Jenni came over to visit with Sonagh a few weeks ago. It was so wonderful to see her smile! It has been a long time since we have seen her smile and leave it to the doglets to tease one out of her.
Snuggle Puppy!
Jenni and Sonagh - these two have got some kind of bond going on….
Look how relaxed Sonagh is in this photo; a dog being hugged is not usually relaxed!
It is so lovely to see Jenni starting to live her life again and creating a new normal for her life. She is a remarkable young lady!
My friend Amy at Big River Labradoodles and her F1B’s Emily and O’Malley had a litter of puppies on the 3rd of February. Two weeks ago my niece and I took a road trip to visit Amy and the puppies.
Momma Emily (a.k.a. The Lunch Truck!)
Did someone say “Lunch!” ???
My niece in puppy heaven…
I am hoping this little girl (she is so sweet I have dubbed ‘Dolce’) will go home to my friend Arika. Arika owned Sonagh’s brother Wrigley. Sweet, darling Wrigley had to be put down at Thanksgiving because they could not get his seizures under control. Her four year old son Max really misses and sometimes sits and talks to Wrigley’s picture! This little boy needs a dog!
No, seriously! I want to sleep in the corner this time!!
Pretty cool how I just blend in with the hippo, huh?
Collective Food Coma…
Cool! The Greta babysitter is here! Party!!
One last look at sweet wee Dolce…
And I can’t resist adding a few pictures that Amy sent me the other day:
Wee Dolce coming in for a kiss!
Orange girl
OY! What a cutie oie!!
Take Me Home Eyes!
Don’t you just want to kiss this little chocolate nose??
From my perspective, the change in Wally’s appearance after his first full grooming is pretty dramatic. He is the first dog that I have owned who is of a breed that requires regular clipping, so these kind of changes are new to me, even though I have owned dogs for decades.
Wally went for his first ever full body trim yesterday. Previously all he has had done are his paws, eye area and privates. All he wanted to do when he got home was drink water, go outside, eat dinner and pass out in his kennel.He was kinda crabby and wasn’t real happy about the camera flashing in his face.
Before
And the handsome boy after!He doesn’t look like a puppy any more!
Hard to believe that it has been a year since we got the good news that our new bundle of fur had been born! Here are some photos of the last year.
At a rest stop on the long ride home from Noble Vestal Labradoodles in Noblesville, Indiana.He cried for the first ½ hour or so and then was a perfect angel (naturally!) for the rest of the 12 hour trip!
Loving his new sisters, fully confident that they are as enthusiastic about playing with him as he is about playing with them. (The girls soon disabused him of this rather misguided notion.)
He is, however, completely correct in his assumption that his momma adores him!
His sometimes spooky human eyes…
A dedicated fan of that team that was soooo darn nice and named their mascot after him!
Wally and I had our last class of Level IIObedience this morning.It has been a wonderful class as there were only two of us (Wally and Bella) and it has been like getting a private lesson each week from our trainer, Jeff Yoon of The Canine Coach here in Minneapolis.
Today we were working on having our dogs stay, walking away, calling them and then having them sit or lie down half way through the recall.We had playing cards laid out on the floor to give us our targets for the sits and downs. Wally was a champ!!
Then Jeff began scattering the entire deck of cards, face up, all over the training room floor.Gina (Bella’s mom) and I looked at each other, wondering what in the world Jeff could be up to!That is when Jeff announced we were going to play a card game…with our dogs!The first round went like this:Black was a sit and Red was a down.The dog’s butt had to be on the card for it to count as a sit and their front paws or legs had to be on the card to qualify as a down.30 seconds…GO!!Well, Wally won that round with us holding four cards.
On to round Two!In this round, rules were the same with one twist – their body had to be going in the same direction as the card!One minute…GO!! We won again, this time with six cards!!
As I watched the Sporting Group segment of the Westminster Dog Show last week, I was struck by how many of the breed descriptions included lineage details that went something like this, “And here is the X Breed.The X Breed was developed by breeding the Y Breed and the Z Breed along with other breeds to achieve the X Breed’s (inserta particular physical or behavioral characteristic) giving us the breed we know and love today.”
In my mind and musings, this begs the question: What is the difference between these AKC breeds and our purpose bred doodles?Time?
The first archaeological evidence of selective breeding occurred around 7,000 BC in early Mesopotamia. The Mesopotamia’s recognized the Arabian Desert wolf as an impressive hunter, since it was lighter and swifter than its relatives. So over time, and with selective breeding, the Mesopotamians developed from this animal the first example of a purebred dog. That dog still exists today and is known as the Saluki or Persian Greyhound.
Now let’s fast forward to the present day, because all you need to do is stroll down any street to see all of the different breeds created to fill a special need for humans.
The Labradoodle, the first dog to be labeled a ‘Designer Dog,’ was developed in the late 1980’s to fill a void in human/dog world, an allergy friendly guide dog.
Their development was not some chic attempt to create a ‘designer dog.’ They were developed as a specialized service dog, because that type of dog didn’t currently exist.The development of the Labradoodle, and later the Goldendoodle (a golden retriever /poodle hybrid), allowed people needing a service dog, but who suffered from dog allergies, to finally get the help they needed to make life more manageable.
Like the breeds showcased at Westminster, only a few of our doodles do the work for which they were originally developed.Most are loving, allergy friendly companion dogs, not active service dogs.But wait!Wasn’t the development of an allergy friendly companion dog also one of the original goals?
In our modern, sometimes disconnected, society more and more people are turning to their dogs to fill an emotional gap in their life.Some of those dogs, in particular the doodles, have been specifically bred to fill yet another human need, that of companionship.
And isn’t molding dogs to fulfill a human need what man has been doing for thousands of years?
Here is my crew – Best in Show, each one of them!! (Okay, so it is only my show, but I still think they are the best!)
Two weeks ago Wally joined his Goldendoodle cousin Lili at a dog park in Bloomington. It was Wally’s first time at a dog park and I am happy to report he did great! He came when he was called every time and was a perfect gentleman with all the other dogs. there were a couple of people he was a bit cautious around, but all in all he did really well. My brother-in-law was great and took the two pups all around the huge park, which was pretty icy, while my sister-in-law and I wandered in the safer zones. When it was time to leave, Wally wasn’t too keen on the idea, but it was sooo cold and the humans did not have the benefit of fur coats! The wee man proceeded to completely pass out on the way home! If we can get the weather to go above zero, we will definitely be going to the park again!
Here are a few pictures of Wally and Lili’s big adventure!
