Sharing all about our Australian Labradoodle, Moose as a puppy & our first year with him as part of our family.
Last Saturday we picked up our new Australian Labradoodle puppy “Moose” from Maryland.
We named him Moose because of his brown coloring just like the real moose we have seen in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado & “Moose” sounded like a manly name.
He is a chocolate Australian Labradoodle from Wild Daisy Labradoodles born on November 8, 2014. 8 weeks old.
Isn’t he a cutie?!!!
Moose – Our Australian Labradoodle
*this post contains affiliate links for more information check out our disclosure page here*
We joke that he looks just like a teddy bear with a tail!
He is so well behaved & our family has quickly come to love him.
He loves just being with us & is happiest when he is at your feet.
He loves to cuddle too and would rather be asleep in your lap than on any one of his beds or in his crate.
Moose is really gentle with the younger two kids & lets them pick him up & carry him around.
He lays right next to the front door so he doesn’t miss anyone coming and going.
He loves stealing shoes & socks from everyone & for some reason Moose loves stealing Audrey’s clothes & stuffed animals from her room.
Audrey loves bossing him when he takes them, it’s really funny.
As you can see he is not suffering lack of any toys.
He arrived just in time for a lot rain, the first snow of the new year & extremely cold temperatures.
Jason & I kid that we should have waited for the summer because it has been a cold & wet week of taking him out but he is wonderful & I don’t think another puppy would have been any better!
He doesn’t seem to mind the rain and loves to jump around in the snow & eat it.
He didn’t like stairs when we first brought him home but now he is going up and down most of them like a pro!
We are so excited to see how big he will get & Jason & I like to imagine what he will be like when he gets older.
We are currently working on getting him to walk on a leash outside, he would much rather run around the yard without a leash.
He is also about 80-90% potty trained and we are looking forward to him being 100% :-).
Moose is so so smart & has already learned how to sit & is close to mastering “stay.”
We feel incredibly lucky to have him be a member of our family!
After we said goodbye to our schnauzer Adam this past fall Jason & I knew that we wanted to add another dog to our family.
The thought of getting another schnauzer was just too hard for me & Jason always wanted a bigger dog.
There are so many kinds of dogs out there we found ourselves confused by what breed to get next.
So when we found out about the Australian labradoodle breed we realized that these dogs sounded like they would be a perfect fit for our family.
This breed is well known to be good therapy dogs that are great for families.
So far Moose is great for ours! We are so thankful!!!
Our 1st Year with Moose our Australian Labradoodle
If you have been following Lehman lane for any amount of time this past year you would most certainly have met Moose, our Australian Labradoodle.
He is my constant shadow, exercise coach, lunch buddy, giant mess maker, and is forever photo bombing my pics.
Moose just had his one year check up last week & I realized it’s been almost a year since I wrote a blog post about the furrier member of our family.
I am certain that I will never have another dog like Mr. Moose.
I think the biggest thing we learned since having Moose is that having big dogs & having little dogs are not the same thing!
Before having Moose I thought I was a pretty amazing dog trainer…
Our previous dogs were very well behaved & didn’t get into much trouble… this was not entirely true…I had forgotten what they were like as puppies.
When little dogs (schnauzers) jump up they are at knee or waist level when Moose jumps up (standard Australian labradoodle) he is looking you straight in the eye.
You don’t have to worry about food on your counter with little dogs.
With Moose nowhere in my kitchen is safe.
Apparently Australian labradoodle are more food driven than most dogs…I had no idea about this before.
We have gotten better at keeping our food safe & Moose has a teeny bit more self control but he regularly gets chips, cookies, sandwiches, & bowls of milk & Cheerios left unattended.
He has eaten through 2 kids lunch boxes (including through Elsa from Frozen’s face to get the little bit of Bologna & cheese sandwich that’s left inside.
He also regularly eats holes in our kids socks, underwear & shoes.
The hardest part with his jumping up is when friends and family come.
He gets so excited to see them that he just wants to lick their faces.
As per the trainers suggestion we first had to arm people with tennis rackets to hold & place gently in front of his face so he wouldn’t jump up.
Thankfully, we have found that Moose will not jump up when he has his stuffed sheep in his mouth.
When friends come over and we need him to stay down as long as he has his “sheepie” we are fine.
After running a few laps he calms down and will lay at the guests feet.
One amazing thing about Moose is how much he loves to play with our kids more so than our two previous dogs combined.
He will seek them out & find them to play.
I am convinced he steals the kids socks only for the fun of having to chase him all over our farmhouse.
He knows when their bus is coming & will wait at the door for me to let him out just so he can be the first to say hi to them.
He also loves to come in the car with us no matter where we are headed.
He has truly become a member of our family. Audrey, my daughter is always reminding me that we have 7 members of our family now, not just six.
If you are considering adding an Australian Labradoodle to your family, I hope this answers a few of the questions you might have about them.
by Tara Lehman
For Some More Posts involving Moose,
He is adorable !!
Hello,
How was your experience with wild daisy labradoodles? We are also planning to adopt. So far our experience has been great.
Hrushi
Hi Hrushi, I think we talked on FB but they were wonderful! We couldn’t have asked for a better experience and Moose is wonderful:). Best wishes for your puppy, Tara