Getting along with humans

What is Buddy's temperament like? Well as you can see, he is quite a placid and tolerant pet. He is easy going and puts up with a lot, including the children carrying him around like a teddy bear at times and then ignoring him at other times.

Our Vet's website has some good articles that you can read about introducing a dog into your family.

Buddy's personality so far is lovely, he is cheeky and playful and fits right in with in our family. When there is a lot of activity in the house he is always happy to get involved and when no body is home or the house is quiet he is happy to chill out and sleep.

The pick of the litter

Butterscotch is one month old in this photo. He has that look on his face like he is just about to speak ...

You can see he is a really robust and healthy little guy. He is slightly bigger than his siblings, but Annie told us that they usually all grow to about the same size as adult, around 8 kg although Buddy might be slightly bigger.

The cavoodles are a great sized dog for our family. They aren't so small that they would get trampled on by our very active kids, and they aren't too big either.

Big dogs make bigger messes, I remember the Labrador and the Alsatians that our family had when I was a kid, they were much harder work to take care of.

Why get a "designer" or hybrid dog?

There was a great article in the Sydney Morning Herald recently about designer dogs, A Bit of Ruff , which says "Cute pet or unwelcome mongrel? The rise of the hybrid pooch has rocked the dog world."

A great article which debunks some of the arguments that have been put forward against designer dogs, also known as hybrid dogs or purpose-bred dogs. So yes, we do understand that a cavoodle isn't a real breed of dog, really it is just a glorified mutt.

However, in choosing a hybrid dog we were hoping for a pet that had the best qualities of two dog breeds, without some of the hereditary problems of a pure breed dog.

PS - 6 months later we are very happy to report that Buddy seems to be the ideal cross-breed, he has the gentle, loving nature of the cavalier, he is smart and he doesn't shed at all!

Choosing the right dog for us (part 2)

We did a few on-line surveys, including the one on Pet Net, to help us decide which kind of dog would be best for our family. The select a pet questionnaires kept telling us that a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel would be a good dog for us. And this lead us to consider getting a cavoodle.

In this photo you can see Butterscotch with his mum, Peggy, who is a cavalier. We think Buddy is the one closest to his mum's head in this picture. You can already see he is a beauty!