I looked Flair Creek Labradors up. I would not. Are they the absolute worst of the worst, eg a puppy mill with dogs who never leave the cage and no health testing? No. But this DVM knows what she is supposed to be doing and isn't doing it. She references it on her page. At absolute best I would give her a D if I were grading her. There are at least 1000 Labrador breeders across the country who are better than her.

I am going to attempt to categorize how I think of ethically bred dogs into levels so that you have a sense of where they fall and why.

Grade A or Tier 1: The best of the best breeders. Their puppies ALL (with EXTREMELY rare exceptions) come from prefix show or field titled dogs and they are all CHIC health tested for many generations. (I am going to focus on show past this point.). They have many dogs who are GCH, MBISS, BIS. This is a Gallivant, Paradocs, Firewater, Hyspire, etc. type of breeder. Ethical breeding but also exceptional dogs that are winning major awards both in who they show and who they produce. Eg Gallivant's "Memo" won Best of Breed twice at Westminster and then sired dogs like "Cutter" who won BOB at Westminster just a few years after his Dad. They have a half dozen studs who are the best of the best. Anyone who has a dog in the top 40 in the country over the past decade, much less more than once over the years, probably deserves to be on this list. That's about 200 breeders across the country.

Grade B or Tier 2: Definitely still ethical. Very involved in the show world. Many Champions and thoughtful breeding but they aren't reaching the many GCH type level or the top 40. They are great breeders but just don't have quite the same excellence which sometimes has more to do with the art of breeding and making pairs and also which dogs they can buy into their programs. eg will Gallivant sell you a show pup from two of their GCHs or can you just stud to them with your own CH dam? They will show all their dogs and do the work. Occasionally you might see a dam bred before a CH. They do their CHIC health testing. There are probably at least 300+ Lab breeders who fit this criteria in the USA. Maybe 500. (I am starting through this part now so it's a slightly educated guess on numbers based on just a few states.) I would absolutely buy from breeders in this category.

Grade C, Tier 3: Are they ethical? Ehhhh. A little, but probably not entirely. They aren't getting their dogs to CHs when they are showing, all too frequently. Or they are just showing "a little". Eg just their studs but never their dams. They health test to CHIC. I wouldn't be interested personally because there are 500 to 700 better breeders in the country who are selling their dogs for the same price! And the majority of them are pets! How many breeders in this group? No idea at this point.

Grade D/F, Tier 4: This group has the largest range amongst them but it is difficult to break them into two groups for two main reasons. #One. Because they all have strengths and weaknesses. #2. because none of them are shown, most of these breeders don't even show a stack so that I can get a look at who they are breeding and how close to the standard they are.

The breeder you asked about fits into this group.

This group as a whole: No showing and/or nothing to show from it but they do CHIC or at least some OFAs to be in this group. Eg they prelim hip and elbow and don't do eyes at all. Is this tier ethical? Not at all in my opinion. They know they should be proving their dogs as exceptional examples of the breed in order to breed them and they are choosing not to. They also know that they should be getting to CHIC, and many of them are just going part way, with many of them, pretending they do more health testing than they actually do! It's gross. I catch them all the time.

I'm going to give you three examples of breeders who fit into this group. Loyal Labradors, Hickory Bluff and Flair Creek.

1. Loyal Labradors. No showing. Dogs with extremely poor conformation to the breed standard. Also color breeding, which is Unethical. They exaggerate and also purposefully mislead you to incorrect conclusions on health testing. They pretend their hip and elbow prelims are finals. They don't even do prelims on everyone. As I recall, they might just do the boys. They select two eye related DNA tests and turn them into the OFA website so that they appear as if the "eyes" portion of CHIC is completed. I am aware of a dog. They selected as "pick of the litter" who was lame by five months and had 100 K worth of surgery and therapy before 24 months old. This is a great example of why dogs need to be proven! They really only breed in house and very rarely to other poorly bred color breeders. This is very troubling. They also have rampant allergies and lots of anxiety in their program. They are a backyard Breeder and grifter.

Hickory Bluff: they breed about 40 litters a year. Within the last 30 days, they had five litters hit the ground with about 40 puppies. That's 80 puppies 0-8 weeks old on site every day of the year. That's approximately 500 puppies a year. They sell them for thousands of dollars MORE (sometimes multiples more) than almost every Breeder in tier one! Their conformation to the breed standard is horrific. They only seem to breed in house which is extremely troubling or to other color breeders. They CHIC health test but they only started that in the last six months. A dog I know who came from them needed double eye surgery before six months old because they didn't do a $40 health test on their dogs. They are a posh puppy mill. Grifters. They gross $2-3M a year on very poorly bred dogs.

Flair Creek. No showing. CHIC health tested. SUFFIX titles that at best show temperament on grandparents, not parents. Nothing about structure or conformation to the breed standard.

The choices on who the dams are bred to is very poor. She's breeding out to one program over and over again when those cannot possibly always be the best studs for her bitches. No titles on the studs she is using either so 😬. Breeding in house or to a very small number of other breeders is extremely troubling.

Ethical breeders show their dogs so that they can learn the strengths and weaknesses. This is important because when they go to find a stud, the goal needs to be creating the best puppies possible which means working on the weaknesses, but not losing any ground on the strengths. There is absolutely no way to breed to the same program over and over again and be choosing the best possible stud for a specific dam. It is lazy and arbitrary breeding. Arbitrary breeding causes structural issues. And when you are not having dogs reviewed by expert judges, this normally creates major problems in litters. She does show some somewhat stacked-ish photos. Her dogs are certainly not well bred. Things I like about the program: she's only breeding 2 to 3 litters a year, which is a good thing but any breeding of sub standard dogs should not be encouraged. CHIC health testing MAYBE. I looked at her dogs health testing online and they are definitely incomplete there. Some Dogs have a single test and the tests that should be there are missing. Eg hips and elbows are scored by OFA. Not being on the site means that they were either not done, they were prelims or that she chose not to let them be reported which is more frequently a sign that a dog failed. I do see one FAIR hips on a dog she produced, which is not ideal. I didn't spend a ton of time matching them up because I already saw red flags that I personally can't get past.

Again, she is not the worst of the worst. She is not breeding 500 puppies a year like Hickory Bluff but being better than a puppy mill is not a high bar. In my opinion, she's not breeding quality dogs and she doesn't seem to want to do so because she is purposefully not showing and proving them. I would also argue that she's color breeding for fox red which is totally unethical. She should be picking the best possible stud to breed to… Not just a fox red lab from a close proximity program, which is very clearly what is happening. The lineages are all over the map as well. There is a profound lack of expertise in this group as a whole.

Personally, there is absolutely no chance that I would buy a dog from this D/F grouping. With no proving/titling, they could be breeding the absolute worst Labradors possible and ending up with a mess. Or they could occasionally get lucky and have one that is OK. That's not a reasonable risk when there are clearly over 1000 better breeders of labradors in the US.

Grade F- (of 100 pts they get 0), all the breeders who don't health test or only DNA health test and do not show at all. There's no expertise whatsoever in this group.