The Goldendoodle Experience

Daisy Doodle!

Have you been thinking about getting yourself a Goldendoodle?  Do you know what Goldendoodles are?  I didn’t until a few years ago when a friend of ours, who had never owned a dog due to allergies, announced that he was getting a puppy.  I learned that day that Goldendoodles are a cross between Golden Retrievers and standard poodles.  They have a couple of big selling points.  The main one is that they often don’t cause allergies to start up in some people who have a bad reaction to most dogs.  That’s why my friend Gary was getting one.  They also don’t shed very much.  Seriously.  To be honest, I didn’t think about doodles too much after that, except to note that the name sounded a bit ridiculous, and that we just called a dog like that a mutt when I was a kid.  Another selling point is that they are said by some to be highly intelligent.  More on that later.

Popcorn and her friend Moofie

Goldendoodle Puppies!

So, fast forward to June of 2010.  We already had a dog, Popcorn.  She’s a yellow Lab with a great personality, but at the time, she had just turned 8.  We have three kids.  Our youngest was three at the time, and we wanted him to have a dog around as he grows up.  The time seemed right to get a puppy.  I’m a Lab lover.  No doubt.  I would have gotten another one in a heartbeat.  My wife wanted something a little bit smaller though.  She was thinking of a very small dog at first, but somehow talked herself into a Goldendoodle.  The fact that they are low shedding really grabbed her attention since we’ve battled dog hair dust bunnies since we were first married.  It seemed like a good compromise to me.  We packed everyone into the minivan and headed off to a doodle dealer in the next state.  He had been recommended to us by some folks we know, and he had a batch of doodles ready to go.

The puppies were adorable, no doubt.  Most puppies are.  The puppy we ended up with

A meeting of the minds

that day was very friendly and followed us around from the moment we met her.  That’s how Daisy Doodle came into our lives (we mostly just call her Daisy).  Daisy is a good pup, but she has boatloads of energy.  She’s a year and a half old now, but she’s still very much like a puppy.  She loves to run around a play.  Popcorn will put up with her for a while, but after a while she’ll give her a bark and Daisy will immediately flop on to her back and “give up”.  It takes about twenty minutes for Daisy to settle down around Popcorn, but then they’re able to co-exist.  I don’t think Popcorn ever really saw the need for a second dog though.

Are Goldendoodles Intelligent?

We were told that Goldendoodles are pretty intelligent.  I suppose she’s about as smart as any dog I’ve ever owned.  That doesn’t mean she has common sense though.  She certainly never takes the hint when Popcorn wants her to go away.  She just circles her continuously waiting for her to start playing.  She does listen to me though.  At bed time, if I say “Crates girls!”, they both run into their crates for the night.

Even smart dogs do dumb things sometimes.  We learned from Popcorn’s puppy days that its very important to make sure that there are no exposed wires around puppies.  Poppy had chewed the cord off of our refrigerator when she was a puppy.  She wasn’t

Who turned out the lights?

hurt, and we did learn to be more careful about that.  We didn’t realize that Daisy came equipped with puppy wire finding ninja skills though.  She was left un-watched for about twenty minutes once when she was about 8 months old and she managed to destroy an external hard drive and a web cam.  That’s probably the closest she ever came to taking a trip to Daisy Hill Puppy Farm, but we made up.  Not long ago though, Daisy was left alone in the backyard for a while.  She had access to the garage, which leads into our house.  When I went out to get her, I found a surprise.  Apparently, she smelled kibble remnants in the bottom of an empty bag of dog food.  She managed to get her head into the bag, but got stuck.  Yep.  Pretty smart.

So…  My over all review of owning a Goldendoodle is this:  I still think that all of these names for “new breeds” are a bit silly sometimes.  I’d be fine with saying she’s a mutt, but “Goldendoodles” sell much better.  The light shedding feature is very nice.  Of course there are no guarantees that your doodle will hold his or her hair this well, but this doodle doesn’t shed much at all.  She is also very even tempered.  She has never growled at anyone.  She will go nuts barking though, if someone approaches the house and she’s in the yard (behind a fence). Although she’s a bit silly, I’ve got to admit that Daisy has grown on the whole family, she is very well behaved for the most part, and we love her.  So, at least from my experience, Goldendoodles get a thumbs up!  (I didn’t ask Popcorn her opinion.)

More Goldendoodle Facts and Tidbits

• There seems to be some debate as to when doodles originated.  Some folks say that they came from Australia, where they were bred to be helpers for their human owners back around 1997 or so.  Others will argue that they have Canadian roots.  I don’t know the answer.  I’m willing to bet that a Golden Retriever and a Poodle had managed to get together on their own at some point long before the 1990s!
• Some breeders will advertise their dogs as being hypo-allergenic.  While they do, for the most part, seem to cause less reactions for sensitive people, making such a wide generalization probably isn’t wise.  If *I* had allergy issues with dogs, I’d probably consult my doctor and then see how I did around the puppies.  Don’t spend your money until you know the dog is going to be able to stay with you.
• If you are looking, some places refer to these dogs as Golden Doodles, other places, put the two words together (Goldendoodle).  Currently, the AKC (American Kennel Club) does not recognize the breed.
• If you are buying a Goldendoodle, ask about the parents.  They could be a mix of a Poodle and a Golden Retriever, a Golden Retriever and a Goldendoodle, two Goldendoodles, or a Poodle and a Goldendoodle.  Got that?
• If you don’t like the capitalization of the dog breed names, don’t bother telling me.  I spent half an hour trying to find a definitive answer about whether they should get a capital or not.  I never found that answer.
• Goldendoodles can show a lot of variety in size, coloring, and the type of hair they have.  They are hybrids, so you can see differences even within the same litter.  Ours looks quite a bit like a Poodle.

Tags: do golden doodles shed, dogs for people with allergies, dogs that don't shed, golden doodle, golden doodle intelligence, golden doodles, Goldendoodle, Goldendoodles

Category: Life at Home