What Kind of Dog is Right for You?

Now that we decided to get a dog, we had to research what dog breed would be right for our family. I wanted everyone's opinions to be heard so I asked each family member to bring their list of "wants" and we would try to find a dog that met most of them. These were what we came up with:

	1st priority	2nd priority
Husband	active	non-lap dog
Me	low shedding	not too big
Son	not too big
Daughter	cute	not too big

Okay, so I just had to find a not-so-big, cute, low shedding, active dog. No biggie for someone who knows nothing about dogs, right?!? Luckily, I have co-workers who were willing to share all about their dogs with me. Two of my co-workers actually have goldendoodles and were telling me how great they were with kids and how easy going they were. I was a little leery when I found out their dogs were 60 and 70 lbs. That was nowhere near not-so-big. One of my co-workers mentioned that there were mini goldendoodles so I went home and googled about them.

Mini goldendoodles. That was the dog that was perfect for our family. Part golden retriever, part poodle. An active, easily trainable dog. Check, check. Low shedding. Check. Cute. Check. Mini? As in less than 30 lbs? Doable. Check. We found our dog breed.

Of course we would have liked to rescue a dog but mini goldendoodles were so hard to come by during the pandemic. Since we had specific wants, we couldn't just rescue any kind of dog. Find out what you and your family's list of wants are so that you know what you are getting into. For some households, it's a rescue. For others, it's a bred dog.