Guardian Homes
What is a Guardian Home?
A Guardian Home is a wonderful opportunity to welcome and raise the first-pick puppy from one of our exceptional litters. As a guardian family, your role includes providing a loving home and helping your puppy grow into a well-rounded, well-socialized, highly mannered, and well-trained adult dog. You are responsible for daily care, including food, vitamins, training, and routine veterinary care.
Our guardian families cover everyday expenses such as food, training, and standard veterinary care, while we cover all costs related to breeding, reproductive care, and genetic testing.
Basic Requirements
You must have a fenced back yard
You must have one responsible adult home during the day.
Must be willing/able to take your dog to breeding-related appointments if you live outside the Portland-Vancouver area.
Adoption Fee & Training
The adoption fee for a guardian puppy is half of our standard adoption fee, yet you receive the very best puppy of the litter. They are chosen for superior structure and temperament. Our standard adoption fee, for Australian Labradoodles, is $3,500, but our Guardian Puppies are $1,750 (+ sales tax for Washington Residents).
We also require all of our Guardian Puppies to have passed the AKC Canine Good Citizenship (along with core commands of sit, here, down). We believe in rewarding strong training foundations and creating outstanding ambassadors for the breed within our community. This also helps them to be well-behaved dogs while in our care during whelping.
When your puppy passes the CGC test, we will reimburse you $500. We have a preferred training partner who will do in-home training starting from the point of adoption.
Female Guardian Dogs
Our girls typically have 3–4 litters over 4 years. We do not breed them until their 2nd or 3rd heat (at least 18 months old). Once their breeding career is complete, they are spayed at our cost and become your dog for life. They are raised in your home as a beloved family member while also being an important part of our breeding program, our hearts, and our lives.
Guardian homes for females may live up to 2 hours away, including areas such as the Oregon Coast, Salem, Portland, Vancouver, and Olympia. If you’re outside this area, you will be responsible for additional transportation for breeding-related appointments. Transportation to and from our program as needed is the responsibility of the guardian family. While we help whenever possible, transportation ultimately falls to the guardian home.
Nutrition for our Guardian Dogs
What we feed our puppies is very important since your puppy is going to be a part of our program. We require that while your dog is a part of our breeding program you feed him PawTree. Your order needs to be placed at least a few weeks in advance to ensure your food arrives in time for puppy pick-up day. The food is delivered directly to your door. If you are unable to have food for pick-up day, we can give you some food until yours arrives.
We like all the dogs in our program to be on the same food. This makes it very easy for us to track any food allergies or issues. Also, when your dog is with us for delivering her puppies there won’t be any food transitions or stomach issues. We serve our dogs the Trout and Barley kibble. pawtree.com/barkandbramble.com/
Your puppy will need to be on a supplement to ensure they are healthy and strong. You can either give your dog NuVet or Pawtree Gastro Plus.
While in heat, prior to breeding, we will also provide supplements, like folic acid, to give to your dog so they have a healthy pregnancy.
If you live within two hours of Vancouver, WA and are interested in becoming a guardian home, please contact us