Tallai Australian Labradoodle & Puppy of the Year

Here we go again,     everyone enjoyed last year so much .... we are doing it all again. The Judges for the record this year will be the human winners of the past years classes. So as most of you have been out at Puppy and Dog Training courses again during the year this year will be full of wonderful entries as well I am sure....If you have a Labradoodle that was born at Tallai or has been/still is part of the our breeding program, Please Enter this little competition :) you could end up being the proud owners of a Trophy and of course all the Glory that goes with it :) Hehehe!

HAVE FUN Keep up all the great training ........

Tallai Labradoodle of the Year 2006

ZIGGY  "Tallai Ziggy Bear"   THE MANY FACES OF 'OUR ZIGGY BEAR'

*   'Athletic Ziggy"  we all hold our breath as he launches himself of one the banks here and clears the 2m wide and 1.5 meter ditch.   He loves this and not only jumps down it but then turns around the jumps right back up again.

*  "Inspector Ziggy"  no criminal or toy can be hidden and not found when 'Inspector Ziggy' has in nose to the ground.  We have developed a game where we throw his toys as far away and into the thick grasses and bush and he loves chasing after them and bringing them back - he hasn't let one get away yet.

*  "Night Security Guard Ziggy"  no bat, rat, possum or horse can move at night without hearing the warning grown of our fearless protector.  These grows and barks are often followed by "bloody shut up and lay down you fluffy mutt..."  mmmm, who says that will remain our secret :)

* "Companion Ziggy"  always at our side, whether he is helping me feed the horses, or running after the ride on mower, or laying under a tree supervising us work, or playing with the children, or chasing after the motor bike, or, like right now, laying at my feet while I type on the computer - our 'companion Ziggy' is always by our side :)

* "Snuggly Teddy Bear Ziggy"  at the end of the long and busy day, what more can we expect than to have our fluffy brown teddy bear snuggle up in front of the McLeod's Daughters and have a good old cuddle. 
Simonne (and a snoring Ziggy Bear)

Tallai Puppy of the Year 2006

Bella "Tallai Melody" ( This entry also had a Beautiful DVD to watch :)  if we ever work out how to attach it here for all of you to see we will! )

Dear Carla, Enclosed is our entry with Bella for the Tallai Puppy of the Year.  The kids wanted to put together some videos of Bella so that you could see her as they see her doing her tricks and just being Bella.  We don't have a video camera, just the video feature on our still camera, so I apologise about some of the out of focus bits.  Bella has been even better than we ever imagined. She is wonderful with the kids which was our number one priority, but she is also very smart and learns things so quickly. She is just a very loving, very sweet dog who has turned out to be quite a good little watchdog too.  We have shown some of Bella's tricks on the video, but she also:

1. Jumps in and out of the car
2. Will go outside when you tell her.
3. Stays inside the fence when we drive our car through our main gate. This is a HUGE one. We have a remote opened gate and we can open it and drive in to yard or out and she will stay within the fence, without us having to talk to her or get out of the car and hold her! ! We thought for months about how we were going to fence her away from the gate, but one day we just thought we would teach her to stay on the grass when we drove out. Now we don't even have to worry. Paul thinks that is just great and shows how smart she is.
4. Stays away from the table when we are eating and knows that she won't get fed until after. So when we have people over, she is never scavenging under the table.
5. Walks like an absolute dream on the lead. The first time we took her out, we also took the kids on the bikes. I thought, here goes, pandemonium. Michael ended up falling off his bike and the whole time that I picked the bike up, cuddled him and made sure he was OK, I wasn't having to worry about Bella. She had got on the footpath and lay down. Great dog!
6. Is really good to brush now, and goes to the groomers every few months. They tell me she is always a pleasure and hasn't got a mean bone in her body.
She has passed both the puppy class and the basic class of obedience, Sit, stay, drop, come, jump over obstacles, crawl through obstacles, go to a set spot and stay. off lead stay, drop from a walk. stay during people and dog distraction, weave through poles. She is now ready for the agility class.

Bella is just wonderful and I couldn't of asked for a better dog for the kids, they adore her,  She is sort of like the 4wd of the dog world. She will go anywhere and do anything as long as she is with us and the kids. I truly think that she could be taught just about anything you wanted and I can see now why Labradoodles make such great therapy dogs. Anyway, I will let you watch the show. Thanks again for such a wonderful dog. You should be very proud of what you are doing, they are just the best family dogs.  We hope that you enjoy the video. (It is the first time we have put a video together with some Adobe software that I have had here for a couple of years)

Our other Tallai Labradoodle of the Year 2006 Entry Below.... Charlie received a certificate and a well done surprise!

CHARLIE Hi Carla, This is our entry for our gorgeous  Charlie Girl!
1. She has passed and certified at the Level 1 Dog Obedience Class at Southport
2. She has passed and certified at the Level 2 Dog Obedience Class at Southport at 9 months
3. She has passed and received her GCCC Dog Obedience Certificate at 9 months
4. She is fully house trained and can locate any missing sock the boys have left lying around!! Charlie likes to then teach them about consequences of their actions by chewing a little hole in the sock!
5. Charlie is fabulous as a personal trainer, she does not allow lazy walks, only very brisk, heart rate raising walks. (much cheaper than a personal trainer)
6. Charlie has been known to take the washing off the line for me, very helpful for a busy mother of 3 boys!!
7. Charlie has had her first litter of puppies and proved to be a very competent, intuitive little mother. When one of her puppies became distressed (before his eyes and ears where open) instead of upsetting the other four puppies Charlie just reached over and touched the puppy with her nose so he stopped crying and crawled towards her, she touched him again with her nose to encourage him to keep coming. Very soon he was safely tucked in with his brothers and sisters.
8. Charlie is fantastic at catching and retrieving a ball.
9. Charlie has been very tolerant and caring of our new puppy Maisy. Never once has she snapped or growled at her despite Maisy pulling out large tufts of hair from her ears.
10. We have a two story balcony and I have put netting around the edge to stop the puppy fitting thought. One morning I roused at Maisy for trying to push under the netting. Charlie looked at me as if to say "I will handle it" she then went and put her mouth around the pups neck and pulled her away from the edge!!
11. The boys love the way Charlie bounds onto the trampoline slides across it in one motion and bounds off the other end!
12. Did I mention she has a hip score of "0/0" perfect hips!!!
13. She can spin left and right
14. We love Charlie Girl, her boys say she is the cutest dog in the world!!    Nicolette

The Puppy Class was a hard to judge yet again..... See some of the other entries below for Tallai Puppy of the Year 2006 everyone received a certificate and a well done surprise!

MOLLIE Hi Carla,
We think that Mollie (Sunset Hills Queen of Spades) should be puppy of the year because:-

She is SOOOOO cute and SOOOO beautiful.  Mollie is a very quick learner, she is very clever.  Sitting, dropping, shaking hands, staying, standing are all very easy for her.  She does these things without treats.  Each weekday afternoon, Mollie walks to the school to pick up the children and she knows the way without me showing her.  She sits at the road before we cross without being told most times.  At four months of age she taught herself to sit at the door and do a little yap to go outside for wees.  She uses different sounds for different things.  We know the yap sound for toilet and there is a different sound if she wants to go into a room if the door is closed.  She never barks, except if she sees the blow up shark floating in our swimming pool, or if she sees her reflection in the window or mirror.

Did you know that Mollie has learnt karate!!!  When she play fights with other dogs she turns around and kicks with her back legs.  She amazes the other dogs who just look at her as if to say, what's the go with that!!!  She learnt this from Samuel who is 5 and who loves to play fight with her.

Just recently we had a Japanese exchange student stay with us, her name was Yuki. Yuki could not speak much English and I am sure that Mollie could sense the difficulty of communication. Mollie would go sit next to her and Yuki very quickly fell in love with her.

In the Christmas holidays, we took Mollie on a trip to Ballarat, Victoria. She traveled 12 hours each day for two days in the car, and she was perfect. She didn't even ask once " Are we there yet"!!!. She was adored by everybody she met.

Mollie loves to play tiggy but her most favorite game is to fetch a ball when you throw it.  Her other favorite game is to steal the washing (which is not my favorite!!)  She sees me carry out the washing basket and she hides and waits until I am busy hanging out, she will then come from nowhere and steal something out of the basket.  The game is then for me to chase her and try and get the piece of clothing.  We do not play this game with her  and she is learning that this is not fun for us and is a no no, but it is quite funny.

Mollie has passed puppy school and will do more training this year.
Mollie is 6th generation labradoodle and her puppies could be any colour.

We think Mollie is the perfect pet, so gentle and loving, she gives us the best cuddles by resting her head over our shoulders and tucking her had into our neck.  She is also very playful and this is why we think she should be puppy of the year.   Trish

TOBY       ( This entry also had a Beautiful DVD to watch showing Just how clever Toby is :) if we ever work out how to attach it here for
                           all of you to see we will!)

Dear Carla and Jamie,
Well what can we say about Tallai Toby?  He is the cutest, smartest little ball of fluff in the world.
Starting with being fully toilet trained  in  2 days and crate trained almost immediately he is our bundle of joy!
We have just started puppy school at 6 months of age but thanks to Toby's cleverness and Paul's teachings he can already :

- sit 
- stay 
- lay down 
- play dead
- shake  hands 
- give a high  five and ten 
- heel even without a leash 

All of this can be done on voice command or on hand signal. 
We have just started him on agility training and he will go over  3 low  jumps  on  voice command  and  we have just started  weaving in and out of witches hats .  'Cause we are still learning the witches hat weave we're using chicken as a reward but that will be phased out next week :-)    When we go for walks we have trained both Toby and our son to stop at every driveway (must look a bit funny both of them stopping at the same time)!     We are now teaching him not to jump up on us and he is doing amazingly well for such a bouncy little pup. Toby is a little champ and we love him to bits 
According to NED - "the best thing about Toby is that he likes playing 'jellyfish' with me. "    From Mel, Paul and Ned  

JEMIMA Dear Carla & Jamie,
I am usually not a big fan of awards (as goodness is its own reward), but I thought this was such a lovely idea that I just had to send you an entry for Jemima Bear. I hope I made it in time.  Jemima, being the modest and unassuming puppy that she is, would be staunchly opposed to my nominating her, but as I am the one with opposable thumbs, I get to make the decisions (most of the time).  Well, here it is (in acrostic form!)

We love Jemima, not because she's blitzed puppy school; started obedience school at 5 months and can do clever tricks and dance (hip hop, actually), but because she reminds us that life is to be enjoyed, that relationships are to be treasured, that one hug is worth a thousand words and that animals, as Beatrix Potter believed, do really have something worth saying.     Cheers,  Amanda.

WELL that's all Folks.... Till next year anyhow.........