Welcome to Kent Family Farms

Having a clear vision for your breeding program is essential to its success. What are your goals? What needs to come first? What is your mission?

We have many things that have influenced how we run our breeding program. For us, our mission is to breed healthy, structurally sound dogs, with amazing temperaments, that can easily become service and therapy dogs. Our own personal program started with breeding Golden Retrievers when I was younger. We loved this breed for their temperaments, stocky build, big ears, among many other traits. We struggled with even the best tested Golden’s having shorter and shorter lifespans though. Part of this is due to bad breeding practices including high COI’s from line breeding and focusing of certain features that aren’t related to health, including colour. That being said our hearts have always been with the Golden Retriever and when we explored looking for a breed that was better for allergies due to sensitivities in our own family but still maintaining that Golden temperament when couldn’t find a purebred that did that. I came across info on Goldendoodles during that time and immediately dismissed it, mostly because I grew up with show Golden’s and that would be blasphemy in that world. I was also finishing my degree in Biology at this time and the genetic argument for cross breeding was astounding. It solved so many genetic problems and longevity problems. So this started me genuinely looking at Goldendoodles as my breed of choice for our family. Many years after that we then incorporated Bernedoodles into our program due to their amazing temperaments as well and physical traits that balanced the Poodles more. This took a lot longer for us because we wanted to find a line of Bernese that lived to be 10+ years old and also had all their health testing. Many people don’t realize many Bernese only live to be 7 years old. This was not okay with me, so I waited for the perfect line.

Now that you have a little background on how we got here, I want to talk more about what we focus on. Our focus remains on having genetically diverse lines that will be healthier and live longer, only breeding dogs with high level genetic testing including DNA and orthopedic traits, while maintaining the temperament traits we love from the Golden Retriever, Bernese and Poodle.

What does this look like in our program?

1. Health testing is the first thing we look at. It is imperative that we breed the healthiest dogs possible. Because both Bernese and Golden’s (and many Poodles) are in the medium to larger breed category hips are an absolute non negotiable. Cardiac, patellas, elbows and full disease panels are a must as well. By parents all having these health testing requirements we can literally avoid diseases that could cause early death to our dogs, but also things that will cause thousands of dollars in vet bills.

2. The next thing we look at is structure and temperament. We look for healthy structure, no extreme traits that cosmetically people want but aren’t beneficial to the dog as a whole. Luckily we don’t have to deal with this a lot with our breeds, but we want proper bites, balanced angulation of joints and structure that allows for a healthy life for the dog. We want temperament that is not only highly adaptable to children, elderly people and everyone inbetween, but an eager to please personality that is laid back and confident. We intentionally avoid lines that are vocal and/or reactive as well. We don’t want a dog in our home that barks all the time, nor do we want them to pass on that trait to their puppies and not be able to pass as a therapy dog, who can go out in public and do their job. Same goes for being reactive. We need our dogs to be excellent with children, adaptable to new things and not reactive, so they will be able to do therapy or service work as easily.

Note*** Because of these traits, we don’t really incorporate Toy Poodles into our lines, as they tend to be more reactive and vocal. I know many people want the small size, but temperament has to come above size for us.

3. We also focus on COI’s of our dogs and percentage of each breed incorporated into each breeding. Making sure that each dog’s pedigree and genetic COI is low is also extremely important for focusing on healthy dogs. We can’t test for every genetic disease or trait yet, so making sure they are genetically diverse is important to avoid all the diseases we can’t test for, minimizing our risk. So we track these on each dog. On top of that, we watch their percentage of each breed in them. Not to say percentages are always accurate because it depends on what the breeder is selecting for, but making sure we are balancing breeds and traits long term is a focus for us.

4. Traits are important as well. We look for traits that aren’t structural in the sense that they affect the dog's quality of life, but they change the look of the dog. These are more cosmetic things that we just prefer as a breeder and select for after health, temperament and structure are approved. So traits we look for are things like we want stockier heads, bigger, forward set ears, less curl to the tails and mid range back length (not long or extremely short). We also look for certain coat traits. We slowly over time will breed away from curly coats and towards two furnishing genes, so our dogs are better for those with allergies and also are less maintenance day to day. After all of that if everything is equivalent between two dogs, we will test for colours and love providing families with a variety of colours, but this always comes secondary to everything else.

Overall, as a breeder we focus first on health testing, next on temperament and structure, then COI’s and breed percentages, then on specific traits we prefer. We as a breeder love the intelligence of the Poodle. We love the laidback nature of the Bernese and Golden. We love the focus of the Golden. We love the silliness of the Bernese. We love the big, forward set floppy ears from the Bernese and Golden. We love the health and allergy friendliness of the Poodle. We love the shorter, stockier head and bodies of the Bernese and Golden. We love the confidence of the Golden and Bernese. We love the straight coat type of the Bernese and Golden. We love all the colours of the Poodle. These are all the traits that we will focus on more heavily. We will accomplish this by eventually breeding multigen Doodles that each generation we focus on keeping back puppies that have these traits. Another breeder may focus on completely different traits and that is okay. My heart is more with the Golden and Bernese, so you will see me focus more heavily that way (while maintaining the allergy friendliness and health of the Poodle) and another breeder may focus more heavily on the Poodle side and each is completely fine. It is about finding a breeder that is focused on the things that are important to you trait wise. We should never, ever compromise on health, structure and temperament though, ever!

I would argue why and how we do what we do and determining what we see as success is the most important thing about a breeding program and helps us to find the path we want to follow. For us success is improving the breed as a whole, so that dogs are healthier and happier. Providing loving family members to people that will improve their quality of life, including service and therapy dogs. And doing all of this in a way that is focusing on doing what is best for both people and dogs. I love the relationships I have built, I love that I have families that reach out ten years later just to talk about the joy their dog has brought or families that want to talk to me about something completely unrelated to dogs, they just feel like family so reach out. I love seeing how well adjusted our dogs are and how they can be trusted completely because of our intentional focuses. If dog breeding is not about both dogs and people too, I think we have missed out on so much in life as a dog breeder! Dog breeding is a world that comes with a lot of grief whether it be from dealing with heartache from losses that are beyond our control, sleepless nights, lack of personal time or people that criticize us for things just because they are uneducated or cruel, so we need to make sure our focus is where it needs to be to get through those hard times. My focus is always on doing right by the dogs and the people that trust us to provide them the most amazing dog

Vision for our Breeding Program