Temperament
The happiest dogs are beloved family pets. In making breeding decisions, we first look for the qualities that will make our puppies successful pets. This means choosing whippets whose temperaments we know over those we don't, and it means choosing sometimes to breed animals with easygoing temperaments over those with more drive to win in the performance arena. While we hope some adopters will show or race our puppies, or work with them in agility, obedience, lure coursing, flyball, and other venues, we place puppies only in homes where they'll be pets first.

Health
In the long run, no breed can survive unless its genetic health is protected by breeding only the soundest examples. Whippets are an exceptionally healthy breed and we would not knowingly breed any animal with a health questionmark.

Eye problems are sometimes found, but are not common in whippets. We have ours checked annually by a certified opthamologist. As it seems to us that heart disease is becoming more common in whippets, we've made a commitment to also have echocardiograms done before breeding. Deafness has been reported, again rarely, so we have our dogs BAER (brainstem auditory evoked response) tested. As additional problems crop up in the breed, we'll do our best to test and breed against them.

Type and soundness
After steady temperaments and genetic health, we look for good structure, proper movement, and whippet "type"...that hard-to-define quality that makes a whippet a whippet. Most fanciers would consider our whippets typey and sound. We do show our dogs, because we wouldn't want to breed dogs that hadn't been seen and approved by others with extensive experience in the breed.

Something special!
Finally, we are among those who feel that having a good dog or even a champion isn't a reason to breed. We breed only when we believe that a particular whippet has qualities which should be part of the future of whippets -- that her genetic makeup is so good that it should not be lost. We had whippets for many years before we decided to breed, and it was several more years till we found whippets we felt really should be bred.

We don't kid ourselves that we are "improving the breed." We will never breed enough to have an impact on whippets as a whole. But we strive to improve our tiny corner of whippetdom, and above all, to do no harm to the future of whippets!