How to Become a Guardian Family

What is a Guardian Family?

We breed Australian Labradoodle puppies in a family setting. Our dogs live in the house with us or with another family. A Guardian Family will treat their dog as a member of their family and allow us to breed it up to three times.

A Puppy for You

As a Guardian Family you can get a puppy now for less than half the regular price. You get the dog, we retain the breeding rights. The dog is yours and will always live with you, only coming to our house in Stanwood for about two months for each of her three litters.

What Is Required

Live within an hour of our house in Stanwood, Washington, USA.

Complete the application below.

We will visit your house before we agree to add you to our Guardian Family program.

Protect your dog from accidental pregnancies.

Have a fenced yard.

Your dog needs to live in the house with you.

Feed her a dog food we approve. We feed Orijen to our dogs.

Get routine and ordinary vet care.

Use Revolution to control fleas, dog tics and heart worms.

Inform us each time she comes into season.

Make her available for testing and pictures.

Make her available for breeding.

Professional grooming at least every 3 months.

Take her to obedience classes.

You can not have any unaltered dogs, of either sex, at your house.

You plan to live in the area for the next five years.

How It Works

We keep one girl from each litter for our breeding program. We choose her based on genetic testing before she is six weeks old. In order to be approved as a breeding dog by the ALAA she needs further tests of her eyes at five months and of her hips and elbows at nine months. If she were to fail either of those tests we would have her spayed and return her to you. If she passes her tests we will add her to our breeding program. We pay for all of the vet visits related to breeding.

Let us know as soon as she comes into season. This could be as early as eight months or as late as 14 months. We need to keep track of her cycle to (hopefully) plan her future breedings.

We will breed her after she is eighteen months old and has her second season. When we first plan to breed her we will get her progesterone tested every couple of days in order to determine when she is ovulating (these tests are time-critical and decided by our reproductive vet). Either we will pick her up, take her to the vet for a blood draw and return her to you or you can take her to the vet yourself. When it is time to breed her we will take her to our reproductive vet for a Trans Cervical Insemination. After the TCI we return her to you. There is an ultrasound to confirm pregnancy at three weeks and an x-ray at eight weeks. At eight weeks we will bring her back to our house where she will stay until her puppies are weaned when they are about six weeks old. You can come visit your dog and her puppies once a week while she is living with us.

We only breed our girls three times. When your dog has had her third litter we will have her spayed, return her to you and transfer her registration to you. We might also choose to breed her fewer than three times.