Songbird Siberians

2025 Update

Our family photo isn’t very snowy this year since we took it out in California during our Thanksgiving trip!

Happy Holidays to all of our extended Songbird family! It’s been a while since I updated, as always. I’m going to make it one of my New Year’s Resolutions to be more active on the website and social media in 2026. Our two-year-old is finally starting to be a bit more independent, thank god!

There is much to update this year in terms of all that has happened, but I will leave the bragging out of this post. You can find our accomplishments in the show ring on our Facebook page (from winning our first working group to our first placements at the National), but that’s not really the purpose of this post. This was another really challenging year for me as a dog breeder, as a mom, and as a human. We had our first litter since Josie was born and, while everything turned out fine, the whole thing was stressful and I was unable to enjoy it. As I briefly touched on in 2024, balancing motherhood with dog breeding has been a rollercoaster of emotions. Many times during the lows, I questioned myself whether this difficult, expensive, and heartbreaking passion was worth it. Not just worth it for myself, but worth it for my family. I asked myself over and over again: is this the right thing for us? Because it wasn’t just about me anymore — I had to think about my daughter. For an entire year, my answer kept flip flopping back and forth. Dan was of no help, since he changed his mind just as often as I did.

A curious and sad thing was happening in the background at the same time. Siberian breeders were just falling off the face of the earth. Not literally, but they pretty much vanished from social media. They stopped posting, they didn’t interact with others’ posts anymore, etc. Yes, some of it may have been just people taking a healthy break from Facebook. But the vast majority of it was breeders retiring or semi-retiring. When I noticed this trend, I initially panicked. Living where we do, we’re pretty far from other Siberian breeders and already feel pretty isolated. The pictures, bragging, and discussions online were how I felt connected with other breeders in a lifestyle that is, by nature, lonely. Now everyone I had cared about was leaving in droves. And there were no more stud dogs I could use to strengthen my breeding program.

So I started panicking. What was the point of it all, of investing my whole life into this breed and this sport, if it was just going to die off in my lifetime? Now, I realize that entries and registrations have been dwindling for a long time now, since the 90s. But I felt that things had kind of stabilized pre-COVID and there was still a critical mass that was able to sustain enough genetic diversity and quality in the breed that I wasn’t terribly worried about its future. Then COVID hit. I think the economic reality post-COVID has prevented a lot of new breeders from joining the sport or becoming more involved in it. Now, I feel like the breed is truly “endangered” and there aren’t enough breeders to support its future.

Although I was initially depressed, I started to feel that I still wanted to keep supporting the breed and the fancy, even if I just slowly watch it die out in my lifetime. I still want to do my best to “save” the breed. I don’t think that’s an arrogant goal — when it comes to a breed facing a bottleneck, every single breeder matters, every single breeding counts, every single dog kept in the breeding pool matters, and frozen semen from a single sire can be critical. Of course, one person or a few people can’t keep a breed going forever, but the hope is that we can buy enough time for things to turn around in the future. And yes, there are a lot of breeders overseas, but many have been affected by war and the economy as well, and both the quality and ethics can be quite inconsistent. In the future, I definitely plan on flying overseas to personally visit the pockets where breeders seem to be breeding to standard and upholding good ethics.

In 2026 and beyond, the words preservation breeder ring truer than ever for our breed. I hope to continue to do my part: breeding to the standard, preserving genetics for the future, and educating the public on responsible breeding.

2024: A Turning Point

The highlight of our year was Maggie finishing her AKC championship in Orlando, FL at the biggest dog show in North America!

I haven’t blogged in a very long time, and I’m always saying that, and I feel badly about it! I had planned to do a series of posts on handling tips, which I will get back to at some point. This past year has been a huge challenge for me personally, since we welcomed a baby girl in the fall of 2023, and our lives changed dramatically afterwards. I became a stay-at-home mom, and the days were long and draining. I hope I don’t offend anyone by saying this, but I much prefer having puppies to a newborn baby! In many ways, babies are much less self-sufficient and fragile than puppies. I had to worry about things that I never had to worry about with the puppies. And any concern I had would last for months, instead of going away within days. We have had some litters get very sick, and we have lost puppies in devastating ways, so having litters can also be very hard. But when things went well, I found the process of raising puppies really enjoyable. They grew so much and changed so much from day to day. I remember waking up every morning excited to see them! That was not how I experienced being a stay-at-home mom lol.

Our daughter has been absolutely delightful and perfect! But motherhood is hard.

Now that the baby has officially become a toddler, things are still hard. Now in the throes of teething and picking up cold after cold during flu season, the toddler is Needy with a capital N. I specifically picked Siberians as my breed because they are not clingy. They can be very affectionate, and I do really like that, but they are not a velcro dog. I knew I would struggle a lot with a dog that needed my attention all the time, and if I had more than one like that, I would feel so guilty about not being able to give all the dogs the one-on-one attention they required. I already feel guilty about spending significantly less time with the dogs after our daughter was born! But most of them don’t seem to care, because they’re still getting plenty of attention from their other favorite people, Dan and Bianca (our amazing kennel manager). On the other hand, my human child won’t let me go to the bathroom or eat a meal in peace. She gets bored of everything within five minutes and wants me to carry her somewhere else more entertaining.

Anyway, I feel that this year was a big turning point for us not only because we welcomed a human child but also because this fall marked seven years that we’ve been showing dogs. Our first dog Juno turned eight this fall, and we started showing him around his first birthday. He is doing great and has mellowed in his older age, but is still the same spunky, playful dog. We neutered him this past year, and now he can finally relax through our girls’ heat cycles. He was an excellent stud dog and would tell us exactly when the girls ovulated and when their eggs were ripe for fertilization. That part was quite annoying, since he would refuse to be crated during that time, but it was nice to know exactly what was going on! Since he was neutered, now it’s hard to know where exactly the girls are in their heat cycles and whether it’s safe to reintroduce them to the intact boys.

Seven years is not a long time to be showing and breeding dogs, in the grand scheme of things. Some people who have been in the breed seven years may have just finished their first show dog or just bred their first litter. It all depends on how much time and energy you’ve committed during that period, and also a fair amount of luck. Many people have to restart from the beginning multiple times due to show prospects not turning out or litters not turning out. We were both very committed and very lucky (overall) so far in our dog journey, so we were able to accomplish a lot in the past seven years. Simply sticking with it for seven years is a big accomplishment in of itself. There’s a reason why most new dog fanciers quit within the first seven years. After the novelty and excitement of the first few years wears off, you start to experience the really low lows. I really don’t want to discourage newbies, so I won’t elaborate more, but by seven years in, you’ve probably experienced some really trying times. At the very least, you’ve questioned yourself and your lifestyle and whether this is what you want for the future. It requires deep sacrifice on the part of a breeder, in every area of their life, to continue breeding dogs.

In the past seven years that we’ve been showing, we’ve seen many people come and go. And a lot of people retired or quit. I think it’s more important than ever for those who are left to join hands, practice good sportsmanship, and support each other. I’ve seen that go a long ways in other breeds, and the entries in many of those breeds are going up instead of down. If nobody wants to become a Siberian fancier, we only have ourselves to blame! We need to be more welcoming and more open to mentoring, especially in an online format. These days, people do not have the time or finances to travel states away for the opportunity of mentorship. Please, if you are interested in showing Siberians, simply reach out to us and we will help you as much as we can.

Happy New Year from all of us at Songbird!

I apologize for the stream of consciousness that is this blog post, which I’ve written in-between feeding and entertaining the toddler. My point in writing all of this is to say that I’m proud of us for making it through seven years, especially this past year. In this sport, we often don’t give each other, ourselves, or our dogs enough credit. After seven years, if you are still passionate about the breed, about showing/mushing with your dog, about breeding responsibly, then you are honestly killing it! Kudos to you.

Handling Tips Part One: Stacking

This is a really nice overall picture from this angle. His front and expression look fantastic, he is relaxed but standing upright, and my body language mirrors that. Note how my hands are relaxed. My spacing from him is good here. This does not give the judge the best picture of him, though, as he is twisted away from her and looking at me. This was after she had stopped looking at him, but I could have moved in front of him here and free baited him straight forward in case she glanced back at him.

Disclaimer: most of these tips are specific to Siberians, although they apply to a lot of other breeds as well.

So I am far from the best handler in the world, but I am always striving to improve, and I’m pretty good at observing and imitating others, so I thought I’d share some of my handling tips as well as pet peeves. A few months ago, I was taking a win photo with a friendly judge who loved my puppy but was also very insistent that I was doing her a disservice by showing like an “amateur”, in his words. It was a little harsh, but it was great constructive feedback. You do have to have thick skin in this world! I put a positive spin on it in my head…logically, it followed that he was saying I wasn’t an amateur. Just that I was showing like one. Lol. Anyway, his point was that I was standing way too far back from the dog while stacking. And he was right — it did make me stand out, and not in a good way.

I started out showing a dog that I didn’t start show training until he was 6 months old, and by that time he didn’t like to be hand stacked. He was a very balanced and showy dog, though, and he excelled at free stacking. So I free stacked him 100% of the way to his championship. The problem was that I never really learned to hand stack well. Eventually, I got to the point where I was pretty good at hand stacking the dog quickly, but my own posture was not the best. It’s my natural inclination to put some space between myself and the dog, just so I can see and double-check my work, and because it feels like the dog has more room to show off. As opposed to being right next to the dog and your legs getting in the way of his silhouette. The way I was doing it though, by leaning over super awkwardly, wasn’t it. The dog looked good, but I looked amateur. And the worst thing you can do as a handler is carry yourself in a way that distracts or detracts from the dog.

I’m always at a loss for what to do with puppies. I think I should just kneel with him honestly, especially in a short skirt. He looks fabulous here, his head position is ideal and his stack is perfect. He’s standing really strong, with just a little bit of support from the collar. But I look like I’m about to throw up or something 😂

When you are stacking your dog for the lineup, you have a few different options. You can kneel next to the dog, which is the easiest, because you can easily have good posture but also lean back and take peeks at the dog and make quick adjustments as needed. You can easily bait the dog’s head downwards, which is how most dogs look their best. You give the dog a lot of support with your body language, and they usually stay put better, especially when they are young, wiggly puppies. I’ve always felt awkward kneeling, though, and I know some pros and judges have strong opinions on never kneeling. You rarely see the top handlers on their knees, but then again, they are mostly showing polished specials. I never kneel with boys, even puppies, but sometimes I kneel with female puppies. It doesn’t bother me when other handlers do it, but it obviously doesn’t look as good or polished as staying upright. Sometimes, though, I think it’s a necessary evil.

That being said, I really hate option #2 and always have, which is why I kind of refused to do it. Option #2 is you stand right next to the dog’s head and start doing the splits. The degree of the splits depends on how short the dog is and how tall you are, as well as how long your arms are. So you just kind of start doing the splits and leaning towards one side to get your hands down lower, to the level of the dog, while keeping your upper body upright. It’s my personal pet peeve, but I hate the look of this. You do stay upright, but you don’t look confident or elegant, and the “dancing” feet to me are really distracting from the silhouette of the dog. Plus you are typically not low enough to bait the dog’s head downwards.

Unfortunately, those two options are the only realistic ones you have until or unless you have a well trained and structurally stable dog who has the physical and mental strength to hold himself in position. Once you do have that, though, you can do fancier things. Option #3 you switch the hand holding the collar from the left to right hand, and you stand next to but behind the head of the dog, in line with the body. This is a totally hands off position, you can’t bait the dog unless you toss food, and you can’t reach down and fix anything either. An advanced variation of this is when you hold the lead taut and high over the dog’s head and you stand even farther back, towards the rear. From here you can’t fix the front, but you can fix the rear.

Option #4 you stand directly in front of the dog and free bait the dog. One variation is you hold the lead tight and high over his head, which gives you a little more control and helps him stand a bit more upright, and you can use a visual bait downwards at your side. I prefer a really subtle hand motion here — I absolutely hate it when handlers use this forceful motion like they are gesturing to slash someone’s throat. The other variation is you stand very far away and you use a completely slack lead, but from this position you can only bait upwards, and most dogs do not look their best when they are looking up. I would recommend to use this variation sparingly. Only attempt if you have a dog with a perfect free stack, nice long neck, and strong topline. The shorter you are and the farther away you stand, the better and more natural this will look.

My personal advice is: whatever you do while stacking, do not lean over and do not spread your legs more than shoulder’s width apart. In general, stand with your shoulders square and both feet pointing forwards. My personal preference is if you can’t accomplish that without your dog falling apart, then kneel. Also, working in front of a mirror is amazing to help you trust your feel and your dog. One last tip: make sure the dog’s head is pointing slightly downwards and straight (perpendicular to the judge) as much as possible. Especially in young dogs, if the head is turned away from the judge or twisting to get to bait, it really messes up the whole stack.

In Part Two, we will discuss posing for win photos, both dog and human, and how to avoid looking like an amateur handler in a win photo.

Adventures In Choosing Stud Dogs

I’m a planner, and I like to have my breedings planned out as far in advance as possible. Of course, most planned breedings don’t work out, as I typically change my mind about 1000 times. Sometimes, though, I just know from the start — I picked Valley for Serena when she was 3 months old and he was 2 months. On the other hand, I cycled through many a stud dog, and was turned down quite a few times, when I was looking for Cece’s mate. She wasn’t even two, but like I said, I do like to plan ahead! People often retire or neuter their stud dogs, and I wanted to make sure they knew I was interested. One of them declined due to the stud having produced oversize, and I’ll never know if that was the real story, or if they just weren’t sure about Cece, but that comes with the territory when you have a pedigree people are not familiar with. I got incredibly lucky that the stud dog I ultimately chose for Cece was not only available but was a near-perfect fit for her.

Now, a generation down from that breeding, I’m thrilled with how much progress we’ve made in just two breedings. Unlike in Serena’s case, I really struggled with picking a stud for Lillie. Lillie had quite a few faults that I wanted to fix, and I was greedy in wanting to fix them all, while not ruining her many strengths. She is also a top of the standard bitch, and I didn’t want to risk producing oversized pups. Blaze was actually the first dog I had my eye on, from the time I saw him around six months or so. I absolutely loved his pedigree, and I thought that it would be very complementary to Lillie’s pedigree. But I was also hesitant, because he was young and I wanted to wait to see how he matured, as well as how he produced. Lillie had a good amount of bone, and I didn’t want to get anything overdone. While Blaze was on the taller side, he had a lot of smaller relatives and quite moderate ones as well, so I was definitely still interested in him. Over the next year or so until Lillie turned two, I went through a long list of other studs. There were two in particular that I really might have used if not for various obstacles — one was in the middle of nowhere in Canada, and one had a heavy family history of hemangiosarcoma. Both were older (one was dead, in fact!) so they did have that going for them, and I liked what they had previously produced. Alas, I decided to pass on them.

So, process of elimination brought me back to Blaze. Then, when I inquired about him, I learned he would soon be going overseas! So that sealed the deal, since I knew I wanted the chance to use him live cover. At first, it seemed that Lillie was going to be amazingly cooperative and go into heat just in time to do the breeding when she and Blaze were both going to be at the September National. Nope, no such luck. She decides to go into heat super late, so late that we had to drive out to a dog show to meet Blaze, three days before he was scheduled to board his flight to the Philippines. We had to leave after only registering 2 point something in progesterone, since it was a weekend and we wouldn’t have results back until Monday. The 2 reading was a Thursday, and we left Saturday morning to hopefully get a tie that evening and maybe one more Sunday. Well, we couldn’t get the deed done on Saturday, despite walking them all around the romantic Finger Lakes. I was left wondering that night if perhaps my instincts were wrong and Lillie had not yet ovulated or was stalling.

The following day, I was more hopeful, but it became clear that it still wasn’t happening. But we had a backup plan. At the end of the show day, we whisked the lovers away for the type of clandestine rendezvous that only dog people will understand, involving plastic bags and skilled hands. The person who “helped” us out, so to speak, who shall remain unnamed, boasted a 95% success rate.

Stud dog rendezvous road trips are the best kind, not nearly as stressful as dog show road trips! Lol.

That weekend, we felt relaxed enough to continue with our original planned detour at a nice resort, where we hung out with the pups and went horseback riding in the Hudson Valley. On Monday, we got the call from our repro vet. Lillie’s progesterone on Saturday morning had been a 5. We all breathed a sigh of relief and crossed our fingers. I noticed immediately, literally hours after she’d been bred, that Lillie was acting differently. She was noticeably quieter, more protective of herself. This obviously doesn’t make sense from a biological perspective, but there are plenty of things we don’t understand — it’s possible her body knew. Next thing we knew, she was sleeping like a baby, starving to death, and had gained several inches around her ribcage (the lungs expand in early pregnancy to increase blood oxygen).

About a month after Blaze arrived in the Philippines, we hopped in the car with Lillie to our repro vet and found six beautiful fetal sacs. Those were the same six babies she had another month later, although one of them wasn’t meant to be. Looking at those pups now, at four months old, I feel so incredibly lucky that it all worked out. And so incredibly fortunate that yet again, we nailed the stud dog search. This is our nicest litter so far, one that completely exceeded my expectations and initial goals with the breeding. They are not perfect, but they are an improvement on their parents in almost every way. These puppies have retained the best qualities of Cece and her working line traits, kept the type and structure that made Lillie easily a top 20 dog in limited showing, and added the showiness, angulation, and balance that made the sire line consistent group and BIS winners. We are dreaming big dreams for them, and we feel that the sky is the limit.

2022

Gracie getting a huge 5 point major at the biggest dog show in America! Just 7 months old.

Goodbye, 2022! This was a huge year for us in terms of milestones. So much happened that it’s difficult to believe it all happened in such a short amount of time. It will take a while for me to process everything. There were a lot of hard times as well, even traumatic losses, which we are still grieving. It was a year that taught us what it means to breed, challenged our commitment to the breed, and also rewarded us for sticking with it. Although I’ve never written down specific goals, if I had, then this past year we certainly would have checked off a whole bunch of them.

We have been so blessed with the two lovely litters we had in 2022, although the first is only eight months old and the second four weeks old, so they have plenty of growing up to do. But there is so much to love about them already, so many things that we have been able to improve on in our second generation of dogs, from structure to temperament to training. It is so encouraging to see, and I feel secure and content with what we have in our kennel in a way that I never have before. As a preservation breeder, you are always racing against the clock, against time. Lines, dogs, and breeders are dying out by the second. Even great judges are passing or retiring. Your girls have a limited number of reproductive years, and I have always felt an urgency to breed my girls as soon as possible. Now that we have enough promising youngsters, I feel that I can slow down a bit, especially since we plan to keep quite a few of Lillie’s babies.

I truly feel like I have been able to “preserve” the best qualities of our foundation dogs, Juno and Cece, and have vastly improved upon them in just two generations of breeding. A lot of that was careful planning, and a lot of it was also luck. If I could give a piece of advice to a new breeder, it would be this: pick the right stud dog the first time around. It saves you so much time and energy, and you are able to move forward with every breeding. Of course, that’s much easier said than done. I agonized over Lillie’s suitor for years — I had my eye on Blaze early on, but he was a young, unproven stud. I wasn’t sure if I would like him once he matured, and I wanted to see how he would produce. When I heard that he was soon going overseas, though, I decided that he was the one. I felt confident in his pedigree, and I felt that he was the best I could do for Lillie. Although the litter is only four weeks old, I have been extremely impressed with them so far. I’m so pleased we got some nice boys in this litter — finding a good stud dog is practically impossible these days, so it’s much better to have one at home.

Without further ado, here are some of our 2022 highlights:

Our first grand champion. Lillie got her grand championship in the blink of an eye. She did it in style, going breed her second day as a move-up in a huge, competitive entry on a specialty weekend.
Our first group placement. When I saw that the only other specials entered that weekend were RBIS, group-winning, top 10, etc., I did not have any expectations for Lillie’s first weekend out as a special. She proceeded to take 3 out of 4 breeds and got a group fourth the first day. The one day she lost the breed, the group judge gave the breed winner the group win. After seeing that, and knowing the same judge was judging breed the next day, I thought for sure we would lose to the group winning dog. To my shock, Lillie took the breed over that dog, and the judge made sure to let us know that she would’ve been her working group winner! That was a working group that included a National winning Doberman. To be honest, when we had Lillie out, I was so often surprised by her results, I think on the whole the judges appreciated her more than I did! I had to learn to see her through their eyes.
Our first ranked special. Lillie was top 25 both breed and all-breed after only a month of being specialed. For half of that she was out of coat too. Then she hit another awkward phase around 2 years old, so we decided to keep her home and breed her. Even now, she is still ranked in breed!
Our first second generation bred-by champion. With each generation that you breed, if you are lucky enough to maintain a line, the blood, sweat, and tears that go into the newest generation just grow exponentially. So many lines fizzle out in the first generation; it’s so incredibly hard to keep quality going for more than one generation. To improve on that quality two generations in a row is truly unusual and requires both skill and luck. Gracie is everything that we wanted from her parents, and we couldn’t be prouder to have her representing us as our first second generation bred-by.
Our first competitive 6-9 puppy. It is every breeder’s dream to breed a dog that is competitive at every age, from the puppy class to the veteran class. We have had some nice puppies, but not the type of puppy that wins breed from the classes or is consistently competitive against older dogs. Gracie is pretty much that – her head is the only part that looks a little awkward. I wasn’t sure if the judges would see what I loved about Gracie, but enough of them did, and she became our youngest champion ever at just 7 months old. She took back-to-back 5 point majors (another first for us) in stiff competition to finish.
Our first stud dog service. It was such an honor to get our first stud dog recommendation from a longtime breeder who had seen Valley at last year’s National and told us he should’ve won his huge and competitive open dog class! It’s been a whole new experience navigating these waters as a stud dog owner, writing up a stud contract, and really thinking about the responsibilities of this new role. We have decided that we wouldn’t stud our dog out to anyone who we wouldn’t sell a puppy to, and while this decision certainly upset people, it’s something we’ve decided to stick to, if only for our own peace of mind. The fact that Valley is about to have puppies on the other side of the country is hard to comprehend!
Our first time rehoming a retired dog. We have always kept our kennel small (we do not actually have a physical kennel) so that we would never need to rehome dogs upon retirement. I always said, though, that if the perfect home came along, I would be willing to do it. All of our dogs are very happy in our home, but some of them I know would be even happier having more one-on-one attention. So the perfect home ended up coming along for one of our retired girls, our second show dog who we decided not to breed, and we thought we would give it a try. This home already had one of Gracie’s sisters, and they were doing a great job with her as first-time Siberian owners. It turned out to be a perfect match, and we are absolutely thrilled!