Designer dogs - are they good value?

Designer dogs aren't free but a good dog breeder puts in lots of hard work long before you adopt your puppy. It is important to find out from the breeder what your pup's parents are like and also how your puppy will be raised in the 8 weeks before you adopt him or her.

As you can see from the photo, Annie and her family also handled the pups a lot, so they were able to get used to people from birth.

We think that Annie's dogs are excellent value, especially considering how much time and care she takes with them. Some designer dogs can sell for up to $3000 - according to a recent SMH article!

Butterscotch at 6 weeks of age

This is Buddy when he was about 6 weeks of age. He was a bit bigger when he came to live with us, about 8 weeks of age.

Some places will sell dogs this young, as little as 6 weeks of age. But that is one of the things we liked about Annie, that she keeps her pups a little longer, giving them extra time with their mum.

Being with their mum and littermates longer helps a pup to learn how to be a dog and helps them to learn social skills. Annie usually keeps the puppies with their mum until about 8 weeks.

What kind of food do cavoodles like best?

A couple of weeks before we picked up Buddy, the breeder, Annie sent us a good summary of how to feed and care for our new puppy. This was a great help so that we could start buying in the supplies that we would need.

Annie uses the "Evolutionary Diet" or "BARF" diet with her dogs. Dr Ian Billinghurst developed this diet, believing that processed diets are just as bad for dogs as they are for people.

You can read the Barf Philosophy or Dr Billinghurt's website. We decided it was a good idea to follow this approach.

PS Buddy loves the Barf dog food, he also enjoys left-overs, especially roast dinners, but chicken necks are his very favorite. He wont eat canned dog food, probably because he is so clever he knows it isn't good for him.

Where's my mum?

He looks a bit lost without his mum and littermates around him. This photo is taken about 2 weeks before Buddy came to live with us.

At this stage we were preparing ourselves by reading lots of info about dogs. We found a great book at the school jumble sale (for only $2) called "The Perfect Puppy: How to Raise a Problem-Free Dog". The author is Gwen Bailey, a very well known dog trainer, who has lots of great on-line articles about dog behavior and socialization, including "Ingredients for the Perfect Puppy".

(our puppy is already perfect - just look as his little face!)

Peppy the poodle

This is Butterscotch's dad, Peppy. Buddy looks heaps more like his dad than his mum.

Annie told us that Peppy and Peggy's pups are usually about 8 kg when fully grown, although sometimes one ends up a little smaller. Annie wondered if the smaller pups could mean that Peppy might have some toy poodle in his background somewhere.

When we picked up Buddy at the airport, his sister Lucy was also being picked up. She was very much smaller than Buddy, and very sweet too. She obviously takes after the poodle side of the family.

The pick of the litter

Butterscotch is one month old in this photo. He has that look on his face like he is just about to speak ...

You can see he is a really robust and healthy little guy. He is slightly bigger than his siblings, but Annie told us that they usually all grow to about the same size as adult, around 8 kg although Buddy might be slightly bigger.

The cavoodles are a great sized dog for our family. They aren't so small that they would get trampled on by our very active kids, and they aren't too big either.

Big dogs make bigger messes, I remember the Labrador and the Alsatians that our family had when I was a kid, they were much harder work to take care of.