First-time Dog Owners – Why Cavoodle Puppies Are The Best!

Our first blog post! Woof woof! I’m Ollie’s mum Iro, and I’ll be blogging my experience of raising our Cavoodle pup, Ollie. For our very first post, I want to give a little bit of background on what lead us to get Ollie.

Yes! I’m that person

Have you ever found yourself needing a dog so bad that you would say “hello” to every dog you meet on the road? you’ll beg your partner for a dog for every birthday, every anniversary or even on random days regularly? Well, that was me. I was one of those people. I had a dog (a pugzu) before moving to Australia named Luke Cumberbatch (Luke – star wars, Cumberbatch – Sherlock), and I had to leave him with my parents due to many reasons. It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve made. Ever since then, I felt like there was a gap that can never be filled. After moving we could not get a dog for a long time due to many reasons;

• My partner has never had a dog before, so there was some convincing involved
• We were renting and most landlords used to refuse rental applications if you own a dog, but the law in Victoria (Australia) on this is changed now
• We live in an apartment so we were worried about raising a dog in a small space
• I was doing my Postgraduate studies and my partner worked full time
• I have allergies and my partner is asthmatic

Why a Cavoodle?

We researched for 3 years (a good half of this time was spent on convincing my partner) and finally decided to get a Cavoodle (a.k.a Cavapoo). Here’s why we decided to go with this particular breed;

• Poodle mixes don’t shed – this depends on how much Poodle your Cavoodle has, but your breeder should be able to tell clearly at 6 weeks point. They are hypoallergenic too.
• I have always liked King Charles Cavaliers but knew we can’t get one due to shedding.
• Cavoodles are usually small in size. Again this depends as they are mixed. If crossed with a toy poodle, Cavoodles tend to be around 5 Kg. But some may grow up to 10 Kg as well. Ollie is 6 Kg at 1 year.
• They don’t have a mean bone in their body. Extremely intelligent, super cuddly, gentle, loving and caring.
• They make great apartment dogs, city dogs or family dogs. Ollie is so active I’m sure he’ll thrive as an adventure dog too.

While those are the general characteristics, just like humans babies, every furbaby is different. Each has their own unique personality and its a wonderful adventure to discover how and who they are going to grow up into.

Leading up to Gotcha day

While I would have loved to adopt, our conditions required us to know the exact characteristics of our future furbaby, and we had to plan it so that we would get our furbaby at a particular time. Other than the above-mentioned requirements, we also wanted a male pup arriving in December. Male because my Luke was a male, and I liked his traits. We generally have two weeks of holiday in December, and we can stay home during a very crucial period of our little furbaby’s life. This was pre-covid, and we did not know what we were in for in the upcoming months.

We found a breeder based in Melbourne and joined a waiting list (more on this on a later blog post). Finally, December 2019 came and we found out more information about our future furbaby, who turned out to be an F1b Cavoodle.

What is an F1b Cavoodle

Cavoodles are usually a hybrid of King Charles Cavalier and a toy or a miniature Poodle. F1 refers to the First generation. F1 back cross, commonly referred to as an F1b or sometimes as an F2b is a purebred cross to the first generation cross. Therefore F1b Cavoodles are a hybrid of a first-generation Cavoodle and a poodle. This is sometimes desirable as they have more poodle resulting in a curlier coat which makes them low shedding and hypoallergenic, although not guaranteed.

https://captivatingcavoodle.com/what-is-the-difference-between-first-generation-second-generation-f1b-etc/

Deciding on the name

We did many preparations to bring our furbaby home, most of which I will go through in detail in subsequent blog posts. But one of the most important decisions we made was the name! I wanted the name to signify something I loved, but every name suggestion I put forward to my partner was put down until we landed on the name “Ollie”. Ollie, is short for Oliver and his surname is Wooof (with three ‘O’s yes!). Oliver Wood is a character from Harry Potter, while it is not an obvious reference it still signified something I loved. Fun fact: Ollie’s surname Wooof starts with “W” similar to our family name!

Here’s a list of questions we asked before finalising this name

1. Does it signify something important to us?
2. Is it easy to call out in a crowd?
3. Will it be easy for our future puppy to recognise the name as his own? According to internet a puppy name should have the following characteristics
   – Not confusing with regular commands
   – Name that ends two syllables and ends with a vowel – easy to call out but some say names that end with hard constants such as “hard c” or “k,” helps dogs distinguish it from surrounding sounds.

While these are great to consider our ultimate decision came down to what name we liked the best, suited the personality of our furbaby, and what he liked to respond to.

Gotcha day!

Finally, we went to collect our perfect little fluff ball on the 19th of December 2020. Ollie was 2 days short 8 weeks, he was 1.6Kg and with tiny curls, white socks, and cutest little puppy eyes. I was in awe, I felt so much love towards him but I was so terrified of what is to come as well. Nothing I did up to that point felt like enough to prepare for the arrival of Ollie, yet everything turned out ok. He is one year old now and I think we did alright. There were a lot of trial and error and a lot that I learnt. I hope to share them along the way in this blog.

So this is the first part of our story. I know there are a lot of topics that I did not cover here. I am hoping to do it in future posts (subscribe!). Let me know your thoughts and suggestions in the comments.

Oliver, Winky & Iro