Our Breeding Goals and Philosophy
We at Quellen believe in breeding for the complete German Shepherd. When Max von Stephanitz developed the breed he had a vision of a versatile, good looking working dog. To us, nothing has changed with that vision. We hate to see this wonderful breed split and become two separate breeds. The perfect German Shepherd should be able to work all day (be it a service dog, herding dog, rescue dog or tracking dog), come home and play with the baby and look beautiful doing it.
We believe every litter should have a plan for what you are trying to accomplish. If you are not improving the breed, you are destroying it.
We are combining the best of European Show Lines and Working Lines. We want our show dogs to be able to work hard and our working dogs to impress at the show. It's a challenging goal, but we believe it is doable.
If Max von Stephanitz could build such a versatile dog from scratch, that fulfilled everything he envisioned, surely we should be able to take what he spent a lifetime creating and keep it from splitting into two different breeds.
We only own females. We believe that gives us the choice of all the top stud dogs and bloodlines world wide. We can choose to breed to the male that best enhances our female and contributes to our plan for that litter.
We x-ray hips and elbows of all our breeding stock, and we will not breed any female under the age of 24 months. This allows plenty of time for dysplasia, or any other inherited condition to surface. It also gives us plenty of time to evaluate the temperament and working ability of the dog.
Our Dogs Lifestyle
We are situated on 10 acres in central British Columbia, in the middle of the beautiful Cariboo. Our dogs are members of the family.
We are not really a kennel, we are a family. Our dogs live in the house and accompany us everywhere. They enjoy back country camping, hiking, fishing, and just hanging out with us downtown. It is rare that a vehicle leaves our yard without a German Shepherd mascot.
This is one more reason we do not own any stud dogs. When one of the girls was in season, someone would have to stay home.
~Roger Caras
