Dog Tales: 2004 – present ; Casper’s Story

Dog Tales – Part 4

Casper’s Story

After Kyah passed away, we knew we would like to have another dog in our home but not right away. For one, we had two toddlers, 2 and 3 years old, and for another, Kyah left a big hole in our hearts. It was hard to consider another animal.

Belgian sheepdogs have a lovely coat and its practically never stinky. They have to be really dirty before they smell and when you do bathe them, you let their coat dry and they look gorgeous with zero effort. The downside is, they leave this beautiful coat EVERYWHERE! When we had Kyah we would vacuum the house every day and still there was hair everywhere. Little babies and toddlers always have wet hands and mouths so they always had hair stuck to them. Any time spent on the floor meant time cleaning up hair. We decided that for our next dog, we wanted a non-shedding breed.

We spent a long time researching breeds and arranging to meet people that had some of these breeds. We were quite fond of the Portuguese Water dog (like Ariella) but there are very few breeders in Canada and there is a very high incidence of Addison’s disease. We looked at Wheaton Terriers but decided not for a few reasons, the main one being the energy level is way too high. We considered a few small ones like the Havanese and Bichon Frise but finally both agreed we wanted a bigger dog. Along the way we had investigated poodles and contacted a local breeder for some information. We told her we might be looking for a dog in a year or so. Anyway, we carried on checking out dogs and then at the end of 2003 this breeder sent us a note asking if we were still interested in poodles because she was going to breed a litter in the spring. We checked her out and found she had a great reputation. Then we spend an afternoon with her and her dogs. Well, that was it. We knew right then we wanted a Standard Poodle. So, Casper was born on February 13, 2004, along with his 6 siblings.

Here’s a picture of Casper as a baby with his dam and

siblings.

No idea which white baby is him!

Here are pictures of his sire as a poof (that’s a show clip or lion cut), as a hunk (that’s called a Dutch clip).

 

Casper is smart, One day on my blog he did this ‘guest post’ on the grooming of a poodle. He’s a bit rude but I’ll let it go.

 

This was the look he had as a youngster but it became a lot easier if we just groomed him with a straight ‘sport cut’ as below.

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So you see, Casper is not only gorgeous and smart, he’s pretty handy with a computer too. We’re looking forward to many more years with this rascal brightening our home.

Poodles Rule!