Dolores Ferrero
1. I am a native of the San Francisco Bay Area, currently living in San Ramon, California. I was born in dogs… my parents bred and showed Cocker Spaniels well into my teens. What I learned from that experience (besides a love of dogs) was that when I got to choose a breed, it would be one that didn’t mat or require a day’s worth of grooming. So, the Boston Terrier is my low maintenance Parti-Color Cocker Spaniel. We just celebrated the 12th anniversary of our foundation bitch’s “gotcha day,” and she had her first litter in 2017. We’re using my father’s kennel name – he had a passion for Greek mythology – and our dogs are absolutely the center of our universe.
2. The Boston Terrier is a collection of squares – muzzle, head, body – and understanding and accepting that is critical to a dog’s physical conformation to the Breed Standard. Unlike the French Bulldog, a square body requires a level topline.
In our own breeding program, we also focus on the first two descriptive words in our Standard: “the Boston Terrier is a lively, highly intelligent… dog.” While we train our dogs to behave, we’re not breeding statues. Our goal is to produce puppies who are bright, active, and fun to watch and interact with.
3. At least in our area, there are many puppy homes looking for a healthy, well-bred and socialized addition to their home. We work very carefully with our prospective puppy families to ensure a perfect match, and they become our friends and extended family.
4. We work with a wonderful reproductive veterinarian who is as committed as we are to the health and safety of our sires and dams and the puppies they produce. We use progesterone timing to determine ovulation, and ultrasound to confirm pregnancy and to ensure safe cesarean-section timing. We recently had a successful litter of puppies using 14-year-old frozen semen, which wasn’t possible when my parents were breeding dogs. With a different litter, we used the WhelpWise service to monitor a high-risk pregnancy for premature labor, and we’ve used the Puppywarmer incubator and oxygen supplementation to support puppies in their first few hours with us. We raise our puppies using Puppy Culture methodology, and while much of it isn’t new or innovative, it is absolutely based in extensive scientific research.
5. The “adopt don’t shop” movement backed by some of the more extreme animal rights organizations is still very prevalent in our area. We have chosen to do our part to re-educate by building relationships with both our local veterinarians and rescue organizations. We’ve discovered that there is much we can teach (and learn from) each other when we stop arguing and start listening to each other. I have learned a ton about neonatal support for struggling puppies from a rescue contact who has become a dear friend, and we’ve worked with her to teach her staff about how we socialize puppies in their first weeks with us. And both her rescue puppies and our purebreds have found amazing homes through referrals we’ve made to each other.
6. I wasn’t initially sure how to respond to the new NOHS Regional events, but the clubs that have hosted the first few of them have done a great job of making them special events for exhibitors who can’t or don’t wish to make an annual pilgrimage to Orlando.
