Sundance Retrievers (Cranesville, Pennsylvania)

My husband and I searched for several months to find a solid, dedicated and loving breeder of Labrador retrievers. We felt so fortunate to have found Sundance Retrievers in PA. Sheryl and her staff have trained beautiful lab puppies and we were blessed to have found our new companion from them. They have laid down the foundation to work from and you can be sure the basics of heel , sit , stay and stop whistle are firmly entrenched. One thing we will say is that visiting Sundance Retrievers and taking part in your puppy’s training is extremely helpful. We learned a lot from Sheryl and got to know our puppy.
We brought our puppy Abby home in May and she is just a sweet, calm and well mannered puppy. We still have ongoing training work ahead of us but we are loving the journey with our new friend in our lives.
My husband and I would highly recommend Sundance Retrievers to anyone interested in purchasing a beautiful well trained Labrador Retriever.

Sundance retrievers is the best. We picked our new (Companion) dog, Sammy up on a Saturday and he quickly made himself part of the family. He is incredibly well mannered, a good listener and seldom gets distracted when out there on our walks. He has plenty of playful energy in the yard and keeps us laughing all day long. Sheryl and the team at Sundance deliver great pets. Here, Heel and Sit are exactly what Sammy does when asked. We could not be happier and I would give 100 stars if I could. Getting Sammy from Sundance was worth every penny. Sheryl has been available to answer questions when they have come up. And has great suggestions and insights. I highly recommend this breeder.

We can’t recommend Sheryl & Sundance Retrievers enough! She was incredibly insightful throughout the entire process and has shown commitment to stay engaged with us. The pups coming from Sundance carrying a tremendous pedigree and make for top notch companions.

We picked Mac up 3 months ago and he has quickly become a cornerstone of our family. He is well adjusted to toddler life and is up for any adventure! A true “turn-key” dog. The responsibility is on us to ensure he stays on track with his training and temperament.

If you are considering a dog from Sundance Retrievers, GO FOR IT!

Everyone can have a bad experience from time to time. No one is perfect all the time. Our experience with Sundance has been very poor. Our retriever, a yellow lab, came to us at 6 months. I knew the moment I picked him up something was wrong. He was very poorly behaved and poorly trained from the start. Maybe b/c we were looking for a companion dog for my daughter they didn’t train him as hard? From day one at the home he did not take to his crate, yelped all night long, scratched at the crate, keep everyone up. Whenever we tried to let him out, on leash first, then off, he never followed commands or behaved. As for potty training, wow, he pooped and peed in every room of the house for weeks. You don’t expect that from a 6 month old “trained” lab.

Eventually we had no choice after 2 weeks of this but to put his crate in the garage and leave him outside down stairs during the day. We hired various trainers we have had success with in the past and they also agreed he seemed to have not been trained much prior to their working with him. Even with their training he has only marginally improved over several months. WORSE OF ALL, HE’S A RETRIVER THAT WONT RETRIVE. To me that is the ultimate failure of selling “trained retrievers,”, they can’t even retrieve. Again, no one is perfect to be fair, but wow.

We are a family that has enjoyed retrievers for decades. I owned and trained a Cheasepeke Bay Retriver, Crash, that was the most wonderful dog for 12 great years. We had EPIC hour long Frisbee sessions through the years and he competed and won several local Frisbee contest. Crash was also amazingly helpful for me after 2 combat tours with the Marines(Navy myself, volunteer for Marine Infantry), very calming influence on me. We lost him 3 years ago to lymphoma and Sandie was suppose to help fill that void. We currently also have a mutt my wife adopted when I was deployed to Iraq with the Marines in 2007/08, good dog, but not the same for me as Crash.

The point, both my wife and I have had dogs for decades and we agree that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the yellow lab retriever we purchased from Sundance is the worse, most incorrigible, most poorly trained dog we’ve ever experienced. Again, to be fair, maybe we were just the unlucky ones, no business is perfect.

Now the kicker, we paid $6,000 dollars more for this dog than we ever paid for any other dog. The reason, we were promised a “TRAINED” yellow lab. I did contact Sundance a few times, and I will say to be fair to them, they were always very responsive to my emails and they offered to fly him back up for more training, but by then my wife was reluctant to fly Sandie to a place that seemed to have so inadequately trained our dog in the first place. My wife’s very first comment the night she first meet Sandie……………”are you sure they trained this dog?”

So here we are, over a year later, we’ve found a good home for Sandie, someone with a big yard that has nothing else to do but work on training him every day. He is loving, just so poorly trained he can’t live in a house yet. It will be a good home. We have formed attachments to Sandie so we want him to have a good life.

As for Sundance, no offer of restitution for selling such a poorly trained dog was offered. In fairness, we may just be the unlucky ones. We may be the ones that got the lemon in the group. That said, BUYER BEWARE.

I would echo the comments of Justin, Michael and Kristin. I had similar experience myself and do not recommend Sundance. Extremely overpriced for what they deliver. Dog’s nice, friendly enough, but we spent months training him with a professional before he was even somewhat behaved. Not sure why the dog had to stay with them for so long for such a poorly trained dog.

Sundance has been working with my started gun dog Bell. They have been terrific in providing me with updates on her progress and what exercises and drills she’s been undertaking to get ready to be the perfect hunting companion. Thank you so much to the Sundance team!

Edit: My above review was posted early on in my experience with Sundance, prior to receiving my dog. Up to that point communication had been good, but I ultimately posted as they offered additional solo pictures of Bell for a positive review on Google/FB/Yelp etc.

I ended up receiving my dog, Bell in October of 2021. This was a few months after I had initially been told I should expect to get the dog(June/July). As Bell’s ship date approached Sundance’s communication got worse and their tone became frustrated that I was asking for updates on her. I was informed that only they could decide when Bell was ready and to stop asking. I accepted that they were the experts and patiently waited for the next steps. Sundance told me that once she was ready they would provide me videos of Bell performing commands with their trainer as an instructional guide for her first 30 days with us. I used an animal transportation service recommended by Sundance. This was a cross country trip from PA to CA. Bell arrived in the evening and was very skittish, which I expected after several days of travel. Bell had on just a standard collar and leash. I was instructed by the transportation team to pick her up out of the van, upon doing so Bell bit me on my hand, struggled out of my arms and slipped out of her collar taking off down the street, ignoring the calls of both the ladies who had transported her as well as my own. The transportation service workers spent about 15 minutes helping me look before they left when I went inside to make a phone call. Before the dog was shipped to me I had offered to purchase a harness style collar/vest and Sundance had declined reassuring me that it wasn’t necessary.

Bell was missing for almost a MONTH. She had been spotted a few times by neighbors, but she would bolt anytime people called for her.

Communication was fairly decent with Sundance during this stressful period, but I began to have my doubts about the advertised training and sociability of the dog.

After Bell had finally been caught by a neighbor and returned to us it became obvious that she at this point retained VERY little of what she was advertised in having been trained on if she was trained on them at all. She did not respond to sit, stay, or heel commands, she was not house trained and she was gun shy. I asked for the instructional videos with the trainer and Bell they had claimed they had taken prior to shipping. Sundance then sent me 3 videos of their trainers working with another dog through commands that Bell had no response to.

She’s a very pretty and healthy dog, but the level of training and socialization that Bell had purportedly received was not at all in line with what they advertised or the price paid. (With birds and all Bell cost upwards of $6,500 as a “started Gun Dog” before transportation)

I’m continuing to work with her in the hopes to get her to a level where I feel comfortable taking her with me as a duck hunting dog. My training efforts have essentially started from ground up as she had retained none of the advertised traits or skills.

I would not recommend purchasing from Sundance and do not feel their online presentation or reviews match the service they actually offer, especially when considering their practice of requesting incentivized reviews.

I feel that I was ultimately misled by Sundance and while I did receive a dog that I will continue to train and care for Sundance financially took advantage of my good faith in them being a reputable breeder and training facility.