It all started with a black, standard poodle named Smokey….
When my youngest daughter was 4 and my middle girl was 8, I talked my husband into looking for a poodle. My 8 year old has Asperger’s and both girls were extremely allergic to dogs. My husband wasn’t an indoor-dog guy. He loved his Labrador retrievers. He had 2 beautiful dogs when we married but because of the girls’ allergies we couldn’t keep them. Because of the impulsivity involved in Asperger’s, my daughter couldn’t resist any and all dogs. We noticed it exacerbated her Asperger’s. I reasoned with my husband that she may be less likely to run after other people’s pets if we had our own. My argument worked!
We made a decision when we married that I would stay home with our children and were thus a single income family. Poodles were way out of our budget, but I happened to see a local ad for poodles, asking $300. Still out of our price range, we decided to pray and ask the Lord for a poodle with a specific price – FREE. We finished praying together, got the phone number listed in the ad and called the lady. My husband started out by telling this lady that he had always had labs and had trained them to be hunting dogs. He proceeded to tell her how he had bred dogs before and was left with puppies no one wanted. He told her our situation and asked if she found herself with a puppy unspoken for would she consider giving it to us.
“You train hunting dogs? Well, yes, I’ll give one to you” was her immediate response! She did want to have a poster hunting dog. Unfortunately, our boy was never a hunting dog, but oh, how we loved him. I had never seen a black poodle before. He was so gorgeous! We had to have him neutered of course. I regretted that he was never bred so much that it started my husband and I on this journey more than 13 years later after our very painful goodbye to Smokey. He is also the reason I became a dog groomer. So many blessings out of one beautiful answer to prayer. And, yes, he did help our daughter stay away from other dogs too.
After Smokey died, my friend and dog-breeding mentor had a couple of puppies available. She called and asked if I would be interested. Wouldn’t you know it? They were both not only males but black. We picked our boy and now Spruce is the beginning of this wonderful adventure. No more regrets. I hope everyone who gets a Streifeldoodle loves them as much as we love ours and is as blessed by them as we are.