January 2021

We finally sold the Venture van! We bought this used van in 2005, so it was time!

January was a continuation of PUPPIES PUPPIES PUPPIES. That's all we did for two months straight. I quickly came to understand why breeders charge so much for puppies, because we pour our hearts, souls, time and lives into it!!! 

Jared and Luna

We were so exhausted and couldn't keep up with regular life, like laundry, that Jared and I discovered that we were both wearing mismatched socks, which were probably whatever we could find!

Nolan and Dallin started basketball

Teya and her bestie Abby Miller. Teya's friends LOVED coming over to play with the puppies, and it would take Teya a while to tear them away to play with her, haha.

Teya's new Harry Potter comforter she got for Christmas

Our next door neighbor Giselle playing with the puppies. She's holding Ginny above and Luna below.

The used ski gear Jared slowly collected for the kids. He took them skiing a couple of more times that season.

Jared's workout equipment for his home gym finally arrived!

We did a ton of different exposure activities to help desensitize the puppies to various people, places, sounds, and sensations. One thing we worked on the last week or two we had them was taking them on car rides.

Nolan was the most attached to the puppies and cried a couple of weeks before they went home just thinking of them leaving! When the first one left, Draco, Nolan balled his eyes out. He found one of Draco's old green collars, wrote Draco on it, and put it on this teddy bear to carry around and sleep with. He did fine with the others left though.

I was so excited to get this book written by one of my fav instagrammers/podcasters!

Little Ivy (yellow collar girl, formerly Hedwig) had the most separation anxiety and anxiety in the car, so we spent the most one-on-one time with her, and took her on the most car rides. Here she had fallen asleep in my arms while sitting in the driveway- what an angel!

If they were going to be flying to their new home in a carrier, we would also practice with them in a pet carrier in the car. This is little Draco, Teya is giving him treats while we go for a ride.

I had written on the calendar "Pups go Home!" and when Nolan saw it, he scribbled out the exclamation mark and drew a sad face. He was a little upset with me for writing it with an exclamation mark, because it looked like I was excited for them to leave.

Teya and precious little Ginny!!! Man we loved her! A week before she was to fly to her new home, I took the puppies in for their first vet exam and shots, and the vet diagnosed her with a grade 2 heart murmur. I let her buyer know and she reluctantly backed out since she was planning on breeding Ginny. She quickly sold to another lady who had originally been on our waitlist (who wasn't concerned about the low grade heart murmur but we put in the contract that if the heart murmur didn't go away by 6 months old, we would give a full refund) before the puppies were born. This lady had backed out when the puppies were born because she wanted a puppy with more white markings, but she continued to follow the puppies' growth and all of the exercises I did with the puppies, and sent me a message a few weeks later saying that she wanted to be on my waitlist for the next litter. So when Ginny became available, she sent me messages through 4 different modes of communication and said that she regretted backing out very soon after she did and was thrilled to still get one of my puppies! Ginny's heart murmur went away before her next vet visit 2 weeks later!

The whelping box as seen from our nanny cam. Crates and potties on one side, food and toys on the other side.  I had a playlist that they often listened to with classical music (calming) and different sounds like thunder, fireworks, car horns, dogs barking, doorbells ringing, etc., to desensitize them to these sounds.  All of their owners told me later that they think this made a huge difference and that none of their puppies are afraid of noises! We also introduced them to some sort of new visual and physical stimuli each day.

Nolan stopped sucking his thumb, even to go to sleep, but will start sucking it in his sleep without realizing it.

Precious little Hagrid fell asleep on Teya. These puppies kill us, they are so dang sweet.

The Bauers came over to play with puppies a couple of times.

We tried to spend one on one time each day with the puppies the last couple of weeks to prepare them to be separated from their litter mates. 

Skin to skin with Hedwig to warm her up after her bath.

Look how much this little guy changed and grew in one month!

I flew little Hermoine (Esther) out to Texas to her new family. Her mom and I had become friends through chatting about the puppies so much that we were excited to meet each other!

Lucie arrived on January 30th!  I have been looking for the perfect goldendoodle puppy to be our future mama when we retire Rue from breeding. I wanted her to have two red parents, be F1 (mom a red golden retriever and dad a red poodle), be around 30 lbs full grown, and have white abstract markings, and carry one curl gene! Lucie was all of that!! Her breeder drove her down from Wyoming to me and she arrived the same day that two more of our puppies were going to their new homes, and the last one (Hedwig/Ivy) left the next day). It was a good distraction for Nolan!

She is SO cute and so perfect!! We kept her for about 3 weeks before placing her in a guardian home with our next door neighbors! 

Everyone asks if it was hard to let the puppies go home. We loved these little puppies SO SO MUCH, but it was SO much work taking care of them, and stressful making sure I was doing the very best I could to keep them safe, healthy, and preparing them to be good family pets, that it was actually a huge relief when they went home. The first thing I did was take a nap!