Frequently Asked Questions
If something isn't addressed here or elsewhere on the site, please feel free to contact me and we can talk!
Short answer is, no.
The longer answer is... as an ethical breeder, we have kept our ears and eyes on this topic as it has evolved and we are now currently the proud owner of a "dew claw intact" young man! Dew claws can be used as a gripper of physical items they are holding onto and they can also help the dog with turning and gripping onto the ground as they move. The biggest concern I've seen is injury during grooming. If you advise your groomer to pay attention to their dew claw there is little, to no risk.
Although, I do think a Standard Poodle can look aesthetically a bit more balanced with a cropped tail, I have since found some breeders that have beautifully shown the potential of natural tails. With our pups being primarily in the multi-color realm (abstract, parti, sable, brindle, etc), they can only be shown in UKC conformation which does allow for undocked tails. In my living with Standards, they do wag their tails differently than labs or Goldens. The tails are higher up in their setting when wagging and typically have a 'lighter' not as destructive cadence :P! Natural tails it is!
Yes! Our puppies have one last visit to our reproductive veterinary clinic between 7-8 weeks where they are given their first round of vaccines, a full examination, a fecal test, and a health report card! Our puppies are dewormed periodically during our time here with us and should receive a clear fecal test before going home. Worms are a common problem in puppies and can be picked up easily in new environments so we do suggest you continue to do fecal tests during your initial vet visits after bringing pup home. For your sake, the puppies' sake, and our peace of mind, we love to ensure that everyone is doing well before heading home.
We recommend that you book your puppies' first at-home vet appointment right away when are notified of go-home dates. Vet offices can book up quickly so it's a good practice to ensure that pups are seen when needed. For efficacy, pups should continue to receive rounds of vaccines every 3-4 weeks until they are 16 weeks of age. This helps to most properly protect from very serious diseases such as parvo. We recommend practicing safe socialization up until the 16-week vaccinations. We have some tips in our blog that will help you make informed decisions regarding new puppy safety.
Our Standard Poodles are 100% purebred and AKC registered. Primarily, our poodle puppies go to pet/companion/sport and therapy homes. For these purposes, we sell these puppies under AKC limited registration, meaning, your puppy is 100% registered with the AKC but the dog should be spayed/neutered between 12-18 months of age in order to reduce the chance of any unintended breedings (the larger the dog, we recommend waiting until closer to 18 months to ensure growth hormones have had ample time to work and plates are closed). Any breedings that take place with a limited registration dog cannot and will not be registerable with the AKC. The spay/neuter requirement is stipulated in our contract (as are any consequences). We do hope to have an open and honest relationship with our buyers, and spend ample time qualifying our buyers to hopefully avoid any issues regarding this.
Receiving full registration is an option but not a given. We first have to ensure that we feel there are puppies in a given litter that will be of breeding quality. Kettle Cove Standard Poodles reserves first right to keep back one male and one female of each litter, afterall, we are breeding to improve both the breed and our lines. This should looked at as positive thing for our buyers as it hopefully helps to reassure you that we aren't just breeding for money; we are producing puppies/dogs that meet our definition of ideal. These are puppies and adult Standard Poodles that we want to retain for our program and to share home and life with.
Regarding pricing, we review a few factors to make these decisions over time:
What is the cost of our program:
Health testing.
Acquiring quality breeding dogs (to keep in-house or utilize for stud).
Building, supplying, and maintaining the facilities we have here for caring for our dogs, whelping, and raising our puppies.
Administrative costs that go into running a business.
Applying for and obtaining any titles, registrations, organization fees, etc. that we need to work with to better our dogs and/or abide by for community standards.
Taking the time needed to ensure the dogs we have in our program are trained and meet our program standards. Additionally, the time we put into whelping our litters and the intensive early neonatal stages. We also dedicate a large amount of time into our puppy curriculum and early-stage grooming which in turn, sets our pups on a successful pathway to positive lifetime placement.
We do not mass-produce puppies. Every puppy that leaves our premises is treasured to us and we insist that their future owners understand the investment that comes with bringing home a new puppy. They will need preventative medical care, attention to training, quality food, cozy/safe habitats, and routine grooming. Should our puppies ever encounter an emergency requiring financial intervention, we want to know that our KCSP families are the type to not hesitate or better yet, are proactive in carrying health insurance.
With all the above said, we still want families and people who love dogs to be able to afford a quality, purebred, well-bred, purpose-bred, health-cleared Standard Poodle. We want to give KC Standard Poodles an opportunity to leave a lifelong positive impression on the children in their lives so that those children grow up to be adults who love and treasure the special bond with dogs. We want those who seek an emotional therapy companion to be able to experience the much-needed support they seek. We want children and adults alike to find pride in training a dog, whether it be in general obedience or a specified sport like agility or hunting. Also, poodles are social dogs, so you never know when you might need to find them a friend – we want to make sure that's obtainable too :).
Our mother dogs are fed a rotational diet of various nutritionally dense dry food. We have been very happy with this approach in regards to the nutritional composition being able to meet the needs of our momma dogs. As bonus is that it seems to work very harmoniously with our poodle's digestive systems, less soupy poopies and more well-defined nuggets! Our dogs are active, and they do a wonderful job of self-regulating. Additionally, mother dogs are spoiled with scrambled eggs, cheese sticks, chicken, sardines, mousse, and even special stew!
Puppies will be sent home with sample bags of the current puppy food in rotation to ensure a healthy transition home. It will either be Open Farm, Purina Pro Plan Sport, Royal Canin, or Victor Hi Pro Plus. We prefer the pups to be kept on these foods (it can be purchased easily at Tractor Supply, Chewy, etc). If you are hoping to introduce any of these or any other new foods, we recommend you mixing them together before doing a full switch. It is actually helpful to dogs’ digestion to do periodic switches between foods and varieties!
Technically when it comes to Standard Poodles, anything over 15" is considered a standard. Some breeders have coined the term moyen to describe the size of their dogs. This is either due to them aquiring a european dog that has been designated to this category in their native land or they are practicing intervariety breeding (breeding two sizes together).
As all things go, we prefer to keep things simple. Size is absolutely a factor in a puppy purchasing decision and we will be as transparent as possible regarding our size potentials. Generally our breeding females will be more petite (23" or so and 40lbs or so) and our studs could be somewhat larger or closer to the female size depending on each individual litter. This means they could be anywhere from 23"-27" and 40 lbs - 65 lbs. Sizes will be noted on the parent dogs under the current puppies page as well as the parents' detailed information pages. We are choosing to not practice intervariety breeding as to not introduce unnecessary health/conformation complications to our program or bring in habits we don't care for from the smaller varieties. For this reason, we also do not plan to offer toy or mini poodles either.