How do you feel when you're grooming your Doodle?

Do you feel at all rushed? Trying to get it over with pronto?

Or do you instead regard it as some quality alone time with your Doodle. Nice and easy?

And how is your Doodle behaving?

Does he trust you blindly?

Does he use his whole bag of tricks to get away from your brush?

Or does he feel playful, trying to snatch that brush (and your hand) whenever he…

This question ‘pups’ up all the time in Facebook groups and the Labradoodle forums: what coat do you think my pup will get?

Will it grow to look Doodle-ish?

And I assume that when the owner says 'Doodle-ish', he/she refers to a fluffy fleece or curly fleece coat.

Now, with all those different Labradoodle types being bred, it's hard to determine beforehand what the coat will look like

(unless you have an Australian Doodle, in which case…

If I browse pictures on Facebook, and listen to the experiences of my grooming customers and the owners that participate in my Labradoodle self grooming workshops, it's undeniable that most people wait too long before they visit the groomer.

The result: tangles, felt and a bare-shaven Doodle a few times a year, whilst looking like a Bearded Collie the rest of the year.

I know, most dog owners love a long coat.

The longer, the better, right?

Well,…

I've said it before: the white coats of Labradoodles require the most maintenance.

That is, if they're curly or curly fleece coats (which they usually are).

Not just because white Labradoodles love nothing more than to roll around in puddles, mud, sand, etc.

But rather, because white hair is porous, and tangles more easily than brown or black hair.

If this type of coat gets wet and dries by air (or central heating), it’s very susceptible to…

My first blog under this title immediately covers what I find to be the very essence: the purity and authenticity of Doodles.

Why do we have Doodles in our lives? And how come that we humans get along so well with them? We don't share

that much in common, in fact, evolution has removed many of the capacities that we once shared.

Could it be to remind us of who we really are? Of how we're supposed to be? To inspire us to BE more, like them?

I had a remarkable…

Just like clothes make the man, the coat makes the dog.

And in the case of Doodles that is saying a lot, as every owner who’s ever seen his dog after it decided to go for a swim is well aware.

The natural purpose of a dog’s coat is to protect its skin and organs, and thick long coats are generally intended to prevent hypothermia and therefore serve a practical purpose, even though there is nothing wrong with it from an aesthetic point of view either. In…

I often get dog owners commenting that their Doodle puts up a fight when he gets brushed.



That 'fight' can vary from not wanting to sit still, to downright growling or even biting the brush, especially when still a puppy.



If a dog doesn't want to be brushed, it's not the dog that's to blame, but the owner!

His negative energy, the wrong habituation, the wrong method of brushing, the wrong bush, or all of it combined.



Brushing should be a pleasant experience.…

It's not rare for me to receive emails from dog owners whose Labradoodle of 7 to 12 months old has felted.

Some will then claim that the fur was tangle-free to start with, until the moment they left their Doodle with someone else for a few days where suddenly the fur coat ended up felted.

Now, that's impossible.

A coat will never just go fully felted within a day, so when I inquire as to what kind of brush and grooming materials the dog owner uses, the answer is more…

Pff, had to restrain myself watching the first video just now. It is just ugly and horrible how people who claim to know what they are doing (but aren't groomers) are grooming Doodles and putting the wrong info on the web for every Doodle owner to see and wrongly copy. So I hope that by giving you the right information you will be able to groom your Doodle in a professional, natural looking way, without silly shaving trics that do not only look ugly, but can harm your Doodle as…

7 secrets to brush effectively and efficiently

You might say brushing isn’t difficult.

However it often happens that Labradoodles that are brushed regularly have nasty tangles and the owner doesn’t know what to do about them.

How can that happen? But more importantly, how can you brush your Labradoodle and guarantee that the fur remains tangle free?



Here is how:

1. Use the right brush:

In the…