Hello and thank you for dropping in. For a long time I have been planning to share with you the story of our three pups and the joy of goldendoodles! I grew up in a house with two dogs and had always wanted to own a dog myself. Working full time with lots of business travel meant that for a long time I couldn’t consider getting a dog. However, in the winter of 2012 my husband stopped full-time working and was around the house most of the time. It started to look possible!
At this point my children were seven and eight years old which is a great age to get a dog. My husband was lining up a big sailing adventure for the summer to kick off his retirement. I thought it would be a good idea to introduce a dog a while before he left as he would be away for a few months. I wanted him to have a chance to bond with the dog before his trip
The joy of goldendoodles – Picking the breed
When it came to deciding on a breed of dog I knew I didn’t want to go with a pedigree. There had been lots of stories of congenital defects in pure bred dogs and above all else I wanted our dog to be healthy and happy. I grew up with golden retrievers and loved them to bits but the breed has issues with blindness and hip issues.
We started our search for a pup with the rescue centres. I really wanted a ‘big hairy’ dog. This ruled out all the rescue pups we could find at the time. Most of the rescues seemed to be staffordshire bull terrier type. Don’t get me wrong, I love all dogs and staffies are full of character but I was after more of a rug of a dog. My ideal at the time would have been a newfoundland cross – you can see I was aiming BIG.
Once we decided that we would be buying a pup, I started to look at golden retrievers. A bit of research showed that there were lots of poodle crosses out there. I didn’t know much about poodles but I loved the look of the poodle crosses. Poodles as it turns out are FULL of character. I assumed that they were a bit dumb. Well, you don’t see them trained to be guide dogs or assistance dogs do you! Let me tell you they are not at all dumb.
Goldendoodle Characteristics
The best description I read about poodles is that they are like bright toddlers but have much lower interest in pleasing their owners than say a Labrador. When you ask a Labrador to fetch something or try to train them they are hanging off your every word and if you introduce food treats they will do anything for you. With a poodle they listen and understand but will only do what you ask if it suits them! You might get a ‘whatever’ in response 🙂
With the golden retriever, poodle crosses you are getting a bit of both kinds of character. They are very clever with a huge vocabulary. They are still relatively easy to train but they definitely have their own minds. I will include a biography of each of our pups in a later post. At the point we chose our first pup their characters were an unknown bit of theory!
We didn’t want to buy a pup from a breeder as there had been some nightmare stories about those. Our ideal was a pup that had been brought up in a home as a family pet. We found a litter of pups for sale about an hours drive from home.
The pups had been born on or around Christmas Day which must have been fun for the family! There were seven pups in the litter. All of them were black which seemed odd for a dog called Goldendoodle! The pups were with their mum in a family home. The dog who had fathered them was a black standard poodle owned by family friends which explained the colour of the litter. Perfect!
The joy of goldendoodles – Meeting our Pup
It was a snowy February day when we drove down the motorway to visit the litter. The family let us in to their house where they had a pen set up in a downstairs bedroom. The mum of the pups met us at the door. She was a large blonde golden doodle and very friendly. As soon as I saw her I knew that this breed was going to be bang on my description of a ‘large hairy’ dog!
The pen of pups was great fun. We were allowed in to play with them. My children and I went in with the seven pups. They had my shoelaces undone in a flash, these tiny little scraps of pure love. We fell in love with the one that we were told was the feisty one.
Our pup’s litter name was Red (it was meant to be!). It had been a visit only to see the pups to confirm that we wanted to adopt one. We were due to go home without her and come back later in the month. As it turned out the owners were happy to let her leave that day. She was due one more jab that we would organise but she was ready to leave. We knew we didn’t need any more thinking time – we were in love.
Bringing our pup home
I drove home and my hubby sat in the back. Our new little pup was curled up asleep on his lap. The breeder gave us the blanket for her comfort, as it would smell of home. Here is a picture of our tiny little girl meeting our two cats for the first time!

That evening with my children we picked a name and our gorgeous Dixie joined the family. Her first evening was one of exploration. Getting used to hardwood floors, meeting cats and a new bed.
We were to have four years of adventures with Dixie before our little family grew. Dixie had ten puppies of her own in 2017 and two of them stayed with us. That is a whole other story which I will share in later posts.

Suffice to say that we have never regretted our choice of dog breed or pup. Dixie means the world to all of us 🙂 People call them a designer breed. The vet calls them mongrels. They are exactly what I wanted, happy, healthy, big hairy dogs!

To read more about our gorgeous dogs please join my mailing list or watch out for future posts here. If you are interested in crafts and particularly crochet, you might like to check my other blog over at Stickytapeandstring.
Annie 🙂