Doodle Doings

you answer yes to more than two of these things (translations below for those things that non-breeders will not get!):

1.  Your kids say, “The dog is wearing underwear, she must be in season!”

2.  You worry when the neighbor kids come over when the dog is wearing underwear because you may have to explain WHY the dog is wearing underwear.

3. You spend more on vet bills in a year than you do on your family’s medical bills.

4. You’re cooking vegetables and meat on the stove and the kids ask, ‘Is that for us or the dogs?’

5. Those glass bottles in the fridge with expiration dates on them all hold only 1 ml.

6.  You spend all night….regularly….. looking at a dog’s butt.

7.  There are more pictures of puppies on your computer’s hard drive than there are of your children.

8.  You worry about someone ever needing to use ‘CSI’ techniques in your house because you know there are traces of every type of body fluid in your house.

9. Vacation and family plans revolve around the dogs having sex.

10. There is a category of laundry in your home called “Dog Laundry”.

Translations:

1. My dogs wear boys tighty-whitety underwear when they are in season….their tail fits through the fly perfectly!

4. Breeding dogs eat well!

5. Vials used for vaccines are generally 1 ml.

6.  Some females give no indication at all when they are about to deliver a puppy.  So unless you are LOOKING at the…..important part……you might miss an important event!

8.  Between dogs in season (ie drops of blood no matter how careful you are) and dogs giving birth (more blood no matter how careful you are) there are definitely traces of blood in every breeder’s home!

9. It is pretty much a given that a dog will come into season if a breeder makes plans that cannot be changed (picture a wedding, or non-refundable plane reservations).

ADDENDUM:  Following this post a number of breeders made observations and comments that rang VERY true. So the following are not my original thoughts, but came from other breeders:

A. There are more dog beds then people beds in your house.

B. When reporting that you are taking your child to a medical appointment, you have been known to say,  “I  am  taking (insert child’s name) to the vet.”

C.  All your travel planes are based on where a stud dog lives.

Puppies are going home!  This is always a bittersweet time.  I am pretty good at not getting TOO attached to puppies in the first couple months they are here.  I tell myself from the beginning that they are not my puppies; I am raising them for someone else.  I love them and care for them and get to know all their little quirks, knowing I will be letting them go soon.  And I am pretty good at that for about 2 months.  If they stay much longer than that I start to get attached despite my best efforts.  I am just getting to the crucial junction with these two litters! Who can NOT get attached to faces like this?

Daisy Double Doodle pups

So puppies are going home, and it is a good thing.  Families are excited, and that is part of what makes this all worth while.

A Doodle puppy of our own, a dream come true

This weekend I was planning puppy deliveries around our holiday travel plans.  One puppy was going to the same town where my sister lives, so the plan was celebrate Thanksgiving with my sister’s family the weekend after Thanksgiving, bringing the puppy with us.  In addition, a puppy was to be delivered to a town half way between Columbus and my sister’s house, so we were going to bring those folks their puppy as we passed through.

But before we could even head out for the holiday, I needed to take care of a minor detail. Sunny, my mini F3 Labradoodle, came into season last week, and according to my calculations she would ovulate on Thanksgiving.  Without fail, I have some kind of doggie event EVERY holiday, so this was not unexpected.  So Sunny is at our house to be bred, and her suitor, Zabba,  a mini F1B Goldendoodle, is also here, visiting from his guardian in Cincinnati.

Zabba: F1B mini Red Goldendoodle

Sunny: F3 Mini Labradoodle

Our house has been like a scene from a teen love flick, with young lovers pining for each other from afar….in this case from across a gate in the back hall.  Well, one young lover, anyway.  Zabba is WHINING and WHINING in frustration at not being able to reach Sunny.  Sunny is not so sure about this whole thing

(this is the first time I am breeding her).  In fact, over the three days they have both been here, she has not become interested in Zabba at all.  Normally when a female is close to ovulating her hormones take over and she will be interested in ANY male.  But Sunny is not receptive at all.  She is nervous, not really eating, very clingy to me, and growls and snaps vigorously, shrieking in indignation, at Zabba if he comes anywhere close to her.  I became concerned that maybe we had missed her fertile window, and took her in for a blood test.  It showed that she DID ovulate on Thanksgiving! So the prime days for breeding are Saturday and Monday. My plan is to allow them to breed on Saturday morning before we leave.  Then Zabba will come with us to my sister’s house, and Sunny’s family will pick her up and she will spend the weekend with her guardians, returning for another breeding on Monday.

I spend Friday getting the two puppies that are being delivered on Saturday ready: baths, groomed, trimmed, contracts and puppy kits ready, final meeting plans made with the new owners, it is all very hectic, but seems to be going well.  Then at 9 PM my younger son begins vomiting.  An hour later, my older son follows suit.  I spent the night on the floor in a sleeping bag in the room between the two rooms where they are camped out, alternating  between napping for a few minutes at a time and dumping their buckets.

By Saturday morning the worst of it seems to be over and my kids are sleeping.  Although we are clearly NOT going to be traveling to my sister’s house, I still need to make plans to deliver the puppies, AND to breed Zabba and Sunny.  That is not going well at all.  Sunny is still FREAKING out if Zabba even walks into the room.  Her guardians are scheduled to pick her up at 9AM, so at 8:15 AM I decide to move to Plan B; I will collect semen from Zabba and artificially inseminate Sunny.  I collect from Zabba, who is more than willing to donate, and I have just begun the insemination when the doorbell rings.  It is Sunny’s guardians, eager to have her home, and early.  In a comical scene I tell my partner to send them home…I’m BUSY! While Sunny is certainly more receptive to me than she was to  Zabba, I am pretty tired by the time we are done.  She may only be 20 lbs, but holding a 20 lb dog upside down (the head has to be lower than the hindquarters for an insemination!) for 10 minutes makes for a LONG 10 minutes.  Especially when I have been up all night with vomiting kids. Sunny is pretty tired too. She is so hormonal she hasn’t been eating well, she hasn’t been sleeping well, and her entire schedule seems topsy-survey.  As I leave the kitchen she seems to be settling in to a nap next to the stove.

Just as I am wrapping up the emails to the folks I will be meeting in a few hours, I hear Sunny whine a couple times in the kitchen.  Poor dog is just tired, I think. A few minutes later, I hear a shout in the kitchen, and a crash.  I burst into the kitchen in time to see my younger son starting to shake poop off his bare foot.  “DON’T SHAKE YOUR FOOT!  SIT ON YOUR BUTT.”  It turns out he had opened the other door to the kitchen and his first step through the door landed his foot in a pile of poop.  He slid, almost falling to the floor.  I guess his excellent balance from his martial arts training kept him upright in the end, upright enough that his instinct was to try to shake the poop off his foot. Poor Sunny had been so distracted this morning that she apparently had forgotten to take care of business while she was out.  She tried to tell me by whining and I ignored her.  Now I barely escaped having to clean poop off the ceiling and it’s barely 9AM.

It is always a little anxiety-producing when a mom whelps her first litter, and I seemed to have been going through that a lot in recent months (Reese, and Sloopy’s recent litters had also been firsts for them).  But Daisy did a great job and things went smoothly, although, of course, her litter was born in the middle of the night!  Three cream boy and two chocolate girl mini North American Retriever puppies made their appearance in the wee hours of 9/24.

Home school had started for my kids a few days after Sloopy’s litter was born, and now, a month later, Daisy’s litter was also keeping me busy.  I was spending the days alternating between working with my kids and cleaning up after moms and pups, and nights catching up on puppy applications and emails preparing new owners for the arrivals of their puppies.  September had blended in to October.

As summer was ending I did something I had never done before……whelped two litters within a month of each other!

I plan the litters at Westwood so that I never have more than two ‘on the ground’, as we say, at the same time.  Puppies are an INCREDIBLE amount of work, and I would not have the time for them, or for the investment in time that I make communicating with the families that are getting ready for their arrival.  So I have had two litters here at once before, but one litter was always within a week or so of going to new homes when the other arrived.  So all of August was spent preparing for Sloopy’s litter  to arrive at the end of August, and Daisy’s to arrive at the end of September.

In addition, it became clear as summer was coming to an end that my older son was not going to lottery in to a different middle school. The school he was at last year was a disaster, with daily fights involving tables, as well as fists, being thrown, as well as a required police presence.  We knew he could not go back there, and when he did not lottery in to a different school I had to begin plans to home school him.  I already knew I would continue to home school my younger son, but planning for schooling for two very different kids, in different grades and with very different needs, was a daunting task.

Sloopy’s puppies were born on 8/27, a litter of 5 mini Double Doodles with Beau as the father. This was Sloopy’s first litter, and it was greatly anticipated.  She did a great job!  One of the puppies was a phantom (a dark puppy with tan markings like a Doberman)

Sloopy's mini North American Retriever litter included a phantom puppy!

The puppies were a delight, and the phantom puppy ended up being the one chosen to be trained for service by WAGS4KIDS.  This was the third puppy I donated to WAGS4KIDS.  Wendy, the director of that organization, is always a joy to work with.  Her program places the puppies in the Marion Correctional Institution for training, a win-win situation for everyone.  Here is ‘Petey’ before he left for prison!

Getting ready to leave for service training by WAGS4KIDS!