Doodle Diaries!
Entry #4
From time to time, our families submit guest blog posts about their Doodles that came from Lost Creek Farm. We’ll try to post a new entry as often as possible. We hope this helps families searching for their perfect new family member, and existing owners alike!
Benelli the Bernedoodle!
Submitted by Avery Bashaw (Austin, TX)
Growing up, we always had dogs in our house...
We lived on a small farm when I was born, and my mom has always been an animal lover. The first dogs I remember us having were Rusty (a springer spaniel) and Gunther (a German Shorthaired Pointer). Then we had two golden retrievers, and now my mom has Lola, a silver Lab.
I absolutely love dogs, but I had never had a dog of my own.
As long as I can remember, we would vacation to Vail, Colorado during the summers and winters, and I fell in love Bernese Mountain Dogs. But living is Texas, I couldn’t imagine having such a large furry dog in this heat. So I started researching Bernedoodles (probably 10-15 years ago!). Since I was in college, I put getting a dog on the back burner.
Fast forward a few years, my finance and I had a backyard & wanted to add a puppy to the mix.
And then Nelli was born to her dog parents, Nettie & George Grimes. Keith is an avid hunter, and wanted a hunting dog, so it worked out perfectly. Benelli, Nelli for short, got her name from the type of shotgun we both have. And her name fits perfectly with her personality. She lays around all day and is pretty chill while I work from home, but gets random bursts of energy & frequently gets the zoomies when we let her into the back yard. She thinks any visitor to the house is here to see her, and she is the goofiest, cuddliest “lap dog” around.
Training Nelli...
Because she has Bernese in her, she is extremely stubborn...but the Poodle makes her very intelligent. So the mix is like a 5 year old kid.
Training Nelli was quite the task. Because she has Bernese in her, she is extremely stubborn and hard headed. But the poodle makes her very intelligent. So the mix is like a 5 year old kid. She intentionally wouldn’t do some things just to be stubborn about it. But as long as we were persistent, she would have breakthrough moments and as she gets older, we can definitely tell that she processed what we taught her when she was a puppy. She knows both verbal and hand signals for sit, lay down, stay & heel. The other verbal tricks/cues she knows are shake (both paws), back up, place (her spot in the living room), up, down, leave it, drop it, touch (her nose to your hand) & work (when there is a bird or animal we want her to find). We even taught her to jump through a tree in our back yard like a circus dog!
She's quite the social butterfly!
She loves to play in the back yard and chase the squirrels, and her siblings Gunner (14 yr old chocolate lab) & Bella (12 yr old chocolate lab). She also loves going to the dog park to hang out with all the other young spry dogs. And when she sees Keith bring out one of the shotguns, even if it is just to clean it, she goes nuts and wants to go work. She enjoys hunting with dad, but once she picks the bird up, she has to do a victory lap to make sure everyone knows she got the bird.
Her favorite snacks are most kinds of fruit, of course that are dog safe, but she isn’t a fan of bananas. She also loves peas with her dinner. She loves to cuddle at night, but only for a short time because she gets too hot.
We couldn’t imagine life without our Nelli girl!
