For nine years now, we’ve been on a journey of loss, grief, adoption, trauma, healing, and redemption. This story includes both our children and our dogs.

In 2010, we got pregnant with our first little girl, Stella Rose. From nineteen weeks onward, we knew that she had congenital abnormalities. She was born full-term in October but passed away five days later from severe birth defects caused by a very rare spontaneous case of Wolf Hischhorn Syndrome.

Before Stella’s birth, we had an amazing rescue dog Yorkie Poo, Curly. It took us FOREVER to find him. (We needed a poodle/long-haired non-shedding mix due to my severe allergies and my young son’s developing allergies.) After nearly a year of searching, we found Curly. He was wonderful with our toddler sons and never showed any aggression…until Stella died, that is. Curly sensed Stella’s death and the change in atmosphere in our home. He became aggressive and began attacking our children and friends’ kids who came over for play dates. We tried everything to help him get past his aggression, including vet visits and training. With a sad heart, we found him a wonderful home with a retired couple.

Fast forward a few years. We had another son and adopted two precious Chinese daughters. We had also added another pup, Sugar, a Shih Tzu, to our mix. (Before finding her, we rescued several other dogs that were not good fits for us due to allergies or temperaments or both – all of which also found their forever homes through us.) Sugar was also a fabulous dog and so good with our kiddos. We were thrilled with our family. Little did we know that, ten months later and three years to the month after Stella Rose passed away, we would say goodbye to our youngest Chinese daughter. Once again, our happy little rescue pup turned into a terror and began pooping and peeing in our house. No matter what we did, she wouldn’t stop. We once again had to rehome a beloved pet after losing our child. It was more than our hearts could bear.

Over the next five years, our family grew to include many adopted children and one more biological daughter. Our children were all from hard places with difficult and heartbreaking histories. They brought with them their own trauma and anxieties, which were added to our own. Our oldest and last adopted daughter came to us with one big request; she really wanted a big dog. Once again, we tried the rescue route with several failures due to the same two problems we had experienced before: temperament and allergies. Feeling discouraged, we started researching doodles, and came across a local family selling sheepadoodles. We purchased an eight-week-old puppy, Mocha, who is now three years old.

Raising Mocha taught us many things. We discovered we LOVED standard-sized dogs (all our previous dogs were small or medium-sized), and we found that doodles had the perfect hair for all our allergy sufferers. Best of all, we discovered that raising our own pup and socializing her from babyhood in our home resulted in an adult dog that could handle the various anxieties of our children and even provide relief for some of them.

So many of our friends began searching for dogs like Mocha: ones that were low shedding, hypoallergenic, and could handle the energy and anxiety of children. Because we saw the great need of dogs like our Mocha and because we saw the great benefit our dog was to our children, we began our journey raising these wonderful dogs for people like us: for those with adopted children, for those with traumatized children, for soldiers with PTSD, for people who can’t live with animals due to allergies, for those living with anxiety and need an animal to help relieve their stress, for those suffering with various types of mental illness and physical challenges. FOR FAMILIES in general.

It is our goal to offer health-tested, hypoallergenic standard (and eventually moyen and mini-sized) doodles and poodles with excellent temperaments and appropriate socialization from our family to yours.