Lesson learned – don’t let the waitlist fool you! I cannot believe that I had a list of 26 families with deposits paid and 20 of those families said the Christmas timing was not right for them. I try to prepare my families for the worst, telling people it could be a year out so if I get to their name early it is a nice surprise instead of setting people up to be disappointed. I just can’t control how many puppies are in a litter or if my girls will even get pregnant but I also don’t know what might be going on with my families. For this litter I made my way through the list and even had a day where I updated my site to say 1 available puppy. There were lots of vacations planned, a remodel, a new baby, a recent pregnancy announced, I have a few families with a senior dog that aren’t ready to add a puppy to their home, etc. Here’s a visual of how far I went down the list:

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If you have spent any time looking for a dog you have probably seen the term “health tested” but this doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone so I wanted to post about what it means to me.

When we first got Shakira our breeder Thom, who is a very nice man that I’m still friends with to this day, equated health testing to regular vet check ups with no health issues between visits. Thom had standard size labradoodles as well as minis so he was aware of the retrievers issues with hip dysplasia however he explained that he didn’t feel that it was needed in a small dog because they weighed less and were generally less active. At the time this made sense to my husband and I but only because we just didn’t educate ourselves to know any better and we desperately wanted this adorable puppy. NOTE: PUPPIES ARE ADORABLE. DO NOT LOSE YOUR MIND!

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