I’ll just say it upfront: the Bernedoodle is one of the most bougie dogs on the planet. Possibly the most bougie. We own one. His name is Hobbes. He’s been part of the family for three years now, and I feel like I should explain how that happened, because it wasn’t exactly a straight line.
It started at a soccer game. Or maybe baseball. Jennifer and one of the kids — Henry or Elias, I honestly can’t remember — were at some game, and someone there had a Bernedoodle puppy. Jennifer came home convinced it was the cutest dog she had ever seen in her life.
This was notable, because up to that point, Jennifer had zero interest in pets. She might have had cats as a kid, but in our house? No pets. Part of it was the shedding — she had no interest in dog hair on everything. Part of it was a legitimately bad experience when the kids were small: Jennifer’s father had a terrier with serious pack-leader issues, and that dog would go after the kids if they touched the wrong toy. He was a small dog, but when the kids were really little, he was about their size standing up. They were terrified of dogs for years after that.
So “getting a dog” was not really on the table. Until the Bernedoodle.
The pitch, once she started researching, was basically: Bernese Mountain Dog traits (calm, kid-friendly, not hyper) plus poodle (low-shedding, smart). The non-shedding angle reopened the door. We knew people with sheepdogs and herding breeds that needed to run constantly — that felt like a layer of complication we didn’t need. The Bernedoodle seemed like it could actually fit our life.
The kids, for their part, had been asking for a pet for years. Some of it was a cat, some of it was just the ambient kid pressure to have something. There was also some wishful-thinking parental logic at work — maybe the dog would get them outside more. (It didn’t. It never does. But you tell yourself that story anyway.)
Finding one was its own process.
Breeders were in North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, maybe upstate New York. The litters go fast. The first couple times we were in the running, we waited too long to decide, and by the time we were ready to commit, the litter was already spoken for. We eventually learned: when they notify you, you act immediately.
We also opted for a program where the puppy goes to a trainer first — comes to you three or four weeks later already housebroken, with basic commands. Sit, stay, come, wait, shake, spin, go potty on command. For people who had never owned a dog and where the care was realistically going to fall on one person (me), that felt like the right call. We’d miss some of the puppy chaos, but we’d get a dog we could actually manage.
We had actually picked a different dog, but that one was already claimed. So we ended up with Hobbes. A trainer in North Carolina sent us videos — here’s what he responds to, here’s the command, here’s how to stay consistent. And then someone drove him up to us.
Three years in, here’s where we are:
He is, genuinely, one of the happiest dogs I’ve ever encountered. Loves people. Super soft. Exactly the temperament they described.
He also hates the car. Like, deeply, personally hates the car. He knows when you’re going somewhere — you can watch him figure it out and start looking for places to hide. Once he’s in, he just sits there and pants. I got a trailer for bike rides. He hates the trailer more than the car. He whines. He suffers audibly.
The jumping is our ongoing project. He’s not aggressive about it — he just gets excited and goes up on people. The challenge is that Henry actively encourages it, so you’re trying to train the dog with one kid who keeps inviting the exact behavior you’re trying to stop. We’re working on it.
He was supposed to be the kids’ dog.
That’s not how it went. He’s my dog. I walk him, I deal with him, I’m the one he follows around. I didn’t fully anticipate how much I’d enjoy his company, honestly. Forces me outside, forces me to take actual walks, gives me something that isn’t a screen or a deadline. That part has been genuinely good.
He’s been a great addition. Even if he is, objectively, a very bougie dog.
Even that's Odd 
Leave a comment