Juliet and Mojo

The long awaited day has come!  We have Juliet staying with us while she is fertile and she has been a dream!  Thank you Jenica and Patrick for letting us have this visit with Juliet.  We have had Juliet and Mojo tested thoroughly for a variety of health issues to insure that they are premium breeders.  They have passed all the tests with flying colors.  We also know that Juliet was very close to ovulating on Monday morning.  Monday evening Mojo and Juliet had a tie (honeymoon for those of you who aren't breeders) and we will have them breed again this evening (Wednesday) and then again on Friday.  We may test Juliet's progesterone again on Thursday to make sure it indicates she has ovulated and that we can expect a pregnancy.

The puppies these two will have should be solid dark chocolate in color, with soft fleece coats and great conformation.  Juliet brings a beautiful dark chocolate color that has held up long enough to show us that she will not likely lighten up much.  Most chocolate Labradoodles do lighten up and we have been working hard to have a line that will keep its dark color.  Juliet also brings a very sweet and warm personality into the mix.  She is a lovely young lady and has stolen our hearts again with her visit.  She has matured into a beautiful girl.  

Mojo brings a great personality as well.  He has been home with us for over a month now, and has been in a trial guardian home for a little over a week of that time.  He is quite the lover.  He tries to sit on our laps when possible.  He is about 26 pounds and thinks he should put his face right next to ours whether we are sitting with him on the floor, or are on the couch.  He wants to be as close to us as possible.  He has great conformation and boning and will pass that on to the puppies.  He loves to play and will take all the time we can give him.  His caramel coat is buttery soft.  

We are looking forward to a litter of dark chocolate puppies that will be under 30 pounds when mature and will stand about 17 inches at the shoulder.  These puppies should be born around December 20th and will be ready for their new homes around Valentine's Day.  If you want a puppy for your family, these puppies will be great Christmas gifts, (notes in a gift) and can be yours on Valentines!

Finally, Signs of Heat

While the weather is turning crisp, the big news at our house is heat.  That is right, we have signs that our girl Tiramisu is going into heat and will be ready to breed in the next couple of weeks.  That means she will be having a litter of puppies by the end of December.  She is a beautiful parti factored dog with milk chocolate and cream coloring.  Her coat is a buttery soft straight fleece and will not shed.  Misu also is a wonderful dog that lives with a guardian family in Newberg and loves being with kids.  She will produce puppies with a similar temperament.  In fact, we have selected the male we will use with Misu on the basis of his temperament.  These puppies will be very friendly and loving.  They will be chocolate in color with luscious soft fleece coats.  We will be training them as they grow to be used to people, to be potty trained and crate trained, as well as to know the basic commands of sit, down, stay, and come.  We also will be working on training the puppies what they can chew and what they can not.  You will love these puppies!  If you would like to give your family a “coupon” for their Christmas gift that shows the puppy you will be receiving once the craziness of Christmas has passed, we can help you.  

 We also have our beautiful midnight colored girl, Velvet, showing signs of going into heat.  Velvet is a gentle and loving girl who just spent the weekend with us so that we could perform some health tests on her.  It was hard to let her go back to her guardian home.  She just fit so well with our family and the other dogs in the house.  We not only did not have trouble adding another dog into the mix, we were sad to see her go home.  She would sit at our feet and snuggle, making us feel good.  We are confident that she will pass this on to her puppies.  The stud we will be using is also a dog who is just comfortable to be with.  

Seeker is the stud we will use to produce stunning red and black fleece coats.  These dogs will have silky fleece coats that will make you run your fingers through their fur.  We expect that we will be holding back breeders from this litter and already have had some breeders express interest.  If you want a pet from this litter, reserve your place now.  We have waited for this breeding for two years.  We are very eager to have this litter on its way. 

 

Joys and Heartaches

This past week has been another time of joys and heartaches as a breeder.  We got a new stud that we just love.  He is three months old and we have a lot of tests to run on him to make sure he is a good breeder, but he is a love.  His name is Deacon and we got him from Bedrock Labradoodles.  Maggie is a dear to let us get Deacon.  She had been planning to keep him for her own program, but was willing to let us have him.  He is going to be a small standard in size and he is a dark apricot with the most luscious fleece coat.  He is still young enough that we understand how our buyers have to continue the training we begin in order to make sure that the puppies build on their training.  We are working hard with Deacon to make sure that he knows how to potty outside.  We take him out frequently, and we are still working on keeping an eye on him while he is inside.  He wants to please, but he is not familiar with our home yet, and we owe it to him to train him with what we want from him.  He is also doing really well with commands like sit, down, wait, and come.  It is a lot of work, but the result is an amazing dog who knows how to please us.

Deacon is also a very beautiful stud.  He has the boxy conformation we are looking for and a great face.  He is stunning.  We look forward to getting his tests back and being able to both use him in our program and studding him out to other breeders who are looking for the characteristics he brings:  great color, coat, temperament, and size.  We will have to take a lot of time and money to make sure that he passes the health tests.

Speaking of health tests, we had another heartache this week.  We had bred our girl Cappi recently and had hoped that she would produce a litter of reds and apricots with our boy Seeker.  When we went to have the ultrasound done we found out that she was not pregnant.  That was quite the blow to our plans for this year.  We struggled a lot with why.  We recently had her eyes retested (we do this every 12 to 18 months according to our breeding association guidelines) and found that she has a problem with her retinas.  The problem will mean that we cannot breed her (we have not had a litter with her yet and so she will never be a breeder) because her puppies will have serious problems that will lead to blindness.  Her problem is not so serious for her, it will not affect her quality of life, but it would be very serious for her puppies.  This did not show up at all in her earlier tests, but did show up now.  We are so grateful that she was not pregnant and that she will not produce puppies with vision problems.  We are very sad that such a beautiful girl with a wonderful temperament will not pass those characteristics on to puppies.  

As we have said before, breeding is not for the faint of heart.  

We are looking to have an open house in the coming months and in particular are looking for great trainers in our area to invite to meet us and our breeders.  If you know of any really good trainers in the Portland area, please pass on those recommendations.  Also if you are interested in coming to our open house, let us know and we will give you all the details when we pull them together.

Thanks, Steve

What Goes in to Producing Our Dogs

Breeding outstanding Australian Labradoodles takes an incredible amount of work.  If you ask any breeder member of the Australian Labradoodle Association of America, the Australian Labradoodle Club of America, or any of the other breeding associations who exist to make sure the dogs you get are the best they can possibly be.

We raise our dogs in our homes and not in outbuildings, outside, or in kennels.  The rule of thumb is that a puppy ought to meet 100 different people by the time they go home to their new families.  Imagine having one or two litters of puppies in your home (already a massive job) and then having folks you know come to your house by the dozens each week so that by the eighth week your puppies have met and been handled by 100 different people.  This helps your dog to be friendly with everyone.  You want a dog that will comfortably greet new folks.  

We also spend time training your puppy to know where to go potty and more importantly, where not to go potty.  We work with each puppy to train them that there are places where they are praised and rewarded if they potty so that they do not go potty indiscriminately around the house.  Why go potty somewhere that you do not get rewarded if you can go potty in a particular place and get a great tasting treat?  We do something similar with training your puppy about their crate.  We want to teach our puppies that the crate is a place of safety and reward.  They actually like being in their crates!  This helps a lot with the potty training as well.

Along with the training we also do extensive health testing on our breeding dogs so that your puppies are as healthy as they can be.  We test hips, elbows, and patellas so that the dogs we choose to breed are going to produce puppies with good joints.  In Labrador Retrievers, hip dysplasia is a big problem.  We test our dogs with Penn Hip and OFA tests to make sure that your puppies parents have great hips, elbows, and patellas that they pass on to their puppies.  We also test their eyes, their hearts, and their thyroid.  

All of this takes a lot of time and expense.  It is worth it to improve the Labradoodle breed.  It is worth it when we place your new puppy with you.  We want to hear from you after years and years of you and your dog enjoying life together.  

If you have any questions about our breeding program, our dogs, or how we train them, feel free to contact us in the following ways: phone (503-554-5785) e-mail Ann@EvergreenManorLabradoodles.com, or at our webpage www.EvergreenManorLabradoodles.com.  We love to talk with anyone about our work.

If you are interested in getting a high quality dog like those we produce feel free to go to our upcoming litters page http://evergreenmanorlabradoodles.com/Australian_Labradoodle_Puppies_Upcoming_Litter.html.  We have four premium litters coming up in the next few months and you can reserve your space on our list now.  

More on the Ups and Downs of Breeding

In my last blog I shared that we had the disappointment of learning that Lacy, one of our girls whom we had recently bred, was not pregnant.  Today we took our girl Cappuccino to have an ultrasound to confirm her pregnancy.  You guessed it, she is not pregnant.  That was again, very disappointing.

As a result of these two missed litters we are moving forward with breeding two other girls when they come into heat.  You can see all the upcoming litters on our webpage.  We had thought we would hold off on them one more cycle.  We want to make sure we do not have too many puppies on the ground at one time.  We had thought that these two cream girls would produce some creams, apricots, and reds and that we would focus on them for now.  Now we are going to breed out Waltzing Matilda's Black Velvet Beauty and our Spring Creek's Seeker to produce rich, dark reds and silky blacks.  We have been waiting for over a year and a half to breed this litter.  If you want to keep vibrant red coats that hold their color, you have to add in blacks periodically.  Velvet is a beautiful black color that has held up over time.  She will accentuate the rich reds that Seeker has produced, even with our cream girl, Scarlett.  We are planning on holding back breeding stock from this litter for our own program, and we think that other breeders will be interested in these puppies.  

We are also going to breed our chocolate girl, Seattle's Juliet, with our stud who carries for chocolate, Ivy Lane's Michelangelo.  These two should produce stunning dark chocolates with great conformation, gentle and friendly personalities, and buttery soft fleece coats.  Both of these dogs are athletic and graceful.  They love people.  "Mojo" is never far from us and loves to give love.  He will sit at your feet and wait for you to tell him what a wonderful boy he is.  He also has the most amazing yellow eyes that glow.  Juliet has green eyes that hold your gaze.  I am eager to see what color eyes their puppies have.  

Lastly, we are also going to have another litter with our girl, Evergreen 's Bella Luce.  She produced an outstanding litter of ten puppies last winter, and they were apricot to red.  You can look at our web page to see pictures of these puppies as they grew up.  They were amazing and we are eager to have more like them to provide to quality homes who want Australian Labradoodles they will love.  

It is hard to adjust to our girls not being pregnant.  We look forward to each litter and to getting to know the puppies as they grow.  We are looking forward to these new litters in the coming months.  If you are interested in these puppies please contact us or go to our web page to fill out an on line application.