Philosophy & Practices of a Responsible Breeder

Our mission is to provide families with the best, healthiest possible dogs for companions, therapy, service or competition.  We strive to have a net-neutral or net-positive impact on the environment and to raise our dogs as naturally as possible.

Our dogs live with us on 35 acres near Acadia National Park.  Our dogs hike, swim, run through the woods and love to hang out in the house with us.​  We feed premium foods and treats exclusively from Life's Abundance, TLC , and PawTree.  Their supplements are from NuVet.

We raise our puppies using the Avidog and Puppy Culture protocols with adaptations based on our dogs, experience and new research.  Puppies are socialized, and well-started on house, crate and clicker training when they go to their new homes.

To minimize our impact on the planet, we compost, re-use and re-cycle.  We avoid plastics (but some dog toys are a necessity).  We compost waste and use cloth instead of paper whenever possible.  Our dog rooms are heated primarily with wood, harvested responsibly, from our own property. 

All of our parent dogs have the relevant hip, eye, heart, thyroid, patella and DNA exams and clearances.

Parents are evaluated and paired to produce puppies with the best temperament, health, intelligence, confidence, style and beauty.

We are proud to be Red-Ribbon level members of the Goldendoodle Association of North America (GANA).  We adhere to their stringent health-testing requirements and code of ethics.  We are working toward qualifying for GANA's Blue-Ribbon level and many of our parent dogs and litters already meet the blue-ribbon criteria.

Each of our puppies is handled daily starting at birth, and receives ENS treatments from the third through the sixteenth day of life.  The result is an increased capacity that positively affects the dog for life and includes:

•  Cardio-vascular improvement
•  Stronger adrenal glands
• More tolerance to stress  
• Greater resistance to disease 
• Increased ability to learn 

We support the following organizations with our time and money:

Camp Beech Cliff

Friends of Acadia

Allied Whale

College of the Atlantic

Maine People's Alliance 

When we can, we give priority in reserving and selecting puppies to families training their puppy as a service dog.

Our puppies are litter-box trained early.  We start the process when they are 2 weeks old.  They get their first exposure to dog doors at 4 - 5 weeks.  By the time they go home, they are using the litter box, and/or outside area reliably.  All you need to do is get them used to YOUR home/yard/dog-door, stick to a schedule, and watch them closely!!

You don't have time to stay up-to-date on every new development in the canine world.  So, we do it for you. You can call and ask about any issue that comes up during the life of your dog.  

FOR BREEDERS

The web & blog site, Midwoofery, is full of expert and scientific information related to breeding, whelping, and dog care.

We are constantly on the lookout for safe, premium nutrition for our own dogs because of the HUGE effect it has on our breeding program.  We share our recommendations with you and extend our health warranty from 24 months to 36 MONTHS if you follow our recommendations.  

If you don't have time to call or email, you can ALWAYS feel safe ordering anything you find through links on our food site: 

ACADIA PETS

When we get a question from multiple families, we try to put together an informative answer and make a blog post about it.  You can find all the posts on our FAQ page.  If you like blogs, check out The Healthy, Happy Dog for health-specific blogs and Your Dog Advisor, for information on a wide range of topics.