Four days after we picked up Finnegan from McKenzie Doodles, the litter of Sheepadoodles I had my eye on was born — January 20, 2023. Since we had our new puppy, the news was happy but not impactful. Over the next six weeks, as Finnegan began to grow and started interacting with our daughter’s doodle Arzella, it became more and more evident that he needed a playmate to help him get the exercise he needed. Then came the announcement that the Sheepadoodle take-home date was March 19, 2023. In yet another unexpected move, and after talking about it for a few days, Rita and I decided that a Sheepadoodle was in the cards for us — two puppies.
The litter
The Sheepadoodle litter, parented by Huck and Lexi, comprised nine puppies — three girls and six boys. After our first weeks with Finnegan, we knew we wanted a girl as two boys vying for dominance would be too much, but with the number of girls so low, our chances were slim, or so we thought. The litter also was predominantly sheepdog-esque, with only two not having the distinctive black and white markings. We really wanted a black and white dog, but it turned out we would have the number seven pick, so our options would be limited.
When the litter photo was released, we set out to choose our favorite, and immediately purple-string girl jumped to the top. Yellow-string girl was next, and then we started looking at the boys with gold, teal, and blue-string boys as the leaders.
Pick up day
Our time slot was 4 pm, and we kept an eye on the Facebook page to see if any people were posting about their pickup. Initially, there was nothing, but then somebody posted their choice was purple-string girl — bummer. As we headed to Winchester, we resigned ourselves to the fact that a boy was likely all that would be left. We arrived, and the number six family was inside, making their choice. After a few minutes, they emerged with orange-string boy. With our number one male and female choices gone, we were unsure how this would turn out. When we went inside, we were greeted with five puppies, four of which were not spoken for — gold and teal-string boys and pink and yellow-string girls. My immediate choice was yellow-string girl, but it turned out to be more difficult than expected as all the puppies were adorable, but in the end, yellow-string girl was our choice.
What’s in a name
When we picked up Finnegan, we knew exactly what his name would be, and so far, it has been a perfect fit. As we were planning the pickup, we ran through a few names. If we had gotten a boy, the likely name would have been Huck (named after the father), so we would have Huck Finn, but the girls’ names were more problematic. We started with Mollie, Sophie, Estella, Zoe, and Willow. When we picked her up, none of those names seemed to fit, so we decided to take a day or two to see if a personality had emerged. After three days, nothing seemed to fit, so I started scouring name websites. after a few hundred names, I ran across Aoife (pronounced eefa), an old Irish name meaning radiant and beautiful — it seemed to fit.
But wait
So for four days, we tried calling her Aoife, and it just didn’t stay with us, and others were having a hard time too. We returned to one of the names we had liked before — Zoe. Willow was a close second because it is a bit of a laid-back hippy name in our mind, and so far, that is her personality, but Zoe just works and is easier to say quickly.
Introducing Aoife Zoe
So far, our first week with Zoe has been enjoyable. Her personality is so different from Finnegan’s, and she is far more cuddly and less adventurous, sticking to one room in the house rather than investigating everything. She loves to run outside but is very relaxed in the house. She seems relatively fearless in her actions, already tackling going up stairs and wanting to go down but hesitating at the last minute. The biggest problem we have so far is that she doesn’t seem to like treats (definitely different than Finnegan), so training may be a little difficult.
If you are wondering how Finnegan likes his new “sister” and vice versa, that is still unknown. We enrolled Finnegan in an in-residence training school that started the day before we picked her up, and they will not meet until April 28. Given their personalities so far, they should get along very well.
