Hello, I have been lurking for a few weeks and decided that I have a second to introduce myself, so I will!!!
My name is Abbie and I am in southern mid Michigan, I have been rescuing dogs for about 12 years, fostering and volunteering at various rescues and shelters for about 10 years. For the past 18 years I have had nothing but herding dogs and have a huge love for them. Two years ago my friend and I rescued a toy poodle whom I fell madly in love with, my lap is rarely cold since Elwood arrived. Since then, I have joined an all breed rescue, I still mainly foster herding dogs but have a hard time turning down any kind of poodle or poodle mix. About a year ago I started to hear people talking about "doodle" dogs and thought that they were nuts. I can't stand labs and have never liked anything with lab in it. Enter doodle dogs.... About 3 weeks ago our rescue took in a litter of 5, 8 month old labradoodles from a puppymill in MO, who couldn't sell them. They had been neglected and lived in a cage all together with no human contact for all 8 months of their lives. Since I love poodles so much, I decided that I would foster one and see what the hub bub was about. Well, I picked up Gucci on sunday and by tuesday I was so in love that I called the other foster and offered to take another one. I have already told Gucci that unless God himself puts in an application, she isn't going anywhere. I know that we have had some really crazy, out of control doodles come in, but holy moly, these two are awesome. They are still VERY nervous of new people, but we are slowly getting over it and it is helpful that they have really great temperaments. They are doing very well on potty training, which is usually not easy with puppy mill dogs who have used a cage as a potty forever, we haven't had a potty accident in a crate since the first few days. They are teenagers through and through and keeping two sets of doodle teenager teeth off of the non doggy stuff in the house has been a challenge, but these two are so sweet and so much fun to watch. I keep saying that I should have named one of them Prozac because I can watch them play and snuggle up to me and no matter how bad my day was, they always put a smile on my face.
My biggest fear with these guys is the fact that we live close to an area where people have to have the latest fashion item and it seems that doodle dogs are it. I have to be very careful in making sure that they find homes who won't be done with the fad in a year. Are there any other doodle rescuers on here? I haven't noticed a lot of them on petfinder.com but I know that these two are very high energy and very smart on top of it. Any time I have fosters like this I tell people that I am certain that if I didn't give them a lot of exercise and play time and crate them when I am gone, I would certainly come home to a pile of sawdust with two triumphant, smiling doodle dogs sitting on top of it!!!
I will be having thier pics taken on sunday for the web. Gucci is an 8 month old black 26 pound doodle and Estee and is an 8 month old black 35 pound doodle. We also have two, around 40 pound, black males and a 40 ish pound chocolate male. If anyone knows of somebody wonderful for these doggies, please let me know. We will do reference checks, vet checks and home visits. Our adoption fee is $150 and they are spayed and up to date on shots and wormed.
You can see all of our available dogs at
www.apbpets.com if somebody is wanting to put in an application PLEASE do NOT put labradoodle on the app as we have a few poodle people who are VERY crabby about people giving a mixed breed a name other than mixed breed. They are officially poodle/ lab mixes for us or poodle mixes. Just wanted to give a heads up so that I don't have to hear people being crabby about this. Personally, I think we should breed them to a cocker/ doberman mix so that we can have cock-a-doodle-do's. (yes, I am very much kidding!!!)
Ok, I will shut up now.
Nice to meet you all,
