Looking for ideas and stories about your area's doodle romps.

[Sue, Murphy and Bella ()*o*()]

Anyone who has organized a romp or attended some.....I'd love to hear what your thoughts are, good or bad about what you've experienced. I am organizing a romp group in Chandler Arizona and would love to make it an active and fun group. All input is appreciated.

[Adina P]

I've hosted/planned three romps so far.

1) About 5 doodles in a friend's medium sized backyard. Was supposed to be in a college athletic field (before we had a dog park) but with very short notice I learned that I need $1,000,000 insurance to host anything there. So that plan went out the window....

2) 2007 Romp Around the World where we had about 13 doodles and again in a friend's yard, but this was a much bigger yard. Went very nicely. Got a local artist (Kim of Kiniart Studios) to donate some doodle design products and we raffled that away.

3) 2009 Romp Around the World in our new dog park. Again about 13 doodles (but different ones) romped...great time, no scheduled or planned activities.

I've found that even without any planned activities or raffles or things like that it's plenty of fun. If you have a nice dog park locally, that's the easiest place to hold a romp. However, if you would prefer a more private location maybe renting a doggy daycare facility for half a day or a space in your local fairgrounds would work.

[Adina P]

Oh as for advertising I did the following:
--Notice in our local events paper (free)
--Printed fliers that I put up all over town
--Stopped by vet offices, pet stores, and groomers to let them know and gave them fliers or put them up on their bulletin board.
--Contacted trainers and let them know
--Contacted a local breeder to ask them to let their puppy families know.

[Sue, Murphy and Bella ()*o*()]

Great ideas Adina. Thank you. We have several nice dog parks in the Phoenix, Scottsdale area so we are lucky there. THere is also someone's son on the AZ Doodle Luv site who mentioned he is a photographer, so maybe he can come and take pix and we can raffle off those...I also will do the toy swap during one of them as well. I like recycling. Thanks again.

[Sue, Murphy and Bella ()*o*()]

I just last week signed up on Meetup.com and have 19 replies already for our Oct. romp. I have 2 sponsors, but that was easy, since one is our daughters business, and she has a goldendoodle and the other is my business and I have Murphy. We are sponsoring doggie treats and I am going to raffle off a Doggie Quilt occassionally. The group is called [e-mail].

Check it out. I signed up for 3 months to see how it goes. That plus DK and we should get a good turnout. I am making a Liver Treat from one of the recipies in the food group. Murphy loves them and I use them for training treats.

I plan to make name tags for those that sign up in advance so we all know who everyone is and which site they heard about it on. Lots of exposure for DK. I mention DK in the Meetup page also, as does another member.

I will recommend the DK Breeders also for anyone who asks. Ofcourse I always tell them about MY breeder, Cliberdoodles first.

I am going to a 5k that my daughter and SIL are sponsoring this weekend and bringing both our doodles for more live advertisment. people always come up to us asking about our doodles or telling us about thiers. So I can tell them about the romp too.

Had a lady ask me about bringing her Peekapoo and bison/poodle mix. I said sure, but told her how doodles kind of pounce when they play and are generally big dogs. So we'll see. Don't want to turn anyone away and as someone said, it's good to give doodle owners the reputation of not being snobs like some breed owners can be. I like that attitude.