Divinity Poodles

10/03/2025

Thank you K9 Seekers Trailing Club and Canadian Canine Trailing Association for a great first trial!

Rain earned her 'Walk in the Park' Instinct title with a time of 2:50:90 (2 minutes 50 seconds 90 milliseconds) on a 270m trail aged for 33 minutes. She didn't want to approach her victim but strongly indicated and since we had 30 minutes to complete the trail and we found them in under 5 minutes, I gave her a minute to decide that the weird person standing with their hood up and a big jacket on was actually just fine to walk up to lol.

Knives decided that although he knows how to use his nose, all the critters and other smells are more fun than actually letting David know that the person standing right there is who he's looking for 😂 Trying to convince him that a person is what he's hunting rather than a bird is proving to be an interesting experience.

06/03/2025

We are expecting puppies!!!
Divinitys Delicious Creamsicle RATI RATS CRN CA NS aka 'Knives' x HR CD HOP Tudorose Wicked Witch of the West JH TKN aka 'Wicca' are expecting in early-mid April!
We are super excited for this long awaited litter 😍🥳
We are expecting hunt, work and sport prospects in shades of black and brown.

Pedigree
https://poodle.pedigreedatabaseonline.com/en/trialmating/father=83123/mother=115293

BetterBred
https://www.betterbred.com/litter-summary/?sire=2050&dam=9747

OFAs
Sire https://ofa.org/advanced-search/?appnum=1987880
Dam https://ofa.org/advanced-search/?appnum=2248806

Puppies will be born in Oregon with Jac at Tudorose Poodles.

01/03/2025

Simple and fair!

30/01/2025

They're here!! Cale's first babies - 2 boys and 2 girls.
Mama Ember was a champ and all are doing awesome.
Babies up on all fours chasing the milk bar before they were an hour old.
We're so excited 🥰😍🤩

23/01/2025

This does require owners be responsible but so much healthier for the dogs.

21/01/2025

We got to do some mantrailing practice on Sunday. Cold day but absolutely beautiful.
This is Rain's second run and she did phenomenal!
You'll see at the end just before finding her 'victim' that she goes onto the road and loses the trail. She stops and looks at me and then takes herself back to where she 'lost' the scent although I'm sure she had odour at the fence. She's only been at this for a short time with very few practice/training sessions.
It's super fun 😁

06/09/2024

Knives earned his RATS title (Senior) at the Fraser Valley Ratters Labour Day Weekend trial. This was a last minute decision to attend and David did a fantastic job running him since Megan didn't come with us. Knives got a HIC and was the only dog to pass his first run and in the second run only 3 dogs passed and were separated in time by hundredths of a second. This dog loves to work and you can see it in his face 😄

Divinity's Delicious Creamsicle RATI RATS CRN CA NS 🐩🐀

Thank you to Laurie, Erin and all the volunteers and judges for a fantastic trial.
Thank you Emily Weeks for the lovely photos.

06/09/2024

Hopefully this helps.

Adolescence occurs between six months and 18 months of age—a time when guardians typically struggle the most with their dogs. Some guardians are so overwhelmed and underprepared for this developmental stage of their dog’s life, they choose to surrender the dog to a local shelter or rescue group. In a recent study published in the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science found that the majority of the surrendered dogs (47.7 percent) ) were between 5 months and 3 years of age (M.D. Salman,John G. New, Jr.,Janet M. Scarlett,Philip H. Kass,Rebecca Ruch-Gallie &Suzanne Hetts, 2010)

The neurobiology of adolescence is fascinating, with some key events that alter both the structure and function of the brain.

During canine adolescence, changing s*x hormones effect the animals stress responses. Adolescent dogs have a decreased ability to process information they are receiving from the environment including the presence of dogs, vehicles, people, or really anything around them. They behave in ways that might feel frustrating or upsetting for the dog’s person.

The connectivity between the frontal cortex (responsible for decision making) and amygdala (responsible for emotional processing) decreases, resulting in less behavioral control. We see increased risk taking and more sensitivity to fear.

So what does this mean? This could mean that what was once no big deal to the dog now feels scary; what was once easy to do is now stressful; what once made sense is now confusing. At times, the world can feel like ‘too much’ for the adolescent dog.

As your puppy undergoes this transition into adulthood their inner world is intense, even chaotic. Many pet owners experience an increase in undesirable behavior and find themselves becoming increasingly frustrated. In turn, our own frustration and impatience can cause us to act unpredictably. This adds to our puppy’s inner turmoil. When the inside and the outside are both unpredictable it can be difficult for our dogs to adjust.

If you have an adolescent dog, what can you do? You can give your dog the time and space to observe what is going on around them when on leash at a distance away from the activity when possible. You can give your dog long walks to sniff and explore in nature, giving their brain time to decompress. You can offer your dog a quiet space to sleep so that they can consolidate memories effectively. You can continue training various skills, breaking them down into easier steps that can be generously reinforced.

By understanding what our adolescent dog is experiencing we gain greater compassion and understanding. When we approach adolescence with patience we create a world that is predictable and gentle so our puppies grow up to be their best adult selves.

27/08/2024

As some of you know my ability to train and trial with my dogs changed drastically when I got Long Covid. I am not able to anything close to what I used to do with them and really, really miss it. I do sometimes save up my spoons and take a class here and there and this is one of them.

Mantrailing is a type of nosework where the dog is to track down a target person after being shown a scent item (something that the person has worn or purposely added their scent to) and is to do that by both tracking and air scenting.

This video shows Rain at her 3rd class. She is shown the scent item and she then starts tracking her target. In this instance the trainer also walked alongside the target person to lay a 'decoy trail' and was also the person that Rain watched walk away with her bowl of rewards (treats). Rain did not watch either her target person or the trainer actually lay the trail. At this stage the trail is also only a few minutes old.
When she gets to the playground she sees the trainer and is air scenting before ignoring the trainer and going to her target.

She did very, very good work!

Mantrailing is a type of nosework where the dog is to track down a target person after being shown a scent item (something that the person has worn or purpos...

29/07/2024

This is cool to know 😎

The next time you’re in your dog’s mouth (you do brush his or her teeth, right?) notice the bump on the roof of his mouth just behind the two front middle teeth? It’s called the ‘incisive papilla,” and near the center of it is a hole that leads to a duct that leads to the “Jacobson’s organ.” The Jacobson’s organ is a very cool thing. Put in “See Spot Run” terms, it allows your dog to literally taste the air by combining taste and smell.

Dogs use their Jacobson’s organ to experience s*xual markers (pheromones) left behind by other dogs via urine, or when coming across the scent of a bitch in season. While dogs don’t have a Flehmen response seen in many other animals (throwing back the head, and raising or curling the upper lip which helps open the entry slits into Jacobson’s Organ), dogs will “chatter their teeth” instead. A dog might hold his mouth in a quasi-open position that looks a little like a grin, or he might even lick the air. And you thought he was just happy to see you.

One theory holds that the Jacobson’s Organ could account for a dog’s ability to identify and recognize other animals and people. It’s also believed that it’s this organ that enhances a newborn’s ability to find its mother.

07/07/2024

Happy 7th Birthday to the Autumn & Chaos litter!
Cello, Ivy, Nora, Jett and Rain
It's been a wild ride so far!

19/06/2024

I wish there was a less harsh way to think and say this but this is the absolute truth.

A woman once contacted me looking for a puppy. But she kept saying she was hesitant because the borzoi has such a short life span. I’ve had a few who have lived to be over 14 and a more recent one who died at under five months. I felt that she was not connected to reality and was probably not someone I needed to get involved with because there would always be some problem. The problem is that when people pay you for a puppy, they act like they are buying a designer handbag or something. Authenticity, exclusivity, and that it will last forever and be in the Met. The reality is that it is a living, breathing being and it does not come with spare parts, any real guarantee as to what will happen to it or how long it will last. There is no expiration date.
Like all things with dogs, it is a gamble. You go to a show, it is a gamble. You breed a litter, it is a gamble. You place a puppy, it is a gamble. There is no way to know what will happen along the way.

I placed a puppy in a home I took a chance on. There wasn’t enough yard there but there was a huge park nearby and she went to work with her owner everyday. Never did we see a fungal infection in her future.

I placed a puppy in a home in Mexico at the beach. Perfect. Never in a million years did we think she could escape and while harassing pelicans on the cliff, it would give way and she would fall to her death.

How did that dog eat an entire box of fire starter cubes? What is really in those that blood was shooting out his butt? And then he was gone.

Not being a man and never having had male children, I had no idea testicles could torsion. Had I not shaved D’Argo down and got all that hair off of him I would have never noticed that giant shiny black ball under his tail.

I’ve always known how dangerous foxtails are. But you just don’t think about them all the time. Until your dog crashes and they show you the track on X-ray of that “foreign body” heading for his kidney.

I’m sure no one ever thinks about them smacking into each other. Or missing a turn and hitting a fence post. Pneumothorax or simply a broken neck.

And whatever had caused that intussusception was never found but it took out his whole gut all the same.

There are also the freak accidents. The coyote that ran across the trail and the dog who je**ed out of his owner’s hands. The driver just missed hitting the coyote and while watching it, he slammed right into the borzoi. Then there was the silly borzoi who ran out to do his borzoi dance in the middle of the busy street. He didn’t make it to the vet either. And then there was the borzoi I bred that took off through the only open gate at their local high school and their other borzoi ran after her. Again, the car just missed the first one, slammed right into the second one.

So when breeders offer you the chic # of their dog as if it is some sort of bulletproof guarantee that your little puppy is going to make it to 14 and still be able to hike and p*e and p**p on its own, please realize, that testing covers such a teeny tiny little piece of all the possible problems you might face along the way. We spend hundreds of dollars testing for stuff, less on structural analysis, but none of it will prepare you for the myriad ways the universe can take that puppy out.

As a breeder, I deal with up to ten times the number of deaths an individual will face. I have my own dogs and I have all of yours. I have all the ones someone else bred where my dog was used at stud. Each and every death I absorb. Each heartbreak of yours I carry with me. Each litter that doesn’t happen, hopes dashed. Each neonate that doesn’t make it. I have a deep well of sadness. It is so deep I can no longer see the bottom.

What they die from and when, we cannot possibly know that. And if all this testing proved something, it would be that it doesn’t mean what you think because we have to keep testing. It is a way to track trends over time. It is no guarantee for your puppy. And really, since we have yet for one to die of thyroid or heart issues or be born blind or lose their eyesight, of fall down at four or five from degenerative disease, I’m not sure that I can make you any guarantee other than this is a living breathing bundle of love and you will have it for as long as you have it and not a second more. -Bunny Kelly

15/06/2024

This is something that anyone considering getting a high drive/ high energy dog should learn about.

Yesterday I saw a video from a well-known trainer on social media that discussed how there is no such thing as “too much exercise” for dogs. This discussion was accompanied by b roll of dogs fetching balls in a variety of places.
I don’t usually get involved in trainer arguments but I need to say something about this.
There ABSOLUTELY is such a thing as too much high-arousal exercise. And you probably don’t want to find out for yourself what happens next.
Activities that tend to *physically* wear dogs out the fastest are also the ones that create the highest excitement levels. Fetching balls. Playing frisbee. Racing around at the dog park. Chasing water from the garden hose. Running next to a bike.
All of these are physical exercise, but they also create intense arousal states. And if you put your dog into high-arousal states repeatedly you better know how to train around this, too.
I have a lot of students who fell into this trap. They got a high-energy dog (a GSD, a herding breed mix of some sort, a retriever etc.).
They figured out that the fastest way to make the dog physically really tired (the tongue-hanging-to-the-floor-kind-of-tired) was by playing chuck-it for half an hour. Or by taking the dog to the dog park every day for a wild romp.
The dog started to crave these arousal states (as programmed in their DNA).
But at the same time, no impulse control training happened. So now we have a dog who knows the fun of adrenaline and who seeks it, without having been taught to listen and regulate when in a state of high excitement.
This dog will start to show other problems. They might get frustrated to the point of redirecting when they cannot access fun immediately. They might be vocalizing or unable to settle and then I get messages that say “My dog just cannot be normal in public”.
If your dog gets to enjoy a high-arousal activity every time they leave the house, they will start to expect (and eventually demand) a high-arousal activity every time.
And this is not fun.
Your dog needs a balance of high-arousal and low-arousal activities. Furthermore, the more high-arousal activities your dog has, the more you have to balance these with impulse control training. It’s not fair to make our dogs crazy without teaching them the skills to un-crazy ;)
“Exercise” can have four quadrants:
- Low-arousal, not physically demanding (sniff walks)
- Low-arousal, physically demanding (hiking)
- High-arousal, not physically demanding (excited waiting while another dog works)
- High-arousal, physically demanding (fetching)

Make sure you are aware which type of exercise you are providing for your dog, and try to reach a balance that works for your dog.
If you are unhappy with your dog’s arousal level or impulse control in daily life, look at whether this is amplified by the type of exercise you are providing.

22/04/2024

I have not been able to do much training in the last 2+ years thanks to Long Covid which is really disappointing. I decided to save up some spoons and take a Lost Item Recovery workshop with Westcoast Sport Dogs this weekend with Rain.
She has done one nosework class and LOVES to use her nose to track.
The idea behind lost item recovery is to teach your dog to find your lost items as well as teaching her to match a scent to an item in order to find another person's lost item. Super useful in real life as well as a fun dog sport lol.
The first video is of her finding my keys which was the second search she did. She's such a funny nut when she's working, always looks like she's just doing her own thing then casually just locates whatever she's been sent for. Only time that changes is when she's tracking downed game - then you need to get out of her way 🤣
Just a note I stood where I was since it was a very small space and I just let her line out rather than try to manoeuvre around the furniture in the room. I did call her off the stuffies as she would have chosen one for herself lol.
The second video is finding the other person's item. In this case the trainer's remote. She was given her match odour outside the room and first alerted on the trainer (Danica) herself and then when she wasn't told that was it she moved on to continue her search. Again, super laid back and looks like she just randomly came across it but I promise she's working 😉