I’ll be honest. I’ve been debating if we would continue raising Aussaliers or not.

Our main breed is the Cavapoo which we absolutely love raising and plan on continuing with.

The Aussaliers were something we started years ago, and then got “interrupted” after our first litter when we lost our first Aussie girl unexpectedly. It took a while to find our second girl, Oakley and then let her grow, mature and go through her health testing. So with only one Aussie we are only able to raise a few pups each year.

Oakley is not old, but old enough that I needed to look to the future and either close our Aussalier list and make an announcement that there wouldn’t be anymore Aussaliers  in a couple more years or start planning for more.

I was thinking about this when we had our last Aussalier litter still here at home. And after spending more time with them before they headed to their new homes, I came to the conclusion that I really like this mix and enjoy sharing them with others!

So the plan is to continue raising Aussaliers along with our Cavapoos. The Cavapoos will still be our main breed. The Aussalier will be on a smaller scale. But we love both mixes!

So the next step was to either find a nice purebred male Australian Shepherd to breed Oakley to so we could produce purebred pups and have something to fill Oakley’s “shoes”. Or plan “B” was to find another female puppy to raise who would be ready a little before or about the time Oakley would retire.

Plan “A” was not an easy feat and I soon turned to plan “B” looking for a suitable puppy. One step was to make contact with Oakley’s breeder. She actually had a litter due soon. The father of the litter was Oakley’s full brother. How cool would that be, I thought? She put my name on her list, but told me she already had two people on the list waiting for blue females also. But the mom was “huge”. Unfortunately, when she had her litter there weren’t enough blue girls to go around to everyone on the list. So we wait.

In the meantime, I keep searching other breeder’s pages to see what they might have available. And then I saw this face……

It was love at first sight <3

Here I was looking for a blue merle female and I fell for a tricolor male?!

I reached out to the breeder with questions. Apparently she only checks her email once a day, so it would be 24 hours before my questions were asked. Then I would think of more, send her another email and wait another day. (I know, I could’ve called her, but was proceeding slowly). As the days passed I couldn’t believe this handsome fella hadn’t been scooped up! A blue-eyed tricolor is a treasure and usually comes with a hefty price tag and this guy was really reasonable. Everything was heading in the right direction so I finally bit the bullet and put a deposit down on him and waited for her to get the pup’s exam and health certificate. In the meantime, the world went crazy and I was worried if this was a good time to add another dog to the household. So I prayed about it. “God, if this is something you don’t want to happen, please have him fail his health exam so I know I shouldn’t be adding another dog right now.” I know, pretty specific, but hey I needed a ‘sign’.

He passed his health exam with flying colors!

So about a week ago this handsome fella came to live with us. And of course, before introducing him to you all and our other dogs he had to have health testing done for communicable diseases that could affect our other dogs and be quarantined for a while. Even though he came from a reputable breeder there’s always a risk of parvo and with our own precious babies here I can’t take any chances.

He has yet to get an official name as I’m trying (as usual) to come up with something unique and special. So far he is settling in and we love him!

So what exactly am I planning for this special guy? Well, I’m still on a waiting list with Oakley’s breeder for a blue merle female. So eventually he will be bred to Oakley and then the new girl (someday) to produce future generations of purebred Australian Shepherds who will be our parent dogs for future Aussaliers!