Mia joined our little pack in 2022, after a long search. (Scroll down farther for the story) She is the granddaughter, as well as 4th great granddaughter, of Quigley Downs of Under the Rainbow English Shepherds, her sire being his son and linebred on him. (Click here for more info on him)
Mia loves our family, people she meets in town, or visitors. She is a barker, but it is just a front; she is a softie and loves everybody.
From the beginning, Mia has shown a lot of stock interest, which with her pedigree, was to be expected. As she has grown, Mia has developed that nurturing attitude towards our young stock, while maintaining the power needed to move both large stock as well as the goats, and knowing the amount of pressure to get that job done, whichever it is.
To describe Mia in one word, it would be “happy”! She is always happy. She loves walks in the woods, and is always staying nearby, whether the kids are playing in the yard, on a walk in the woods, or doing chores. She still has ‘her person’ and is her shadow. She loves hunting any varmint.
Mia was probably the hardest puppy we have raised, she had some bad habits, and us having to find new ways of training to fix them! She also was pretty independent spirited in her ‘teenage stage’, and went through the ‘selective hearing’ stage for a few months! Thankfully, we worked through these issues as she matured.
A special attribute Mia has that we haven’t seen with our other ES, is sky watching. We have heard of other ES owners’ dogs doing this, but Mia is the first we have owned with this trait.
Mia is all clear (MDR1, CEA, DM, PRA, etc) per genetic testing. Feel free to request results.
Her pedigree contains a lot of Butcher lineage, which is evident in her build, looks, drive, and personality.
ESC #8380 UKC #D176-926
Mia’s Story
In March 2022, we decided to add a female to our breeding program, after retiring Hevra from breeding after her final litter in July 2021 and making plans to retire Cheyenne as well.
We knew we wanted this female to be a helper with the livestock, as well as a good companion and future breeder, with strong, working bloodlines and that carried the traits we like in our dogs.
Both in the beginning of our search for an English Shepherd, years ago, and over the years, we have liked the look, and temperament, of De Butcher’s line of dogs. Particularly from Julia Downs ‘Under the Rainbow’ breeding out of Kansas. We would see an ES we thought was a nice-looking dog, and it would be from that line! We’d also had other folks who bought pups from us, who had her dogs, or their descendants. We had talked back in 2016 with another breeder whose family bought their first ES from her, and loved him, for all the reasons we now find our dogs useful! We would have loved to get one from her, but sadly, Julia died from cancer a few years ago. So we were on the lookout for one with her lineage in the parent dogs.
Each litter we checked with, didn’t end up working out for one reason or another! One had all females spoken for at birth; another the dam lost her pups, minus one, who the owner decided to keep. Eventually, we thought we would just get a grandpup from one of our favorite daughters of Hevra’s. But……
After a long series of events, Mia, “Miracle Mia” was born in June of 2022. “Miracle” because of everything that happened in the events leading up to her arrival here! From the way we found her breeder, her location, to her dams age (9), her breeder being willing to ‘naturally rear’ her for us, to her being the only surviving female in the litter of 8. God answered our prayers in every way, to bring her into our program, and we are very thankful to Mia’s breeder for the time and effort she put into raising this fine pup. And yes, she has the ‘Under the Rainbow’ lineage…..her sire was bred by Julia. We wanted to reflect this lineage, which is the reasoning behind that part of her registered name. She, like Ranger, also carries the Beebe bloodlines from her dams side, which we also like as it was bred for our area, and known for our needs.
Sadly, Mia’s beautiful sire Bennet passed away in an accident in 2023. We are thankful to be able to carry on his breeding through our Miracle, Mia.
Town & Country ES 