As many of you know we had a litter of larger Cavapoos, (coined “Cuddle Cavapoos” by our fellow breeder, Dorothy at Puppy Perfectionist) over a year ago.
The mom was our small standard Poodle, Aurora. Aurora is one of the biggest sweethearts I’ve ever met. She loves to have a hug and snuggles into my neck for one when I put her to bed.
Aurora is about 42-45 pounds and when bred to a regular sized Cavalier, puppies end up in the 25-40-ish pound range. Our regular Cavapoos average 15-20 lbs.
We loved the litter we had with her, but there are a couple reasons we haven’t repeated the litter.
First, Aurora is a lot bigger than our normal-sized moms which are mini Poodle, Cavalier and Cavapoos). So none of our regular whelping and puppy raising equipment; crates, puppy pens, etc really work for her and her brood.
With a normal-sized mom we use a large crate that is really cozy and warm for delivery day and the first two to three weeks of a litter’s life. With Aurora, we had set up a kiddie wading pool in the corner of our living room with a big exercise pen around it to accommodate mom and her litter.
Our regular Cavapoo litters move into a small puppy pen around three weeks and are introduced to a UGOdog litter box there, then transitioned to a regular litter box. At about five weeks they are moved to a bigger puppy pen with more litter boxes.
Well, Aurora’s litters went from the living room swimming pool to the large puppy pen because that’s all the would hold her and her puppies. And that didn’t even last long. With mom and pups being bigger, it was just a challenge to figure out where to raise them.
And secondly, I have more people wanting and asking for smaller Cavapoos rather than larger ones. Lots of people fly with their dogs which requires the dog to be under twenty pounds and be able to fit under the seat in a plane.
So that is why we have no repeated the Cuddle Cavapoo litter.
So we have a few options…
- find Aurora a wonderful home (although I’d really like to keep her and let her romp with the other large dogs; Ben, Cajsa, Zuma and Cody, but hubby is trying to veto that)
- see if I can get enough people that are excited about and will adopt a larger Cavapoo puppy
- and, if we do have enough people, then the litter would have to be timed when we don’t have a lot of other puppies because of space limitations
I’d love to have some feedback!
Here are a couple of the pups as babies and grown up. So so cute!
