Welcome to Endeavor Australian Labradoodles!
Welcome! For several months it’s been a goal of mine to start up a little newsletter type blog for my breeding program. Although we post regularly on our socials, the purpose is to allow signers and readers to see more of the behind the scenes of how we run our program. We have some exciting developments this year, so stay tuned!
I wanted to kick off this project by going over the very beginnings of my breeding program, all the way back when it wasn’t even a thought in my head and what lead me to starting this endeavor.
To recap our program so far, here is how 2024 went for us:
Halo, who we have had since February of 2023 finished her final health testing and passed everything with flying colors!
In July, we brought Patriot’s Day La Salsa home all the way from illinois. She came to us bred to Mandevilla Rubix Cube and our first litter was on its way.
Salsa had her puppies on September 1st. We had a smooth and quick delivery of seven babies!
ALL of her puppies have found fantastic homes. We have one in Boerne, one in Houston, one in San Marcos, one flew to Mexico, one to California, and one to Tennessee! Our seventh puppy, Trivia, also stayed in Boerne and is a future hopeful mama for our program.
We have built an amazing and supportive following of our program from all different types of dog people. We have people following along in the purebred and sport dog world and the ones who have always just had dogs as companions!
Being able to merge the gap between the world of unethical doodle breeding and that of responsible breeding and the development of dog breeds has been my goal and “endeavor” when becoming a breeder. Want to hear my story of why I got to where I am at and why I stand where I do?
Let's start at the beginning. My family got an Australian Labradoodle named Piper in 2017 and she has been my joy for seven years. Before Piper, I wanted a border collie. I was a teenager obsessed with watching trick videos and compilations on youtube and loved all of the things these dogs could do. I wanted a border collie of my own to trick train and to do agility with. I had grown up with small dogs so although I wasn't new to having them in the house, we had not had a dog in several years. When we moved to a rental house in California that allowed dogs, we were ready to find ourselves a puppy. Two weeks before Christmas in 2017, my dad broke the news: we had one! It wasn’t the border collie (or Portuguese water dog, my second choice) I wanted, it was some poodle mix I had never heard of and I was skeptical. Well, I fell in love when she came home the very next day. We had become a guardian home for an Australian Labradoodle.
I started training Piper right away. By the time I had her for two weeks she could sit, down, stay, ring a bell to go potty outside, paw, and was learning how to wave at us on command. By the time she was two she could way more complicated things like a backstall, footstall, and a handstand. She is incredibly smart. The farther I got into training her, the more I integrated myself into the world of sport dog people, even though Piper has never competed much. I realized how much opposition there was to doodles from this side of the coin, and having an instagram for my adventures with Piper meant that the more followers I got, the more negative words I got as well. There were pretty fantastic and thorough arguments as to why poodle mixes were really unethical to breed. Pretty quickly I found my place: Australian Labradoodles were in a totally different ballpark than the dogs these people were referencing. Every argument against poodle mixing didn’t apply to these dogs, and I realized just how incredible this “breed in development was.”
In 2022, I did bring my first border collie home. He is an extremely well bred purebred showline border collie. We moved to Texas (where I am here to stay with my soon-to-be husband, Nate) and I got to jump into the world of sports for the first time first hand. Riot and I have competed in dock diving and FastCAT and have done a lot of agility lessons. During this time I have really pushed to advocate for Australian Labradoodles as a different type of dog than most doodles and I have seen a major shift over the last five years, which I am really proud of. I have given my elevator speech about the breed to hundreds of people with lots of varied responses. Since starting to advocate for ALDs, I have seen an influx of positive reactions from even the show dog world which I think is amazing. Having a breed in development in its own category apart from poodle mixes has its fair share of difficulties, but my “endeavor” to build this breed a positive reputation by starting my own breeding program has been such an amazing path that I am so thankful I have started.
So, this is how Endeavor Australian Labradoodles was born. I decided to become a breeder in the summer of 2022. After looking through every single breeder on the ALAA breeder list to find someone that I knew I would align a lot of my views with, I found Halo’s breeder. I got in touch with a few other wonderful people too and found out that there are a good amount of breeders breeding for conformation as a goal along with temperament and health, and not JUST the cute factor. Halo was born in November and I watched and waited to see which puppy from her litter would be mine. Halo was my favorite from the beginning, and in January of 2023 she came home to Texas!
Halo is now two years and I just bred her for her first litter. Salsa was the unexpected kickoff to my program last year and she was the dam of Endeavor’s first litter. She comes from Halo’s breeder too, who after deciding to slow down her program a little offered her to me. I jumped on the opportunity for a girl who was from some of my favorite ALD lines and I drove to pick her up soon after. Halo will have her first and my second litter for Endeavor in April and I couldn’t be more excited. I am also happy to announce that I have a new future breeding prospect, Endeavor’s Trick Question “Trivia” who will carry on my program in a few years pending health testing.
Well, here was my spiel. I am hoping to use this newsletter (or is this more of a blog?) for further education of the breed as well as a place for all of the behind the scenes here at Endeavor. I am considering documenting all of the steps involved with even just getting a dog bred when you are a responsible breeder since that is what I am looking forward to next week. Until then, stay tuned via my instagram and facebook for photo updates here!
God Bless!
Abby