The Mud Cure: You don't need Doodles

Hey fam. It's been a while since my last blog post. I've been bured. A lot of nonsense going on, and some of that has been related to seeking a new pup. Spent December processing the grief and loss of OG pup, and asking myself, how do I find another dog? Actually AI was quite useful in helping me analyze physical and temperament traits. OG pup was a rarity. I found her by accident in a shelter, with no family, looking for a border collie mix, and didn't even understand how a black and tan dog was a herding breed. However, the hours I spent with AI analyzing face structure, and coat density, one factor was never a problem. Allergies. I never needed to consider getting a hypoallergenic dog. And I will tell you the breeder situation was currently enough of a landmine. With the Border Collie and Aussie Breeders, the show lines are starting to resemble Lassie with the overbred lion main coat. PSA: Rough collies and shelties were popular with our grandparents generation and went out of fashion because overbreeding caused health problems and unmaneable coats. The show lines are unrecognizable, they don't even look like the original dog breed. They are creating a separate breed. But then there are the doodles. They are everywhere. You think it started with Labradoodles, or the earlier version Cockapoos? There is no breed untouched by a doodle. Again, these dogs produced don't look like the breed. They look like a powder puff poodle. I have one friend with one son who got a poodle. She had never owned a dog before in her life, and got the poodle because it was hypoallergenic, and appreciated the poodle because it was so intelligent. French doodles = Frenchie + poodle

Aussie doodle = Aussie + poodle

Mini aussie doodle = MAS + poodle Havadoodle = Havanaer + poodle The abomonations know no ends. But here's where it gets mindblowingly ridiculous. Everyone knows, or should know, the only way to get predictable doodle mixes are full bred breed + full blown poodle. But NOW people are trying to be unscrupulous about the doodle crazy. I saw puppies from an Aussiedoodle plus a Labradoodle for 3000 EUROS! The best Aussie and Border Collie breeders in Germany charge 2500 for full blood pups. This read desperation to me. "We paid way too much for our doodle mix dogs, so we want to sell mutts for 3000 each. BUT DOODLE." Here's the secret. One reason my dog buying considerations never needed to consider hypoallergenic dogs is this: I spent my childhood outside eating mud and sharing my popsicles with the family spaniel. Newsflash: I don't have allergies. I have a very strong immune system and quick recovery time from illness, not to brag. It seems like this whole doodle branding issue is a parasitic trend for the generation with helicopter parents who grew up in a sanitary bubble. The moms that require all hands to be wiped with sanitizer? Those families.

Here's the good news: You don't need to be swindled by a 3000 Euro puppy con job. All you need is mud. Go outside. Eat mud. Don't use hand sanitizer. Share your ice cream with a dog. That's what you need. It's a lot less expensive than a 3000 mutt from people who are trying to get their money back after buying two designer breed dogs. Also fam. Meet fluff nugget. She is the result of hours of AI analyzing dog photos of OG pup, for facial structure, and functional body structure, and coat features, ears, tail, leg, and toe feathering. She's perfect. Economically, she's middle of the road. I tried to get a collie pup from the UK for a few hundred, but the logistics were unmanageable. Because of the highly commercialized and regulating breeding consumer goods situation in Germany, insurance and risk create higher cost breeders, but it's not the most expensive breeder in Germany. But she's black and tan with no white on the face, and a chill personality from her dad, and that was very hard to find. See below if you're thinking "Ok Sylvia, but I didn't grow up with dogs. I've never owned a dog. If YOU have a hard time, where do I even start?" Ok I'll try to share what I know....

Where do I actually start with dogs? Gosh this is hard. I was in a forum for Aussie owners where one woman was a cat woman had never owned a dog, and started with an Aussie. Then proceeded to write a 73 page trauma journal about how she couldn't handle normal puppy behavior. In our family we've had 7 dogs. Three came from breeders when we were kids. In the last 20 years we've had four dogs that were rescues. But my brother and I were confident enough to handle that. Lately inexperienced people think "oh I want an Aussie or a labradoodle because they look cool on instagram." Then you have those people actually criticizing shepherds who know absolutely nothing about how actual working drive works in real dogs. Not instagram photos of dogs. I've never had a cat in my life, apart from a one year temp situation or less than a year with a roommate with a cat. I didn't have a positive experience with the tabby cat I took in temporarily for friends. Therefore, I can't help cat people understand the difference. Of course dogs are amazing. They are more amazing the more you understand them and the less you try to project something onto them, like any sentient creature. But how do I approach dogs? That's what I can offer the "where do I even start?" questions. When we were kids, mom took us to a local breeder with a liter, and we picked out a puppy. My mom had a cocker spaniel when I was born. I wanted a cocker spaniel. I think there was only one left, she was the smallest. I remember she had a fungal infection on her feet they were treating with meds. My brother wanted a beagle. The attention seeking boy of the litter ran up to his feet, so he thought that meant the dog chose him. We were kids, what did we know? Cockers are pretty insecure. Both dogs were sweet. His beagle was dumb as rocks and oversized. 90 pounds is twice the size of a normal beagle, by the way. My cocker was sweet and timid and frequently overshadowed by dumb beagle brother. My brother got a shelter dog first in grad school. It was a lab mix. She was a sweet good dog. He had a hard time putting her down in the end. She was there when his kids were born. I mentioned when I went looking for a dog. I was looking for a bordercollie mix in shelters. The rescues were so competitive. It was impossible to actually get a dog from a rescue. To this day I'm still not a fan, quite honestly. The best dog of my life, and perhaps out of all of our dogs, came from a tiny rural shelter where I wasn't even looking for her. She's by far the most favorite dog of mine we've ever had, and my dad is nearly equally as biased. He would have done anything for OG pup. When I found her, she was a tiny thing. She had been through trauma and had physical scars, including a missing eye. I had concerns but she was under a year, and the woman at the shelter assured me she didn't have any psychological issues. She had personality bursting out of her seams. She was 10kg when I met her, but when she looked at me it felt like a full grown golden. Then she would run away and I would think "no way she's that tiny." She had lack of confidence issues. She was also highly intelligent. So I was prepared for both. I didn't want another submissive peeer or insecure dog after the cocker, and I understood a basic fact. She wanted to know the rules. Either I told her what the rules were or she created her own. It was that simple. At my parents house she would line up their shoes by the door when left at home if they didn't close the door to their bedroom. Rule: "shoes need herding." But unlike border collies, she didn't nip at heels if people in the family didn't do what she wanted. However, this time around, the challenge I faced is we've never had a dog under 7 months in the last 20 years. So that's what I want the inexperienced to understand. I look at a puppy from a breeder litter at 4 weeks and it looks like a gineau pig. For me, I can't see anything about that dogs adult face or personality. It's impossible for me to figure out who that dog is or to make a decision at that age. Let alone what do I even do with a 2 month old puppy that's a lump of clay when it comes home. Here's the contrast. OG pup was 7 months when I got her. She had a fully formed personality and she was super well behaved and easy to train. But still a puppy. I would actually forget she was a puppy unti;l she destroyed something or some other typical puppy developmental behavior because she was so easy. How do you find that dog? That's the question I've been asking for years, even before she died. She will be impossible to find another dog like her. That's why I spent a LOT of time analyzing her personality and physical traits with AI when faced with a landmine field of breeders. A lot of inexperienced first time dog owners worry about or fear puppy mills. So the way to avoid puppy mills, they are told, is get a breeder that has a membership in a kennel club. That way you know its an ethical breeder. But let me tell you the kennel clubs and I have different definitions of what limits ethical breeding should have. When I looked at dog breeders with kennel club memberships I didn't recognize the dogs. This is breed independent. When I look at cocker spaniels - they have bred their ears to come out of the sides of their heads next to the eye balls. When my criterial for "what I want" is just "a dog that looks NORMAL" it's a problem. I have written a complaint to the German kennel association telling the show judges to stop rewarding working breeds for extremes that would hurt the dog in the wild. Coats. This was a big problem. If the dog looks like a lion, just think about things practically. You're going to take that dog on walks in all kinds of weather. Mud. Raid. Swimming. Dirt. Think about a big lion mane coat weighed down with water and mud. Is that what you want? No. It's not what the dog wants either. So the flip side of "don't buy a puppy from a puppy mill" is "dont' buy a dog that's overbred with anatomy or coat that hurts it." European animal welfare laws are already going after overbreeding of pug nosed breeds that can't breath. With working breeds, skull strength is important. I was talking to a MAS breeder. (mini American/ Aussie shepherd). For reference, these are elite athletes of dogs. They have incredible high drive. My dog was sweet as syrup, but her kill drive was fierce. She was designed to hunt prey. She could outrun 90 pound German shepherds and labs. She could leap to the top of a four foot wall from a sitting position. Her head was hard. She was rough and tumble. Her skull had strong bone density like a helmet of a race car drive. It was built to protect her from the inevitable speed and crash course that her instincts designed her for. This MAS breeder was breeding that race car driver type of dog with tiny chihahua skulls. What was worse was when I brought it up with the breeder, the breeder's response was "there's enough room for their teeth." As if she was in complete oblivion about the mismatch of producing high drive race car drivers without a helmet for their brain. And if you are a first time dog buyer looking at kennel club membership "ok it's not a puppy mill" you have no idea about the horrible choices breeders make bringing these sentient amazing beings into the world in ways that do not protect them or equip them the way nature intended. If you look at rural dogs, they have not been bred for designer aesthetics. They are the product of natural selection. That's what a normal functional dog looks like. The basic standard should be that. The sad part is that I had to use AI to analyze head shape structure of puppies to measure how to find that. The body shape too. Breeders that just breed for show, ignore traits like intelligence or functional anatomy. Feet shape. An athletic dog has "cat paws" with toes that have a high level of tension. They do not have flat toes that slay outward. Their abdomens dont look like a barrel. Athletic dogs have a tapered waist and clear muscle definition, even if they ahve a medium coat covering their limbs. If you have a show breeder, the underbelly of the dog looks like a straigh line, the feet are flat and splay outward. This is the kind of analysis I had to spend hours with AI to weed out breeders who were only breeding for coat and show aesthetics, who were breeding out high drive intenstiy dogs to become couch potatoes. There are breeds that have been bred for centuries to be a lap dog. If that is what you want, please get one of those puppies. Please do not buy a working breed dog because it looks cool instagram because you want it to be a couch potato. Another issue of skull structure is the blocky big heads. The opposite of the tiny fragile skull problem. Functional dogs have smooth heads with flowing angles. The forehead isnt' 90 degrees. If you watch videos of Aussies on tiktok who don't look like this, these likelyh come from the breeders dumbing down the breed and breeding for massive impractical coats and face shapes. Just because they have a kennel club membership and aren't a puppy mill doesnt' mean their breeding practices are genetically ethical. Let's think about this. Those cool instagram accounts with the cool looking dogs. What are they doing with those dogs? Climbing mountains? Is that your lifestyle? If you don't have a cool active lifestyle like that instagram with the cool looking dog, you don't have the lifestyle that dog requires. If you want a family dog to be a couch potatoe, don't support breeders who devolve working breeds to product a cool looking dog for that lifestyle. What should you do? Research breed temperaments. Look for low energy dogs that do not come with high working drives. Don't criticize shepherds for giving those dogs an outlet for their instincts and breeding. Become less cluelesss about these amazing companions of the human race, and buy dogs responsibly. 100% adopt from shelters and rescues. Be ready to find support fo the dogs needs if you don't have experience. Ok, you've dont your research. You've found a breeder that isn't a puppy mill and is breeding with genetic integrity instead of mane coats, no crash helmets, or overboned choppy head. Now what do I do Sylvia? A good breeder knows the personalities of that litter, even at 4 weeks. I talked to two breeders last month with 4 week old puppies. One could bareley tell me which were the quiet ones or the ones witht he most energy. This was not her first litter. The other breeder had her first litter ever. But she knew exactly who everyone was in her large litter. 9 puppies. There were two girls who were like their father in color and personality. They were the calmest. The smallest was the biggest trouble maker. And the biggest boy was the most attention seeking. She had a very clear personality inventory of all 9. She could point to them and say "that dog should not be in an apartment. That dog will settle and be happy in an appartment with the right stimulation and exercise." That's the kind of breeder you want. You cannot tell what puppies will look like when they look like guinea pigs. This is what I had to learn to study the parents and any past litters for what will this adult dog look like? Will its coat be manageable? Wil its face look "normal" instead of pinched or like a fox? Be realistic. If you do not have an active lifestyle, do not get a dog that requires one. All dogs will need time outside and exercise. That's a non-negotiable. The difference is "do I need to run 15km with this dog daily?" or "is this dog happy going for a 1km walk with me twice a day?" That's what I can share with you from experience. If you are beyond the industrial doodle market phase and want honest answers about getting a dog.