Welcome to
Pleasant Acre Collies
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Mary Lee Shingle
West Alexander, PA
724-484-9265
dmshingl@verizon.net
    Updated  11/16/24
Pleasant Acre Collies is a small hobby kennel located in southwestern Pennsylvania. We have been breeding and showing AKC registered rough and smooth collies (sable/white, blue merle, and tri color) for  over 40 years. We have been fortunate to have bred/owned a Best In Show winner,  the 2024 Collie Club of America National Best of Breed winner and several CCA National winners, multiple group placing winners, multiple champions, and several near champion collies throughout the years.

​My next chapter of being involved with collies is judging. I have recently been notified by the American Kennel Club that I have been approved to judge collies. It’s been a life long dream of mine! 

I grew up on a farm (Pleasant Hill Farm) in central Pennsylvania. When I was in elementary school I found a copy of Albert Payson Terhune’s Lad of Sunnybank in my school library. I was mesmerized with every word in the book, just couldn’t put it down until I was done reading it! I knew from that moment I had to have a purebred collie. Living on a farm, we never bought dogs; they were either drop offs or were given to us. And there were no purebred collies in our area. When I was in the eighth grade my oldest brother had just moved to the Pittsburgh area and told me there were “purebred” collies advertised in the newspaper down there (males $40, females $50). I wanted a female and had a friend who also wanted a collie. The only problem, neither of us had any money to buy a dog and we couldn’t ask our parents for the money. My friend found an ad in a magazine where you could order a holiday greeting card kit and go door-to-door selling Christmas cards. Well, it was July but my friend and I went door-to-door in our small town and got enough Christmas card orders that we each earned enough money to buy a collie. Lassie was my first purebred collie. As I look back now, she wasn’t much to look at, but she was everything to this starry-eyed twelve year old girl who absolutely had to have a collie!

When I moved to my current residence, I decided to start breeding and showing collies. I wanted to use our farm name Pleasant Hill as my kennel name. I did register my first couple collies using this prefix only to find out later that there was a well known, successful collie kennel named Pleasant Hill. Therefore, my kennel name “Pleasant Acre” was born. I haven’t been without a collie since and hope to always be blessed with such wonderful, beautiful, and loyal companions in my life.




Member of: 
Collie Club of America
Panhandle Collie Club of West Virginia
Cleveland Collie Club
Collie Health Foundation
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