Trixie's Litter 001
Hilliard, Ohio · whelped 17 August 2026
Four puppies.
Two left.
Standard poodles out of a self-trained service dog. Both parents DNA tested through Embark. Come and meet their mother before you decide anything.
The litter
Start here. Look at all of them.
Every photo is real and every one of them is these dogs. Nothing here is generated.
See all 30 photos
Before you keep reading
Let's be honest about how this works.
You've already picked one.
You scrolled, something stopped you, and you've been reading ever since with one particular face in your head.
Don't apologise for it. Anyone who claims they chose their dog purely on temperament has never once looked at their dog. We lead with our eyes and backfill the reasoning afterward. It's the same instinct that sells a house on the kitchen photo.
So pick with your eyes. You'll be looking at her every day for fifteen years and you ought to love what you see.
Then come back up here, because the coat is the first thing to stop mattering.
Four, not eight
Why these two are different
A standard poodle litter usually runs five to eight puppies. I raised four.
Same teacher. Class of twelve or class of thirty. You already know which kid gets called on.
The early handling protocol I ran is done one puppy at a time, by hand, daily. With four, one person can do it properly. With eight, something quietly gets skipped, and it is never the feeding.
Since you're going to ask about the coat
Why they look the way they do
Merle is a patterning gene, and it is stochastic — the gene is inherited, but where the mottling lands is random. Two puppies from the same litter get the same instruction and come out looking nothing alike. Nobody breeds for patch placement. Anybody who says they do is selling you luck.
It usually isn't the merle. It's white. What people are reacting to when a merle looks busy or unbalanced to them.
White is controlled separately, at the S locus, and it lands at random too. When an asymmetric blaze crosses an asymmetric patch field, your eye goes straight to the mismatch — and if the dog has one blue eye and one dark, it goes there twice. That's the look people can't quite name.
Trixie tests SS, little to no white. These two girls came out with none at all. The merle reads as a coat rather than as patches stuck onto one, and that is the whole difference between a dog that photographs expensive and a dog that photographs loud.
That isn't my taste talking. Symmetry in marked coats has been rewarded in the ring for as long as there's been a ring.
Eight weeks of other dogs
What you're actually buying
These girls have been handled, carried, startled and recovered since day three. They've met people, rooms, vehicles and noise on a schedule, not by accident.
And they grew up around other dogs, not just their littermates. Great Danes, more than one household of them, and a pair of adult poodles. Once a puppy has been stepped over by something that outweighs her forty to one and found it unremarkable, very little else rattles her.
You'll see it in the first ninety seconds. Walk in, make noise, move fast. A puppy raised in a quiet box startles and needs a moment to come back. These two look up, decide you're worth investigating, and come straight over.
Then watch what happens next. They sit. Not for minutes — they're eight weeks old — but deliberately, because they have already worked out that sitting is what happens before somebody reaches in and picks them up.
At this age that isn't obedience. It's better than obedience. It means they've figured out that their own behaviour changes what you do next, and once a puppy knows that, everything you teach her afterward is downhill.
The window closes at twelve weeks.
Nearly everything a dog decides about whether the world is safe gets decided before twelve weeks. After that you're not building any more. You're repairing, and repair runs on the dog's clock, not yours.
I know what that costs, because I've paid it.
Trixie came to me after her first year had already gone wrong. Her tail stayed tucked. I thought at first it was broken. It wasn't — it worked fine. She was choosing to keep it down, and it took about three months before she let it lift at all. Several months after that before she wagged it.
Nothing was wrong with her. The brilliant, obedient dog was already in there, fully assembled. She had simply never had a reason to trust anybody, and she wasn't going to hand that over on my schedule.
Once she did, everything changed. Training her as a service dog turned out to be the easy part. The hard part was patience, mine. I wanted her to be who she is now on day one, and that is not a thing you get to want.
These two have never had a reason not to trust somebody. They've been handled every day of their lives by people who were kind to them, and they walk up to strangers expecting it to go well.
You will never have to earn that from them. It's already done.
The two who are available
Not first and second. Different dogs.
Blacktail
Available · companion placement
Her mother goes everywhere with me and she performs. That's what I asked of Trixie, and that's who Trixie is.
Blacktail is not that dog. She is never going to spend her life focused on one person, and I wouldn't ask her to.
Blacktail wants the whole room happy. All of it. Ask her for something and she'll get there, but she might take a lap first, or head off in completely the wrong direction, and come back pleased with herself either way. She's smart enough to know better. She just had somewhere to be.
She belongs in the middle of everything: the living room, the yard, the foot of the bed, the back seat. She will not be left out of anything, and that's the part I want understood before someone falls for her face. They do fall for her face.
Right for you if your house has people in it, you want a dog in the thick of things, and you'd rather laugh than have one that heels perfectly.
Wrong for you if you want a quiet shadow, or a dog who'll settle alone for long stretches.
Half and Half
Available · companion placement
I'm keeping one puppy from this litter. Half and Half was the hard part.
She is half a step behind the one I kept, and that gap is the only reason she's here. If I wanted two more dogs instead of one, this page would have a single puppy on it.
What you notice first is the quality of her attention. She watches, she weighs it, she decides, and then she's with you, all the way, until something better comes along, which it rarely does. That's the trait I'd build a programme on and it's the trait I'd pay for in a puppy.
She is also beautiful, which matters less than everything above and will be the first thing you say out loud.
Breeding rights on Half and Half are available to the right home. If that's you, say so when you write. It's a separate conversation and a separate agreement, and most homes won't want it.
Right for you if you want a thinking dog, you'll give her something to do with that brain, and you notice what a dog is telling you.
Wrong for you if you want a dog that runs on autopilot. She doesn't have one.
What comes with her
Against what else is on the market
Two breeders who publish prices for a merle standard poodle, next to what you get here.
| Breeder A — $2,150 | Breeder B — $2,995 | Here — $3,500 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parent DNA | DNA tested | Merle gene only | Full Embark panels, both parents, handed to you |
| Microchip | Included | Not stated | Included |
| Vaccinations | Two | Not stated | Current, with records |
| Deworming | Included | Not stated | Full series, dated |
| Vet exam | Not stated | Hernia, bite, joints | Full exam and a dated health certificate |
| Meet the adult | — | — | Trixie, in person, working |
| Registry papers | Limited AKC/CKC | Not stated | None. See below. |
On registration
I'd rather you had the DNA
Neither parent is registered with AKC, UKC or anyone else, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. Woody's owner had the option and chose not to. I never pursued it with Trixie.
I've seen litters falsified on a computer screen. A DNA panel on both parents, which you can verify yourself and re-run on your own dog whenever you like, tells you more about what's actually in her than a certificate does. Unless you're showing her it makes no practical difference, and it is not required to breed successfully.
That's my belief, stated plainly so you can weigh it. If registry papers are what you need, I'm not your breeder, and I'd rather tell you now.
The frame nobody gives you
What a dog like her mother costs
Trixie is a service dog. I trained her myself. Here is what that same finished dog costs when somebody else does it.
I am not selling you a service dog and I will never promise one. I'm showing you the range the work sits in, and where a well-bred, well-started puppy from a line that has already produced one falls inside it.
Read this part twice
What she costs once she is yours
I'd rather lose a sale now than have one of these girls surrendered in two years because nobody told the truth up front.
A standard poodle is a haircut on legs. Professional grooming runs about $90 to $180 a visit, every four to six weeks, for her whole life. Budget a thousand a year and you'll be close. That's before food, vet, boarding, or the first time she eats something expensive.
She is also going to need your time. This is a dog bred to work alongside a person. Left alone in a yard, a poodle this smart will invent a job, and you will not like the job she picks.
If that budget and that commitment are comfortable, keep reading. If this isn't the right year, I'd honestly rather you told me. These two will be fine, and so will you.
Price
Straightforward, and it doesn't move
- Microchip, vaccinations, full deworming series, all documented
- Full Embark panels on both parents, handed to you
- Vet exam and a dated health certificate
- Eight weeks of structured early rearing, not eight weeks in a box
- Me, on the phone, for the life of the dog
- Homes are chosen, not first come. Tell me about yours.
Come meet them
Ten minutes with Trixie and you'll know.
Visits are welcome, and you can come back as many times as you like. Bring your kids. Bring the person who'll be living with her.
Tell me about your house and who's in it, and I'll tell you honestly which of the two I think fits.