APAW – Poodle Pups for Working Roles

What a dog! Charlie came to teenage Jillian on a co-ownership with his breeder Kim of Moonstone Poodles – Kim had seen a post Jillian wrote about her dream dog of the future and instantly reached out to offer 7 month old Charlie. He was a truly wonderful and special do-anything kind of dog. He served many years as a therapy dog, visiting nursing homes and skilled rehabs as well as participating in multiple children’s reading programs. He was fully task trained for multiple service dog roles and was APAW’s primary demo dog for 8 years travelling all over New England to teach audiences of all sizes and ages about the important work that service dogs perform for their disabled partners. Charlie was the primary Poodle spokes-dog for Animal Planet’s hit show Dogs 101, and was very nearly on Oprah for his ability to respond to written cue cards (ultimately a counting dog was chosen for the episode instead).

Besides his working roles, Charlie trained and competed in many sports, though not enough to finish titles – the struggle of being matched to a young and financially strained partner (Jillian)! He competed in rally through 3 organizations, competitive obedience through 2, and weight-pull, trained and participated in demos for agility and freestyle, and knew many skills that could be considered advanced tricks – some day old videos of him performing may be used to earn the many trick titles for which he would have qualified. In conformation he earned a Reserve Best in Show his only weekend entered in an international show, and he won an Award of Merit from the Grand Champion class at the United Poodle Association UKC national specialty show. We didn’t show too frequently, but Charlie was nearly undefeated in the breed ring at UKC events, and generally placed well in the competitive Gundog group ring. Charlie competed a few times in AKC with Jillian as his junior handler, but we were dismayed to be told he’d probably never finish owner-handled but would likely finish quickly if sent out with a professional handler – Jillian has always felt strongly that dog sports are meant for the team of a dog and their partner, not to pay someone else to do the handling just to get the titles.

Charlie was hoped to be Jillian’s foundation stud from before APAW even existed, but based on breed-typical health risks in his family it was decided to wait until he was older, and to select carefully a genetically diverse female without those health risks in recent generations. Charlie was a senior by the time the diversity test was available, and it was seen that despite Charlie’s low calculated COI (under 2% based on pedigree), that genetically he had a very high Internal Relationship – another term for how in-bred or out-bred a dog is – and his results made him more inbred than one of our dogs from an accidental brother x sister mating. This is not uncommon in the breed, and it’s why we have so many diseases “fixed” into the gene pool – the majority of the breed is extremely closely related, even if there are no shared relatives within many generations. Charlie was 9 years old by the time a suitable female was ready to be bred, and it seems that Charlie was no longer fertile at that point, so with much heartbreak Charlie’s line was not continued.

Charlie had bloated around 3 years old, battled Lyme and anaplasmosis, and had a splenic torsion around 6 years old most likely as a complication of the tick disease; around 9 he started to develop reduced vision due to corneal edema (water retention – nothing technically ‘wrong’, it’s like steam on a window making it hard to see out) which progressed as he aged. He was otherwise quite healthy until a rapid decline after his 14th birthday, suspected lymphoma. Charlie passed peacefully at home, in Jillian’s lap, when he was ready – a final blessing for and from a most incredible dog.