Goldendoodle beginnings...how we started

When we first decided to breed the Golden Retriever, our Goldendoodles were nothing more than a twinkling star in the sky. We had never considered breeding a hybrid of any sorts. Our focus was on providing quality purebred Golden Retrievers. We started with our first Golden Retriever male, Gruffy (he passed away at the age of 14) and our first Golden Retriever female, Ginger. ( She crossed the rainbow bridge in 2004 of old age. ) At first, Gruffy was quite a handful. He was not only HUGE, but he was very strong and powerful. Fitting the mold to a tee of the very outgoing and rambunctious Golden Retriever.....Ginger was the sweetest and calmest Golden Retriever we had ever owned. Loving and always giving us beautiful loving looks with her baby brown eyes. Then along came Cinnamon. She is the daughter to both Gruffy & Ginger. All three were the "field" style Goldens. They are listed as "Dark Goldens" in color. Later, we decided we wanted to add a new male to our home....but lighter in color and a male who had more of a round shape head. We liked the field style look, but wanted pups with a lighter coat and pups who would have a rounder shape to their head. So....it was then that we added "Autumn" to our breeding program. Autumn just could NOT have been any sweeter and still is, to this day. He sired his first Goldendoodle puppies in 2004. A gentle soul who loves to please and shower you with kindness...that describes Autumn. Autumn is a calm dog who brought many wonderful qualities to our future Golden Retriever puppies and as time goes by, we will see that he adds those same qualities to his beautiful Goldendoodle puppies.

We then bred Autumn and Cinnamon and kept a puppy out of their union. This would be Angel. Little did we know when we kept her, that she would turn out to be the spitting image of her mother, Cinnamon. Another year, we decided to purchase two new Golden Retrievers that were not related to our group of Goldens. This would be Hailey and Brewster's Gold. Hailey and Brewster produced many fine pups for us and we eventually kept a female pup from their union. We then bred Hailey to Autumn and kept a female from their pairing. That girl, in turn, was a very beautiful light golden who favored dear old dad, Autumn. Over time, we have acquired eight generations of beautiful Golden Retrievers. Some who still have the field style and some that are lighter in color with more of a round head.

We loved our Golden Retriever puppies. Our breeding stock brought superb temperaments to our lovely pups. As always, our Golden Retriever puppies were playful, healthy, outgoing and ready to bounce to their new owner....but as an allergy sufferer, I constantly sneezed and wheezed from their fly-away hair. Even as puppies, they shed tremendously! Now we go to our Lovely Miss Hennie Penny. She originally belonged to my older sister. We took Hennie in after my sister left her with my mother, who is not a dog person. Hennie was a great part of our family. You could NOT help but love her! She was smart...sensitive and was always there to listen to your problems. Hennie was a Golden Retriever and Poodle mix. We had no breed name for her. She was just HENNIE. Hennie was hilarious the way she played with her toys and I couldn't wait to groom her! She loved having her nails painted and she enjoyed being brushed and clipped. I loved her face so much, that from the photo above, you can see how I kept her clipped. She was my pride and joy. Every day with Hennie was a pleasure.

I loved to experiment with Hennie's hair. Clipping her one way and then let her hair grow out and clip her another. She absolutely loved it!!! Hennie was spayed and she was about six years old when she came to live with us. Every day with her was a complete joy. I would always notice the way Hennie's temperament was so much like that of my Golden Retrievers.

At times, I would assist a good friend of mine, a breeder of Poodles for 25 years. There would be times when I would visit with her and her poodles and also help groom them. It was there that I could see Hennie in their face. Hennie was also not very large. She was approx. 55 lbs. Her coat was sooo unbelievably wavy, silky and fluffy! I saw alot of her coat in my friends' poodles. The thought had crossed my mind for a long time of the "what ifs" in pairing up my Golden Retriever females with a white or apricot standard Poodle. No hybrid name was even in my head. The only thought in my head was wondering if I could produce another Hennie or pups who were just as wonderful as she was.

When we got Hennie, she had skin issues and an inner ear infection. Hennie did have a sensitivity to fleas and she did have skin allergies off and on. Her skin would dry easily. Our vet prescribed various meds for her issues. Eventually, our vet had placed her on a drug called Rimadyl. (Too late, we discovered that this drug could be fatal to dogs and cause kidney failure if used for a prolonged time. The drug was too new at the time for vets to know the devastating side effects when it was prescribed for Hennie.) Little did we know, when we gave this medication to Hennie, that it would be the beginning of the end for her. Over time, she developed Kidney disease. Toward the end, we had her on IV fluids and she would bounce from good days to bad days. It was devastating for us to learn that the medication we thought was helping her, was also at the same time, killing her. To describe the emotions on the day we had to have Miss Hennie Penny put down to rest, would be impossible.

Hennie was like a child to us and a family member. Her loss was tragic and there was alot of guilt feelings of whether we caused her demise or whether we could have prevented it......I am sure that anyone who has gone through a similar situation of having to place their dog on medication that in turn caused their dog to pass away or become the reason of having to have their dog put down to rest understands our loss. To this day, I can not even speak of Hennie without tearing up. We still miss her greatly and think of her every day. The first Standard Poodle I purchased was Scisco's Kid.....he is a wonderful, apricot Poodle but on the small side. He has a pleasant personality and is very sweet. CLICK HERE to read more about him. He was the sire to our first Goldendoodle puppies in 1999. When our first Goldendoodles were born, I was skeptical. They very much looked like Golden Retrievers when born and At that time, I didn't know anything about the phases of the coat...what to expect regarding size....I was completely in the dark as to what to expect. As the weeks passed, I saw our Goldendoodle puppies' coat change and their facial characteristics come about. I was completely in love with our very first Goldendoodle litter. They were so funny to watch and as they grew, their coat just got thicker and thicker. We noticed the "V" shape in their snout that would eventually house their "beard". From my first litter, I was hooked.

When they were closer to 8 weeks of age, I shaved their face to see if any resembled Miss Hennie. I also wanted to know what was underneath all that hair! They had such a fuzzy face, that it was impossible to tell what was underneath all that fuzz. It was in this girl to the far left that we saw Hennie all over again. From that day, I fell in love with what is now the "Goldendoodle". We had originally called them "Curly Goldens". But one of our original first customers for this hybrid told us there was an actual name for this Golden Retriever/Poodle mix and that there were breeders who actually bred these two on purpose. I told him "GET OUT OF HERE! YOUR KIDDING!!!"

I couldn't imagine it. From that time on, I learned as much about the Goldendoodle as was possible (there is so little REAL information out there about this hybrid). Since most of the information I came across over the internet was unfounded and not true with regards to this hybrid, the only way I could REALLY KNOW about this mixture was to continue our journey with them...documenting everything..... The rest is history!