12 Days of Breeders – 4 – Kari Roach of Chocie Paws

The 12 Days of Breeders is a series of interviews conducted with members of the Dog Breeder Society who are doing innovative, creative, and inspiring things in their dog breeding business.  In each of these interviews we cover challenges each breeder has encountered, and how they’ve overcome those challenges to find success in their breeding program.  Join me for all twelve of these interviews for inspiration, and countless actionable tips you can use to overcome (or avoid) challenges in your own dog breeding program!  You can check out all of the interviews in this series here.

Kari Roach & Choice Paws Cavapoos

For Day 4 of 12 Days of Breeders, we welcome Kari Roach of Choice Paws in Utah. Kari’s journey is highly strategic: a former pre-med student, after starting out as a guardian home, she ended up buying an established breeding business program. This rare and successful move allowed her to immediately apply her health science discipline, bringing a rigorous, systems-based approach to her Cavapoo program. You’ll learn how Kari made the journey from guardian home to purchasing a breeding business, how she meticulously documents health testing and structure, implements a deep, structured curriculum including ENS and scent work to optimize puppy confidence, and details of her social media strategy to showcase integrity, justify premium pricing, and attract educated buyers. You’ll also hear the heart she brings to her dogs, buyers, and guardian families.  If you are ready to stop treating breeding as a hobby and start running a high-caliber program driven by both meticulous standards and genuine passion, this episode is mandatory listening.

Learn more about Kari & Choice Paws

Transcript

Julie Swan | 0:00

Welcome to the Honest Dog Breeder Podcast with me, your host Julie Swan, where each week we dive in to discuss all things dog breeding so you can build a breeding business you love, producing dogs that fulfill their owner’s dreams. I believe you can have an honest dog breeding program that also pays the bills. So throw those pods in your ears while you’re cleaning kennels.

I’d love to join you. Welcome back to 12 Days of Breeders. You guys are in for a treat today.

Today we have Kari Roach of Choice Paws, and you are just outside Salt Lake in Utah. Kari, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Kari Roach | 0:36

Thank you, Julie, for having me.

I’m so excited to be here.

Julie Swan | 0:39

It’s such a good story. All right, so this was not your original plan, right?

Dog breeding wasn’t necessarily something you thought about forever.

Kari Roach | 0:49

No, I went to college. I was a pre-med student and was going to be on that track, and I was thinking, I’m going to do something in health care. And then I met my husband, and he was my anatomy TA.

And so we changed courses, and I ended up staying home and raising kids. So that was the plan. I guess I was going to retire after raising kids and, I don’t know, hit the gym and drink a lot more coffee, I guess.

Julie Swan | 1:23

Yeah, so that was it. All right, so that makes sense. So your kids, they’re older now, right?

Kari Roach | 1:31

They are. My youngest is a senior in high school. And so this kind of all started happening around Andrew, my oldest, going off to college and COVID and stuff like that. And I started to see, I was like, okay, what am I going to do when my kids go off?

And we started getting dogs just like everybody else during COVID. Because we thought before, we don’t have a lifestyle for a dog, you know, we’re never home. But you know, just like everybody else’s story.

And that kind of changed the course and the direction of, I would say my, I don’t know, hopefully next 20 years. I don’t know. I think I can do this for 20 years, maybe.

Julie Swan | 2:16

Yeah. I mean, you’re doing a great job. So this makes sense.

So this kind of filled in instead of just sitting on the couch watching Netflix every day. You’re like, Oh, maybe I’ll, you know, breed dogs. How did you actually get started?

You were looking for what to fill your time with?

Kari Roach | 2:31

Exactly. No, I mean, definitely not breeding, just probably having dogs in general. And so like everybody else in COVID, we were like, okay, we’re gonna get a dog.

And there were no dogs to be found as everybody knows. And so what does it do better, know better.

Anyway, we got our first dog after a month or so of looking, and from probably just a backyard breeder. And she’s a lovely dog. She’s not a breeding dog.

She never was a breeding dog. She was just a pet. But the second time around, I was like, okay, I really want to get a dog.

We’re going to do it right. Now I can see what the benefit is of getting from a breeder, having a socialized dog and knowing the parents and the health and everything. So that’s when I started to look into getting a dog from a breeder.

And there’s a lot of breeders here in Utah. And so I just started messaging people and my daughter still really wanted a Goldendoodle. Our first one was a Goldendoodle.

And so we were looking for another Goldendoodle and just messaging breeders and asking them. We wanted small, that kind of 10 to 15 pound size. And not a lot of people at that time were doing that size. I think more people were still doing a little bit of the bigger, the minis.

And so finally, I had found Jenny from Choice Paws. She was doing both Cavapoos and toy Goldendoodles. But she was going to be done doing Goldendoodles.

And she was only going to focus on Cavapoos. And so she said she had a friend that had Goldendoodles. And so long story short, I ended up becoming a guardian home for Becky at Ruby’s Mini Doodles.

And then after a year, when it got a little bit closer for Maple to be breeding, we kind of started talking about, you know, do you think you want to be a whelping guardian? Does that interest you? And I was just like, you know, I think maybe.

Julie Swan | 4:43

For people who don’t know, what is a whelping guardian compared to a regular guardian.

Kari Roach | 4:48

Oh, exactly. Yes. So a whelping guardian helps deliver the puppies and raise the puppies.

Sometimes it’s only a short period of time, maybe some of the guardians only do a couple weeks, or sometimes they can do it the entire eight weeks. I ended up doing the entire eight weeks for Becky.

And then I started doing a couple other litters for her here and there. If she was traveling, I might cover a few weeks for her, stuff like that. And so I really started to practice.

It’s good to start with your own dog, I think, that lives in your home.

Julie Swan | 5:35

Because you know them. Yeah.

Kari Roach | 5:36

And then I started having other dogs come in. And that was actually probably the best of the both worlds, because raising the puppies is the fun part. And then I didn’t have to worry about the expenses, and the selling, or anything like that.

So some days I was like, oh, you know, that was pretty easy. If somebody changes their mind or backs out, it kind of really wasn’t your responsibility. You got to play with the puppies, right?

Julie Swan | 6:04

It does take the stress off. Okay. Are you relatively close to her?

Kari Roach | 6:10

We are about, they’re in Lehi, a little bit closer to Provo. So maybe 45 minutes or an hour. So that was a little bit of a challenge.

Sometimes it wasn’t like she could just run up and help me out. I mean, there was a lot of late night Zoom calls, because when you’re first learning to deliver puppies, they were on the phone, and the intent always is for them to come up and help you, but sometimes you just don’t have that amount of time.

And so luckily there’s three of us. So Jenny was still friends with Becky and I, and so there was three of us, and we would all be on Zoom calls, or bouncing things back and forth, or help, you think about this. And we still maintain that relationship now.

I was whelping for Becky for several years before I started doing more for Jenny as her health. And we’ll get to that a little bit later, but you know, she was starting to have some significant health problems. And so I was taking a more active role in helping her either all litters or half litters, maybe she would do half of them.

And then I would do half of them. And then after a while, we just kind of realized that it was just, breeding is super taxing on people. I don’t know that they understand.

It’s exhausting.

Julie Swan | 7:39

What do you think is the biggest thing that’s so exhausting?

Kari Roach | 7:44

In the beginning, especially, I would say just the unpredictability. Like I would sit in the whelping box for hours because I just didn’t know. I thought any minute now they’re going to start delivering.

Very, very paranoid about like, if I left, what would happen or stuff like that. So some days I felt like, especially with Maple, she had really, really long litters and you know, I was just starting. So three days I would just not leave.

I would hardly even eat or shower. The more experienced you become, you get better with recognizing those subtle signs. Better trusting the temperatures, the not eating, and stuff like that, and you know your dogs a lot better. And then you do feel like you got hit by a bus after, if you have a nighttime delivery or something like that.

Julie Swan | 8:45

Yeah.

Kari Roach | 8:47

Also, I think early on, I think a lot of people don’t understand, like I sleep next to the litters.

And so the moms and the puppies, if they get too far away from the mom, they’ll cry, or the mom’s in and out of the box or just very restless. And so you’re always just sleeping really lightly, checking on them, up and down every couple hours. So it’s really hard if you don’t sleep well and then you just don’t feel good the next day.

Julie Swan | 9:19

Yeah. Yeah, no, that makes sense. So you’re just mostly, it’s just physically taxing during whelping time.

Kari Roach | 9:24

Yes. I think so. I know with Jenny it was also very stressful.

You know, it’s hard when families back out at the last minute, and finding families for puppies. The business side of it is financially sometimes very stressful. And so I think that amount of stress for Jenny too.

And then we found out later on there was underlying health conditions, but the problem was just the anxiety, and the stress, and the lack of sleeping. It really is kind of a hard thing, to do your best and show up those puppies, and your families day after day when you’re just not feeling good.

Julie Swan | 10:12

Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I know.

I feel like breeders, it’s so helpful if we have good sleep most of the time, because we need that to bounce back after all of it. It’s a lot.

Kari Roach | 10:23

And most breeders, I mean, almost everybody that I know is juggling family life and being a wife. And there’s some that even have small jobs outside of the home and stuff like that. And so just to keep all those balls in the air is a lot.

Julie Swan | 10:42

I agree. Do you kind of feel like it’s hard to not be, even if you’re not full-time in the sense of how much you’re producing, but do you think it’s hard to have another job?

Kari Roach | 10:54

Yeah, it’s really hard, especially the difference I noticed between being a whelping guardian, and actually owning and running the business and being responsible for that. It’s just tenfold in terms of, now you have a website, and then you have to make phone calls, and you have to save all your receipts, and do the books, and stuff like that. So to have a job, even a family, is a lot. My daughter’s a senior in high school. She doesn’t need me a lot.

My husband can cook his own food. Maddie does a lot of her own grocery shopping. So these are just other things that have been taken off of my plate that, gosh, I just don’t know.

I don’t know if I would have been doing good like five years ago when I still had all these other obligations. So I really put it to a lot of breeders that are wearing all those different hats.

Julie Swan | 11:51

Yeah. Oh, I just think it is, it is hard. It’s exhausting.

And I think when you add in marketing and trying to get all this stuff, just really, it’s really hard.

Kari Roach | 12:02

When I bought Choice Paws, I didn’t know anything of website backend and SEO. So again, not only just taking a business that was doing pretty well, Jenny had her name that was already out there, and she had a demand, but at the same time, I only knew how to raise puppies. That’s what I was good at, but setting up business structures and emails and WordPress, I mean, I inherited a super, super complicated website.

It wasn’t just one of the plug-and-plays, like you can imagine a fully functional WordPress, everything was moving and it was a very complicated website. It was beautiful, but I can remember, I pushed a couple buttons and crashed the website and, you know, asked my son.

I’m like, Andrew, can you fix this? He’s like, mom, do not touch anything. You are not allowed to touch anything on that website.

I was like, agh, I don’t know what to do.

Julie Swan | 13:15

Oh yeah. I know in the beginning it’s hard. Okay.

So you mentioned it a couple of times. So tell us about it. Eventually you, I think she had some health concerns, and so you ended up sort of flipping, right?

How did that all happen?

Kari Roach | 13:31

So I was whelping for both, Becky and Jenny. So Becky, she owned Ruby’s Mini Doodles and she was just doing Goldendoodles, small Goldendoodles. She focuses mostly, I think on her English creams now, but she was doing reds and Ruby is her original dog.

And I have a daughter from her and that’s Maple. And then I was whelping for Jenny. And so kind of the same philosophy, like all of us don’t like to have a lot of litters at the same time.

And sometimes traveling is really, really hard when you’re a breeder. Becky has two daughters that are incredible tumblers, like world-class, travel out of the country.

Julie Swan | 14:27

Is that like gymnastics? I’m not familiar.

Kari Roach | 14:29

It’s very similar to gymnastics. It’s kind of under the same umbrella of gymnastics, but it’s not in the Olympics.

They do like the trampoline, and then the big long, you know, backflip, backflip, backflip, you know, it’s on a big long.

Julie Swan | 14:45

So she’s busy taking them around.

Kari Roach | 14:51

And so she was out of the country a lot. And so that was kind of the thing.

So I was whelping more and more for both of them. And we kind of just had a conversation that we were like, well, Jenny, I wonder if we could just switch places. So what, if you were more of the whelper, assisting when you felt better, and then I would just run the business side of it.

We tried to figure out, okay, well, how would this look? it took about a year of us talking. Because she did not, you know, it’s really hard to give up something that you have built from the ground up, and just kind of say like, okay, I’m giving it up.

I’m turning it over to somebody. I mean, that was her baby. So it took a good year for her to decide that, you know, I think for my health and for my family and for everything around me to say that I’m going to retire, and so that’s what she did.

She decided to sell to me. And I didn’t know, I was like, do I really want to buy a business at 50 years old? So that was hard too, a lot of conversations with my husband. Like, it’s going to change a lot how our life looks too.

If I decide to do this.

Julie Swan | 16:15

So how did you get him on board? Is he just magic?

Kari Roach | 16:20

I’m trying to remember. I think at the end of the day, he understood that before we were married, I guess you could say I was kind of giving up a lot of what I had planned for myself in the future to stay home and raise the kids and follow his career path. And so I think at the end of the day, he’s like, you know what, I really want you to have something of your own. You know, you’re good at what you do.

You’re very passionate about it. You did a good job raising our kids. So I don’t doubt that you would do a good job raising your puppies and stuff like that.

And so he’s like, you know, I really want you to have your own thing. I think that was kind of the main thing and, you know, definitely there’s days when he’s looking a little bit like, how many dogs do we have in the house? Or when are those dogs coming? But, at the end of the day, most of the nights he’s on board.

Julie Swan | 17:27

That’s good. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Kari Roach | 17:29

I think every breeders’ husband probably has the same thing sometimes. Like, um, yeah.

Julie Swan | 17:36

Yeah. Sometimes Bill looks at me and he’s like, so when are they going home?

And for the extra loud litters, he’ll ask me that every other day, like he somehow just forgets.

Kari Roach | 17:47

Yes. Well, again, the litters are in our home and stuff like that. So one of our first things that we did was get rid of the carpet that was in the basement, because we didn’t know that there would be pooping in the house with moms that had accidents. And having guardian dogs in the house is hard, you know, do they get along with your pack that’s already there?

And I do try to keep everybody pretty quiet. Sometimes he has to sleep during the day.

And when you have other dogs come into your house, maybe they’re a little more barky, or they want to be with you all the time. And so it’s complicated to do all that.

Julie Swan | 18:41

Oh, I totally agree. So you ended up converting your basement.

Kari Roach | 18:45

Right. So my basement, we have a pretty good size house. And my two boys were down here on the main, like on the second level.

And then we had a huge play room, which as your kids grow up, we didn’t use that anymore. And so as my first one went off to college, his room became the primary whelping room. I kept his bed in there, and he had this little alcove, which is perfect for a whelping room that we were able to just gate off.

And so nice, really private space, away from that top level of your house, from Amazon guys and stuff like that. And then it goes out to a patio where they can go out and potty. And we took out garden boxes, and put rocks down, and kind of made it a really nice, easy cleanable space.

And then as my second one went off to college, I don’t think he was 15 minutes down the road and I was cleaning out his room. I mean, I’m texting him pictures. I’m like, do you need this?

He was like, oh my gosh.

I’m in there in his room with a measuring tape and everything like that. So both of my boys probably have no place to come home if they wanted to come home, and the dogs have pretty much taken over that second level of our house, which is just wonderful. It’s pretty much all plank vinyl now, so it can be steam cleaned, and I have lots of play areas.

Julie Swan | 20:18

When you’re saying second level, is it down low?

Kari Roach | 20:23

It’s still above ground actually. So the main floor is up and then our ground floor is second.

And then there is actually what we call like a basement, our whole house is walk out.

Julie Swan | 20:38

You’re on a hill. Okay. So this is making more sense now.

So second level was down, but still not your basement?

Kari Roach | 20:47

Right. And like I said, our basement is not really a basement either. And that has a treadmill and stuff like that, that never gets used in my husband’s office. And then it was a spare bedroom down there as well.

And now that’s where I take all my pictures, and I have a bunch of just other breeding stuff. Like it’s pretty much taken over. I would say like most of the house, except for the main level.

So we try to keep breeding dogs and stuff like that not on the main level. So my family dogs, and we have a Lab right now.

And so the dogs don’t go up there with the Lab, just because she’s very high energy and she’s big. And so a lot of my breeding moms would be small and maybe would be not used to playing with Gouda or something like that. So the main level we try to just keep for our family and our family dogs and stuff like that.

Julie Swan | 21:50

Yeah. Well, that makes sense. I think that’s so healthy to have a little bit of separation, because at the end of the day, you can sort of close the door to your breeding program for a little bit.

And I find that allows breeders to breed for a lot longer, and reduces divorce rate. So that’s always fun.

Kari Roach | 22:07

It does. And my adult dogs do come down, just not Gouda. Bagel, Maple and Minnie, the Goldendoodles and the Cavapoo. They all do come down and help socialize the puppies, and play with the puppies, and go outside into the deck.

But for the guardian moms to come down and have their own space, I think is really healthy and helpful. And so I’m just really blessed that we have this space and it’s in our home. My husband jokes that he’s really glad that the rest of the house is getting used, because, you know, as your kids go away and move on, he’s like, what would we do with this big house with just the two of us?

So it’s getting used and it’s a really awesome opportunity that we have that.

Julie Swan | 22:58

Yeah. It sounds like such a great floor plan. I’m a little jealous.

So it’s beautiful. We don’t have basements in Arizona. Like nobody really does them.

So it’s just kind of boring. I know.

So let’s get back to purchasing the business. So you started to switch places.

It was a little hard for her. How did she end up getting to a place where she was kind of okay with letting go, or was it very gradual?

Kari Roach | 23:22

It was gradual what we did because it was very complicated, and all of her dogs were in guardian homes. And so to navigate that process, I think is very complicated to go to these families and say like, Hey, guess what? Like I’m really going to sell my business to this person that maybe they kind of knew me a little bit, but they had never interacted with me.

Or a couple of them I had maybe whelped their moms, or something like that. So that’s where we started was with families that I had worked with. Charlotte, for example, was a Cavalier that I worked with that family and I was involved in setting up the guardian home.

So we had a relationship. And so that’s what I did.

I started buying and working with a few of the families, and then she sold those dogs to me. And then she maintained, she didn’t sell all of them at one time to me. So I think I started with about four, which seemed reasonable.

And then it was about a year, or a year and a half later, that we kind of worked on just the last few dogs, either she retired them or I was able to use them in the program, but I never fully officially purchased them. More like a co-own, I think it would be.

Julie Swan | 25:00

Oh, okay. Did you end up sharing profit on those litters with her?

Kari Roach | 25:03

We did. So I paid her a per price puppy, and how many puppies were born, but I still covered all the breeding expenses.

Julie Swan | 25:15

So she owned the dog, she had paid for the dog to be used, health testing, whatever. And then you ended up raising the litter, taking care of the whelping and rearing costs. And then did you split the profit, or did you split the price?

Kari Roach | 25:32

We didn’t split, I just paid her per.

Julie Swan | 25:39

Oh, you just gave her a flat rate per puppy. Was that like a 30% or 50%?

Kari Roach | 25:44

We just did actually $500 per puppy.

Julie Swan | 25:47

Oh, okay. Oh, okay. So you actually did pretty well.

That’s really good.

Kari Roach | 25:52

And I think it turned out okay. It was very hard because some of these moms, they had had litters, but some of them had not. One of them, there were really long heat cycles and stuff like that. So I just didn’t feel comfortable.

Like, I don’t know if I want to fully purchase them. I didn’t know if they were going to be able to be breeders, and how big their litters were going to be, and stuff like that. So there was a couple of them that were a little bit more unknowns, families that I just wasn’t as comfortable with.

Julie Swan | 26:30

Like you wouldn’t have had them as your guardians if you were picking.

Kari Roach | 26:34

Not that, I just didn’t want to disrupt the relationship that she had between them, and kind of be in the middle. Some of the families lived closer to her. And so it was really hard to say, okay, well, your mom is going to now be an hour North.

And if you want to come and visit her or see the puppies, it’s going to be a pretty big inconvenience to you to do that. So a couple of times she started the litter when the mom was still there. And then once the puppies were weaned, the mom went home and that worked out really well. And then I finished the litter.

And we did a couple of those situations as well, just to help the guardians. I don’t know, I didn’t want them to feel that their dog was being moved around all the time or something.

Julie Swan | 27:29

I think it just felt like a very respectful solution. Or like if they only had one or two litters left on the guardian, it made sense to just kind of keep it status quo.

Kari Roach | 27:38

Right.

Julie Swan | 27:38

It’s interesting. We don’t talk with many people who have purchased a breeding business or successfully sold theirs. It is kind of a unique situation, but I feel like you had a very custom approach.

The business was sold, was there a lump sum or was it each piece sort of put together?

Kari Roach | 28:05

Right. So I didn’t feel very good about taking family money or asking my husband to front that. I mean, we had kids in college and stuff like that, and, you know, take out of our savings.

And so Jenny was flexible enough and trusting enough, I guess you would say in that, I did pay her upfront kind of a good faith deposit. And then I paid her a little bit each month, but you have to remember too, I had no cash flow for the first three or four months or something, but you have breeding expenses, right? So I’ve got TCIs, and AIs, and stud fees, because we didn’t actually have our own studs.

And so I was running pretty big credit card bills in the beginning. And then when families paid me for the litter, then I would pay her out of those profits and stuff like that. So it did take, I think it took a good year.

This year, I think I still had some amount that I still had to pay off. Next year I will have been completely done with that and stuff like that. But so it was very big ask for her to, you know, just take on, you know, because then I still had to pay off that credit card and then I had to pay her.

And then I had to get ready for the next breedings that were coming. Something else that we probably didn’t, I don’t think was very clear, was that she had skipped several heats right before she had made the decision, because she wasn’t feeling good. And so I signed the papers in December, but I didn’t have any moms that were really coming into heat until in the spring. And Becky was so kind. She had a couple Poodles that she agreed to let me do Cavapoos because I was starting to try to build a wait list and build a demand, but yet I had no breeding moms ready.

And so she let me do a couple of litters with her moms, and do Cavapoos with them. And so I’m eternally grateful. In fact, Mia that is here now.

She’s actually owned by Becky. And I did a Cavapoo litter with her about a year ago, and kind of the same thing. Charlotte was my Cavalier and she missed her pregnancy.

She didn’t get pregnant. And I had another mom that was late. And I was like, Becky, do you have any moms that are going to come into heat?

And so that relationship has been really good too. Like if you have breeders that, it’s not an official co-own, but like a friend, it’s like, yeah, I actually was going to skip her. So that’s another great aspect of the friendships that we have.

Julie Swan | 41:18

Absolutely. Yeah. I think it worked out really well that you did know each other. One of the biggest things I see when breeders purchase a business from other breeders, is that the breeder is like, I’ll help you.

I’ll help you. I’ll help you. And then as soon as they get paid, they’re gone.

And that was definitely not the situation that you had, but I think it speaks to the relationship you guys had built before then, which was really nice.

Kari Roach | 41:41

It is. I still talk to Jenny almost every day, if not every couple of days. She definitely wants to see Choice Paws grow and continue.

And she does everything she can to help me from, just, you know, this is a good Reel idea. Or, you know, we talk about what studs, you know, she loves to find dogs for me.

So she will send me all these pictures of puppies for sale or stuff like that. She’s like, you should get this one.

Julie Swan | 42:15

She’s always shopping for you.

Kari Roach | 42:18

Yeah. She’s my shopper and stuff like that. So, you know, she’s definitely very involved when she can behind the scenes.

And up until this year, she did do parts of litters. I mean, she will cover for me if I have to go on vacation or something like that. But, definitely had to take a step back and stuff like that.

Julie Swan | 42:42

That seemed really, really good. Can you go over, was there a contract? You don’t have to give details necessarily on pricing if you don’t want to, but can you go over some of the things you did.

Kari Roach | 42:51

It wasn’t really looked over by a lot of lawyers. I had a cousin that I sent it to and I was like, okay, look, don’t get mad.

Because I already signed this. And so hopefully there’s nothing really, really bad in it. But again, we did kind of just, it was drawn up.

And what I think was really fair when we were talking about this later on, and you had said, you know, sometimes when you’re kind of pricing your program, you do think of all this potential profit. That’s true. And while that’s true, I don’t know if you found this, is it hard to convince the buyer to really commit to that?

Like, Oh, you know, you could make 30,000 on this. And it’s like, well, yeah, but I’m not going to pay 30,000 for that mom, you know?

Julie Swan | 43:47

Exactly. And what happens a lot of times is we, so in the business world, a very, very basic, and obviously this is industry dependent, but a very basic formula is five times the profit of the business, of the annual profit.

So if you’re clearing 70,000 a year in a breeding business, then standard business stuff online will tell you, oh, multiply that by five, and now it’s $350,000. It’s like, no, no, it is not a $350,000 breeding program. Because the reason that doesn’t work is that to get into a breeding business, all you have to do is buy good dogs.

So in theory, what you’re doing is you’re looking at what it would cost to purchase those dogs and build those assets, which is like you said, usually the price of the moms. As breeders, maybe, you know, a little bit more for breeding rights.

Kari Roach | 44:41

And that was, I think she was very fair with that because she knew that. She was like, you know, Kari could continue to work for Becky. She could just buy her own dogs in a year, year and a half, you know, stuff like that.

So she priced the program, I would think to not really make a huge amount of money, probably get back about, probably just like any other business, you put way more into it that there’s not a price tag you can really put on, your time and effort on building something. So it was an extremely fair price when I hear you say, oh, you know, you could have paid five times more than that. Because she did, she priced the dogs a little bit more probably than what she paid, and maybe included a little bit of the health testing and stuff like that.

Now, to be fair, some of the moms had had a heat or two, which was good because I did know that they were able to have litters, and I had a little bit of a sense of maybe how big the litters would be. But it is still hard to kind of commit to that and say like, Oh yeah, I’m going to pay, you know, X dollars for this.

I bought the webpage and stuff like that. That was probably about half of what I paid.

And then the other half was the breeding dogs.

Julie Swan | 46:38

Yeah. Which makes sense. And I feel like that’s very reasonable.

Right. And so you ended up, and this is another thing that people don’t really know how to do. So for example, when I was looking to buy a construction company, we were buying their leads, but they didn’t have any assets.

They didn’t have equipment. They didn’t have a crew that we were going to have rights to or anything like that. So we were actually buying their name, but then we were going to use our name.

So then at the end, I was like, Bill, there’s nothing to buy.

Kari Roach | 47:10

Right.

Julie Swan | 47:10

You know? And they’re like, well, that’s our name. And I’m like, yeah, we’re not going to use it.

You know, that’s not our last name. So it wouldn’t make sense. And so at the end of the day, we ended up just not even doing it because we thought we’d at least get equipment, but no.

So anyway, it’s interesting. So, in your perspective, at least you were getting some assets, you were getting the name, you were getting the reputation that came with Choice Paws that you were familiar with, which I think makes so much sense. Was there a valuation, how were you able to kind of place value on that?

Was it just kind of like a round number?

Kari Roach | 47:44

Yeah, it was more of just a friendly agreement and stuff like that. So she just took kind of what she had paid for them. She had the website built.

And so she had that cost, and I think she added maybe a little bit more for the improvements that she had made. Her husband was really tech savvy. And so, again, not counting the time that they had put into it, because that’s hard to put a number on, but they added a little bit of that.

And I think she knew too, that this was a big commitment to me.

I mean, to buy any business, you don’t know like, well, it’s working for them, but am I going to be able to do it? Are people going to trust me now that we have like this change in ownership? They trusted Jenny, but would they trust me? And it was at the height, I think of, and it’s still a big problem, but like scammers and stuff like that in the dog breeding world. So again, I was like, I don’t know, are people going to like, think that I stole her pictures or something?

Julie Swan | 49:20

I mean, it makes sense, right?

Kari Roach | 49:22

If you go way, way back now, it’s probably two years, but you’re going to see a totally different person on the Instagram. I didn’t go and delete everything.

I, we did some posts and we have stuff where there’s both of us on screen, talking and knowing that we’re friends, but imagine if you’re just scrolling along and you’d followed Choice Paws for a while. I did get some emails that would be like, hi, Jenny. And I’d have to, you know, explain and write back like, my name’s Kari and I own Choice Paws now.

And I would get some messages maybe from like previous owners and they’d think they were texting Jenny. And so I’d have to say, you know, tell her the situation and I give them Jenny’s new Instagram, just a personal, you know, Hey, if you want to reach out to her or something like that. So there was this really awkward transition phase.

And we did try to get together as much as possible, and just help people with that, like have both of our faces on there. And we had kind of a goodbye live. And again, I think it would be really, really hard if you were just purchasing that, and that person didn’t really want to be involved in that or, you know, help that transition.

Julie Swan | 50:50

Yeah. And I think a big difference in Jenny compared with a lot of the breeders that I’ve been on the receiving end, working with the person who purchased the business, is a lot of times we get to that burnout phase with our breeding programs and a lot of breeders they want to be done. Like they’re so ready to be done.

And so they are quick to just get out of it, get a price, something that makes it feel worth it to leave and then their hands off. And so I do think in your situation, Jenny wasn’t, she would have continued if it hadn’t been for her situation.

Kari Roach | 51:27

Yes. And do you find maybe that the people wait too long before they sell, or can they not find the buyers in time? So they’re looking and looking.

And by the time that happens, they’re just so ready to wash their hands.

Julie Swan | 41:43

I’ve got to be honest. I think, and this is just my read. So it’s just my impression in working with people.

Obviously people come to me when they have problems. When things are working perfectly, they don’t come to me. So take that into account. But a lot of times, yes, I think they wait too long.

I think a lot of breeders don’t have the systems in place. One of the things that makes a business worth money is systems. So if she had a fully set up HoneyBook for you, automations, emails, guided everything, and she said, okay, here’s exactly what you need to do and handed it to you.

That would have been one thing, right? That’s something worth buying, but they don’t. And so a lot of times the breeders don’t have a retirement.

They haven’t planned for retirement, and this is their income, and they’re burned out. And so they need to make something to buy themselves time to figure out where their next income is coming from. And I know that sounds absolutely terrible, but it is what I see most of the time.

Kari Roach | 42:40

That makes a lot of sense. Actually. I’m lucky because my dad is a CPA.

So good and bad, he worked for the state government and then he worked for the feds and then he did stuff on his own, but he wants everything to be like 100%. I have to scan every single receipt, and I’ve got to link it in my wave accounting or something like that. And he’s in there with a fine-tooth comb and he’s like, well, you can’t write this off because Austin, he lived in this personal space.

And so he was like, technically you cannot. But anyway, he kind of helped a lot of that, trying to figure out the assets and the purchase and depreciation of a dog when they’ve already had these litters before, and then they have two litters left. And then a lot of the reality, I think we’ve talked about before is just like, if you keep your own dog, not being able to write that off, where that’s a piece that a lot of breeders don’t realize is that like, yes, you could have sold for X amount of money, but you don’t get to write that off.

Julie Swan | 44:01

Right. You can only write off what it costs you to produce the dog, which is usually considerably less. Yeah, absolutely. No, that’s a huge point.

So I can see where it would be like a bummer a little bit when your dad’s like, no, sorry. But at the same time, it is nice. Because you don’t get audited.

Kari Roach | 44:17

Exactly. Well I hope not. But, I can’t remember what’s the original question just about the selling. Oh, I know, retirement.

And so I think too, a lot of breeders don’t realize that you can take some of your profits for the year, and you really should be paying you and you can put that into a retirement account.

Julie Swan | 44:40

Absolutely. Or even if you’re purchasing cash flowing assets, like even rental property or anything, there’s just so many options. But like you said, the point is don’t just spend everything you have.

Kari Roach | 44:51

Right.

Julie Swan | 44:51

Do something with it. So you can choose to breed and you’re not forced to breed.

Kari Roach | 44:57

Yes. I really think it would be hard. I know a lot of breeders kind of pass it down to their kids.

And so, that’s one thing, but I can’t even imagine, I can’t even find guardians, let alone somebody that wants to take over a full breeding business. I mean, it’s a very unique kind of situation. I don’t know, maybe I’d buy a Starbucks franchise or a Tim Hortons or something.

Before I would be thinking, Oh yeah, I really want to get into this breeding business. Like, I don’t know what the market is for that.

Julie Swan | 45:30

Well, it goes back to your comment about how many hats breeders are wearing. There are so many hats to wear, to find somebody that can handle each one of them. And in a way that will work with your brand is very difficult, which is also why it doesn’t usually work as well.

I think similar to your situation, what I usually see as the most effective hand down, like passing it down to someone, is either a kid who is always involved in it and loved it. But usually our children don’t always love what we love, unfortunately. Like when my daughter was five and was like, I don’t want to be a breeder mom.

I was like, okay. But then other hand, we sometimes get that great employee who ends up becoming like the kennel manager and they start taking over all the dog care, which is in a way, a lot of what you did more or less in the beginning. So became completely familiar with the dog side said, Oh, I really like this.

And then begrudgingly or not learned the business side. Right. And then that handoff can happen.

The other thing I see that doesn’t work well, but I’ll just throw it out there. A lot of breeders think they can just hire everything out, do nothing and still get paid. I’ve yet to see it work.

I haven’t found a single company that’s making that work.

Kari Roach | 46:45

That’s very interesting. And that’s kind of where I am, it’s really hard to give any amount of control to other people. And in hindsight, I can’t believe both Jenny and Becky did that for me.

Because they were like, okay, well I’ll let you raise Maple’s litters and stuff like that. And so it’s so hard to really, you know, find those people. I think what it was for me was, I started doing things, and setting up areas in my house, that they could really tell that like, Oh, you know, I think she’s really serious.

Like, I had this calendar with all of the different stages of like, okay, this is when I do ENS. And this is when I do ESI. And I showed them, I was like, look at my calendar.

It’s really cool. And I was buying things, and not asking for a reimbursement, for example, I was just like, no, no, I just want to do this, and stuff like that. So maybe that was part of it.

I was just so excited to do it and be part of it. But it is a big ask to find those guardians, or to find those employees. Who are just as passionate about the breeding as we are, because it really does have to be a passion.

Julie Swan | 48:12

I think so. I mean you had to be a 4.0 student when you were in school. But I think what often happens, and maybe this is the difference between you and say some other people.

Because you would be the most ideal person to sell a business to, you get it, you understand it. And when there’s a new challenge, you’ve risen to that challenge to meet it. But I think a lot of times we end up getting people who need a job, or need money, or don’t have a plan.

And so they end up scooping poop for us. And we think, wouldn’t it be great if they could then welp puppies and then they could then do customer service. And then I could be out of it and they could keep going.

And the chances of the person you hired to scoop poop, probably doesn’t have the ambition to be the person who runs the business. And that’s just the nature of the beast. It’s not a bad thing either way.

But I think that’s the difference. For you, the process had intrinsic value. It wasn’t just a paycheck.

Kari Roach | 49:14

And maybe that is something to be said, if you do have a great guardian or someone that really comes to you. So for example, it wasn’t that they approached me or anything like that. At first I was seeking them out and saying like, I am really interested in being a guardian.

Like how often does that happen that you get a cold DM in your Instagram messages, like, I’m looking for a really great dog. And the best way that I found to get your pick of the litter is to be this thing called a guardian, you know? I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a message to say, I really want to be a guardian for you, because I want to have the best dog.

And so I don’t know whatever made me send some of those emails in the beginning, because I sent a couple of them and I didn’t get any response back. They’re probably like crazy lady. But Jenny texted me back, and then for her to even say, you know, I’m not going to have any Goldendoodles, but my friend has a Goldendoodle and maybe it will work out.

And so it’s really interesting how when I look back, a lot of these things had to fall into place. Before I was looking at adding that second dog, I really was just kind of called to it. And I know it sounds so cheesy, but people would stop me in Home Goods and talk to me for 20 minutes about their dog.

And they had just lost their dog, and how much this dog had changed their life and everything. And I was like, I just really want to be part of this. I didn’t know that dogs were this impactful for people.

And I know that it had really helped me and my family through COVID, like it did a lot of other families, but then I just kept seeing these other things, and these other people, that would kind of come into my life and say, you know, you should get another dog and it just makes such a big difference. And so I think in hindsight, some of those things that happened, maybe not by pure chance, I don’t know, maybe just pay attention to those sometimes.

Julie Swan | 51:30

It makes sense. I think you’re right. I think the motivations for the involvement, like you said, because it is interesting.

Sometimes we get so in the rigmarole of problems or managing problems, because that’s what we’re dealing with on the breeding side, that we forget the magic that we’re also creating. And I think you’ve been very careful to keep that part of it front and center in your business.

Kari Roach | 51:52

I do. I should speak to this. I’m a pretty positive person.

So I think temperament wise, in terms of I take the philosophy that let’s not worry about a problem until it actually happens. And then we will figure out what to do then.

I tried not to worry about things until it happened.

If dogs don’t pass health testing, or something like that, I took three in and you get that pit in your stomach, and you start to worry like what happens, what happens, like, let’s not worry about it. We’ll figure things out if something doesn’t work out. And even, I think I find that when I have families back out at the last minute, a day later or a couple hours later, you find the absolute best fit and you’re like, oh my gosh, this is meant to be.

So in breeding, I’ve tried to keep that perspective and that really helps my mental state even when things seem bad. I had a few C-sections, I lost a puppy recently. We’ve had some stuck, but then everything had been like, look, I got three healthy ones and yes, we had a C-section, and it costs money, but everybody’s healthy.

You know, the puppies all made it. The mom is healthy. I really try to keep a positive outlook on the situation and the health of the moms and the puppies.

And, you know, even if things are expensive, or don’t go a hundred percent smoothly, that’s just part of the industry. And your mental state of keeping positive, I think it makes a big difference.

Julie Swan | 53:48

I agree. I think sometimes those positive moments, we have to cling to them, because they’re the only thing that gets you through the bad days. I think about that all the time. Like when I lose a dog, when I had Parvo and you lose them, and you think, oh my gosh.

And then you’re like, can I even do this anymore? And then the next litter, everything goes okay. You finally exhale.

And then you hand that puppy to those kids and they’re so happy. And you’re like, okay, it’s kind of worth it.

Kari Roach | 54:16

Oh, and that was true. Jenny had a couple, she had really bad luck. Not only was it stressful, and she had some of her health problems, but she just had some really bad, like, I think she had a couple of mastitides and things that we don’t see very often.

Like you could go I’ve had 10 litters and never had that, you know? And I’m like, how did you get all of that within your first five litters? You know, so she was very unlucky just in terms of randomness.

I’m trying to remember. I know that one day she was texting me and the mom had not gone in to labor. So she took her to the reproductive vet and they were like, oh, she’s really close.

And then she started delivering on the way home in the car. Now when I have a mom and I’m transporting somebody, I have an emergency car kit, we’ve learned that way that you don’t get into a car without at least a bulb syringe and some scissors if you’re heading to the vet. So just some hard lessons early on.

And I didn’t have to deliver in the car, but I was on my way, and I had a guardian, and I was going to like meet up and she was like, I think she’s delivering. And I’m like, okay, stay at home. I’ll be there.

Stuff like that. So Jenny had a really hard go too, especially that learning curve just increased stress level. It’s much easier when you start off, having uncomplicated deliveries and stuff like that in the beginning.

Julie Swan | 56:11

Oh, absolutely. And I’ll put it out there for new breeders who haven’t had a litter yet. If they’re freaking out, honestly, it is not the norm.

Usually it’s easy. They’re usually pretty good.

Kari Roach | 56:23

I had done a lot of litters before I started to see some stranger things. Like I said, this was my first litter in four or five years now that I had a puppy that was actually born that just didn’t make it. Like if I had some that were born, they were born sleeping, as you would say in the industry.

And so that was kind of my first go around and it was hard, but at the same time, I was kind of grateful. I was like, wow, I had a lot of really, really healthy puppies and I was grateful to have the experience that I had, to try to help, to do the best I could. But yeah, it’s not all as scary for the new breeders.

Usually it goes really easily.

Julie Swan | 57:14

Yeah, usually. It’s definitely not too bad.

Kari Roach | 57:19

I mean, usually you’re doing your own dogs, right? That’s usually how most people start. So you know them, you have a relationship that helps out a lot, versus maybe a guardian dog that you don’t live with full time.

Julie Swan | 57:36

Absolutely. I know.

I feel pretty confident I could whelp pretty much any GSP at this point in time, I would be able to handle it. Obviously, don’t put me in charge of like bulldogs. I don’t know anything about them. I would struggle there.

But it is, it’s different. I think after time, you don’t need to see the breeding to be able to anticipate when they’re going to be born, and you can kind of tell when they’re about to whelp, and they don’t catch you off-guard. I don’t think you probably sit in the whelping box for three days anymore.

Kari Roach | 58:10

I do not. I have a lot of cameras and my husband, he’s been around a lot. Although my kids, when they would come down and I would say, Oh, you know, somebody’s in the middle of delivery.

They were always hightailing it out of there. They were like, ah, I don’t want to see it. It’s scary.

But you know, my husband, he’s been around, and not in the delivery, but he can watch a mom.  I had to be down at South Mountain for some reason.

And Mia was here, and I was like, okay, can you just keep an eye on Mia and check in on her, or stuff like that. But previously I probably would just not leave, and not eat, and not shower, or something like that.

Julie Swan | 59:00

Right, no, that makes so much sense.

Kari Roach | 59:03

And you realize that they can usually do a lot on their own. While we love to be there, if you go up and take a shower, and the first puppy is born, it probably is going to be okay.

Julie Swan | 59:20

Yeah, exactly. I had my most embarrassing moment as a breeder.

I had one dog, I always put her in the pen with the stud. I never saw her get bred in six litters. I just never even saw it.

So I had no dates. But I had been doing it enough time that I kind of knew she would be getting close. And so I always just make sure they’re crated near me the last week or so.

And I went to bed one night, and she was just outside my master bedroom, but the door was closed. And I woke up, I had heard nothing through the night. She had eight puppies, perfectly nursing.

Everything was clean. I was like, wow. Wow, that was magic.

Kari Roach | 1:00:04

It’s funny because I think too, the further along you go, like Mia, this last time, she was sleeping with me in the bed and that was where the first puppy was born. And usually you’d be rushing them off into the whelping box, and you’re like, okay, we’re just going to lay here.

And I had texted her mom, I was like, nope, I think we’re going to bed. I don’t think it’s going to be tonight, or maybe it’ll be like three or four or something like that. And then 30 minutes later, I was like, oh, the first puppy’s here.

So it was pretty crazy in terms of like just you never would have put a mom that was that close to breeding in your bed and like, okay, we’re just going to get a couple hours of shut eye. And so those funny stories that you do hear, like, oh, it was under my bed or it was in my room or something like that, as opposed to when you get the whelping box ready like a month before, and everything’s all set up and pristine. And now it’s kind of like, oh, Mia’s coming, I should probably get things set up.

Julie Swan | 1:01:06

You know what always throws me off, is when they’re like three, four weeks after the another litter. I’m so in the rigmarole of the first litter that I’m like, the time is flying. And a lot of times I’m like, oh crap, we have two days, we got to get them in.

Kari Roach | 1:01:22

Exactly. You’ve got to clean and reset. This is a little bit unusual right now where I only have three-week old puppies, usually I have an older set that I’m working with and doing all my socialization.

And then I have the quieter time, the first four weeks, which is nice. And that timing is about perfect. I love that.

I really love to have the moms that, they do the first part, and then I do the finishing part. When you have, I wouldn’t say close together, but when you’re working with one litter, and they’re getting ready to go and another one’s coming, it does seem like puppy time goes really, really fast.

Julie Swan | 1:02:09

Yeah, it does. It just cruises and you’re like, wait a minute, you’re already five weeks old. So you’ve mentioned a couple of things you do.

You have such a great program. You’ve taken on so much. Can you tell us a little bit of what you did, kind of how you developed it?

Kari Roach | 1:02:26

I think a lot of how my experience was, I took a lot from puppy culture. I took from Badass Breeder. That was very common around the COVID time, Jeanette was very supportive.

But then other groups like yours and other online sources and friendships, and starting with Goldendoodles and then with the Cavapoos, I noticed a little bit difference in things of when I was raising the Goldendoodles to the Cavapoos. The Goldendoodles that I had, were a little bit older and a little bit bigger. And so I had to adjust down the things and the timing for what Jeanette has in her stages.

She has these different stages for introducing things. So it’s like red level, just things that don’t move. Maybe it’s just climbing on things and then you move into things like sound and movement.

And so she has these different stages that are based on the puppy’s development. And so I had to play around a little bit with Cavapoos, in terms of them just being a little bit smaller. I would notice a week or so they would do things a little bit slower than the larger Goldendoodles do.

And then I just honed in on the things that I saw made the biggest difference. And crate training, for example, was really hard for me personally when I got the dogs from other breeders. And so I started crate training.

A lot of people do it at five or six weeks. And then I started to kind of edge it back in a certain way, and developed my own system for the Cavapoos and how I do it and introduce it. So that was where I started, was I really want the families to be able to have the puppies come home and sleep mostly through the night.

We can get six hours, really pretty good. And again, a lot of it’s size dependent, right? Because my puppies are coming home at around three pounds.

So they’re just not physically able to go much further than that. But that’s kind of where it started with developing a way of how I do things. And then I had a couple puppies early on get car sick.

And so I was like, I really need to solve that problem for my families. And so it’s been more of like when I get feedback. That’s something I learned early on, was in the beginning, if I heard no news, I took that as good news.

And I learned really quickly that actually it’s better for you as a breeder to reach out to the families and ask for that feedback. And if we don’t ask for the feedback, we don’t know where the families are struggling or what problems, what was going on and how to fix it. And so I had a couple families say that their puppies got car sick.

And I wanted to really work on helping prevent that. I mean, I don’t know that you can eliminate it all the time, but let’s try to do things. And so I worked on early on, different ways to introduce the swinging motion, and working on car rides earlier than I did before, maybe just going to the vet or doing a couple errands.

So I start hitting those things a little bit earlier. Play pen time. I have a lot of families that work from home.

So I really try to move the puppies around, start individualizing them. So they’re not always used to being in the litter. So I separate them, and I move them around, and give them some individual time in a home office setting where they’ll be the only puppy and stuff like that.

So a lot of the stuff that I have developed in my program is a response to feedback from other families of what they need. And kind of finding my, we talk about our ideal puppy buyer and what my families are telling me that they need or they want.

And me trying to figure out, and sometimes it’s trial and error. Trial and error to figure out, is there a way that I can help these puppies get to be where those families need them.

Julie Swan | 1:07:31

Oh, that makes so much sense. And I think you brought up a really good thing too at the beginning of that, where you said no news is good news. And it is.

But you also brought up another great point, which is for things such as the dog puking in the car, that is only their one dog and their one experience. They might think this is all dogs, or normal, or not think it’s something to bother you with. But you would have never got that feedback had you not reached out.

Kari Roach | 1:07:56

Yeah.

Julie Swan | 1:07:56

You’re going to know if your dog’s sick, or if it’s got some sort of problem, you’re going to know that because they’ll contact you. But for those little things like that, and it makes a huge difference. Have you noticed a change now going forward?

It really has. And that’s one thing I talk about with my families is I do say, look, something that I want you to do is I want you to reach back out with your questions. So last week I had a little puppy and he had been home for a month and the family had said, you know, Kari, he slept wonderfully in his crate all month.

And this week, for some reason, she’s like, do they backslide or something like that? And so we had to go back and we had to troubleshoot.

And what it was, was that he hadn’t been finishing his dinner. And so they were using his dinner to train him in the evening, kind of just have them finish up that dinner or stuff like that. Well, he didn’t get all that through in the evening.

And so he had to wake up and go to the bathroom. But they were in an apartment, and they were just really afraid that he was going to bark and wake everybody up. And so if they don’t have those resources, or they don’t feel like they can come back and ask a question, I can’t really help them.

And so I learned that early on too, and I know breeders will see this, you send out this perfect puppy and you don’t hear anything for six months. And then all of a sudden you get this angry text back that says like, this puppy is not doing this and it’s out of control or whatever. And you’re like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

So I do try to, not everybody, but I try my best to let them know that if you see something, like they’re going to be a teenager, and you’re going to see some things. And if you need some help, reach back out and I can give you some ideas. And if not, then we’re going to go to a trainer.

We’re going to go to Baxter & Bella or something like that. But that relationship, I do let my families know that I do want that feedback. I do want to help them.

And I think a lot of breeders are kind of missing that component, they just hear too many complaints. And so then it doesn’t feel good when you’re just getting these texts about complaints all the time.

Julie Swan | 1:10:25

Oh, exactly. And I think it’s hard too, because in the beginning, you aren’t sure how to respond. You might not have the answer.

I know that me troubleshooting house training, I wasn’t good at that in the beginning. So I wouldn’t have been able to help them. But like you said, you have to know these are problems so you can focus on them.

And so maybe one way that breeders can pitch it, if you aren’t in a place where you feel confident answering the question, but you know you need the feedback, is to say like, please help me. I’m always looking to make my lines better. And I need to know where you struggle so I can make decisions.

And I’ve had people contact me, like I had a dog that got on some of those oral flea and tick medication, but he ended up getting a GI cancer at eight years old. And the family still contacted me to let me know. And that’s helpful.

That’s good information to know, because if everybody in that litter was having this problem, then we have a different problem.

Kari Roach | 1:11:23

Right. And I read something that, sometimes it’s not till generations and generations that you find out about those health problems. And so it could be 10 years down the road.

And there was a breeding decision that even, the family comes back and lets you know that you can say, oh, okay. But I do have to say, I know that when we started HoneyBook, and your email series had a follow-up questionnaire. And I was like, oh my gosh, am I really going to do this?

You’re almost kind of scared to know, what it’s going to be, right? So like, okay, well, is it going to be anonymous? Or are we going to let people go and basically review you, and tell you where maybe they didn’t feel very supported or where you can do better.

But I mean, if you come from a place, and talk to your family, say really, I’m just a person and I am trying to make things better. And so I do think feedback is a key component that breeders need to ask for. And I do think that you will get less complaints, actually, if you’re kind of walking with people. Every couple months, check back on that teething phase, check back on that teenage phase, stuff like that.

We’re always really happy the first night to check in, and then after that, you’re kind of like, but I think that’s super important. And that really helped me grow. And so I would say back to your original question about shaping things, we want to do better for these puppies.

All of us want our puppies to be amazing dogs. And so there’s a few things that I have honed in on, and kind of made my specialty with some training and socialization, just teaching some calm manners and stuff like that really can make a difference for the families. That first month, or month and a half, if the puppy already has a little bit of a head start, it can sleep through the night, then the families are more prepared for things that we can’t control.

Accidents in the house. I mean, we can’t potty train them completely, but if they haven’t been waking up every two hours, they’re going to be a lot more patient to deal with shark phase or some potty accidents. If the puppy has been in the playpen, and had some practice by themselves, then it’s going to make a little bit easier time for that family that has to work from home.

Car rides. A lot of my families just travel. The whole reason that they’re getting a dog under 20 pounds, a lot of times under 15 pounds, is to travel.

And so a lot of work on being in an airline carrier. Almost all of my puppies fly out of state. And so I really, really hit that hard.

Being in the car, travel is a big thing. I’ve had reports from my flight nannies that not my dogs, but other dogs that get sick when they travel, are really disruptive on the airplane or something like that. So that’s, again, maybe it’s out of fear, but I don’t want my families to have to experience that, or not be able to take their dog somewhere.

They’re getting these dogs because they really want to travel and be with them. But if every time they knew they were going to get in the car, or the puppy was going to scream on the airplane, they just wouldn’t take them. And so those are kind of the things that I’ve focused on, is the feedback from my families, knowing what your families need.

So if you have, you know our friends that have the livestock guardian dogs, I mean, they’re trained for that. If you have a clientele that really wants to do dog sports or something like that, the things that you can do to kind of help them, help their families, you can really find a niche for you, to tailor your program for your ideal customer.

Julie Swan | 1:15:51

Mm-hmm. I love it. And I think you’re so on point to bring up how we can prepare the dogs and give them a little bit of headstart.

Because I think at the end of the day, what gives our dogs the highest quality of life? And it’s if they meet the needs of their family.

Kari Roach | 1:16:06

Yes.

Julie Swan | 1:16:06

And so their family is like, I want a dog that does this. And when it does that, the dog gets taken everywhere. They brag about them, they’re the background on their phone, their Facebook profile picture, all these things.

And if that is a miserable time and they weren’t prepared, or then the dog ends up being more work than they expected. And maybe if it’s things we can prevent, even better. It just eats away at that relationship.

Kari Roach | 1:16:31

And something I would say to our community, what I’ve learned is that you need to niche down very, very specific. A lot of breeders are just trying to sell to family pets to everybody. But that’s actually not really the best strategy.

You need to really find, and I know that you do this with your dogs, just a few really specific personality types or family types. And then you develop your program based on that. Not just like, wonderful family dog for everything.

That’s not going to be effective in finding the right fit.

Julie Swan | 1:17:23

Yeah, exactly. It’s too vanilla. And people don’t know if it’s right for them or not.

The joke is the riches are in the niches. When you have exactly what those people are looking for, and they can’t get it anywhere else, you can charge a higher price. And I’m all about it.

Kari Roach | 1:17:40

Learning what you can do, what kind of dogs you like to raise. Like if you really like to train dogs and stuff like that, and you’re really good at it, then that should be your focus. And then your families are going to come to you for that expertise.

Or if they’re really good at nose work or something like that. So we don’t have to sell to everybody. And I learned that I don’t have to sell all over the country either.

I mean, I do have a lot of families that come in now. But I know you do a really good job of, a lot of your families are really pretty close. So it’s for a specific area, a specific family type and a specific need.

And the more you can focus your marketing and your program on that, I think that’s where you’ll find some of the biggest success. And then show what you do. That’s the main thing that I hear from my families is they’re just like, thank you for showing me what you do.

That gives me the confidence in your dogs or your puppies or something like that. Be proud of what you do and how you raise your dogs. And tell the world why your dogs are great and let people know.

Julie Swan | 1:19:10

Yeah. Oh, I love that. And I think you do that so well on your Instagram.

Do you want to share a little bit about how you do your Instagram?

Kari Roach | 1:19:15

I do. So a lot of my Instagram is clips from, I film my day, pretty much carry my phone around. And it’s nothing fancy. I’m usually not setting up things for Instagram.

I’m not creating content for Instagram. They’re just videos that I’ve taken for my families during the day. I have an album that I send my families almost every day.

Like right now the puppies don’t do much. So it’s like, okay, well, here’s our whelping box novelty item, here’s her nursing or something like that. But when they get eating their mush or whatever, it’s 10 minutes of them eating their mush.

And then that goes up to an album and the families can see all of that. So they’re seeing their puppies from birth all the way through. Sometimes it’s 500 or 600 videos.

So it’s a lot, but the families love that. And of course, I don’t expect them to watch all of that. But a lot of times I’m teaching through that.

So I might be explaining what’s going on while I’m doing something, maybe a training video. I give them not just the wins. Like sometimes the puppy’s not doing what I’m trying to get them to do.

And I’m saying like, look, this is normal puppy behavior. When they go home, they’re not going to just sit on the mat and look perfectly for you. So for Instagram, I do take a lot of clips from those videos.

And usually try to explain a little bit about what’s going on, or why I’m doing something like that. And helping people understand what the reason is, how did I get them to mand or sit, or why am I doing this. A lot of it I try to show the reasons behind things.

And so that’s what usually goes on Instagram are those little tiny clips. And so it doesn’t take me a lot of extra time. People are like, oh, social media, I just hate it.

You know, it takes so much time. I’m already doing those things. I’m already filming those things.

I use chat GPT a lot, and I will ask them like, I have a video of a puppy eating mush, and I’m like, okay, give me five ideas of a Reel that I can create that explains something about the transition on what we feed them or what does weaning look like. You can ask AI a lot to give you some ideas and you just tell them what video you have. And sometimes it comes up with some good ideas.

Julie Swan | 1:22:22

Mm-hmm. Oh, absolutely. It’s a great place to brainstorm for sure.

Kari Roach | 1:22:26

And then using your stories. Again, most people love to just flip through stories really quick. So, if you’re doing something 30 seconds just show that transparency. Something else I do that I get a lot of feedback from, that a lot of breeders don’t do is, I do spend a lot of time with my families, really trying to make sure that we are getting the right fit.

And I don’t approve all my applications. I mean, there’s some people that, for example, they have a lot of really little kids and stuff like that. And I said, you know what?

I don’t have little kids in my program. They’re not exposed to a lot of little kids, not that my puppy buyers, nobody has little kids. But when it’s something that I kind of felt the family that it’s like everybody’s under five years old or something like that.

I really felt that it would probably be suited for a breeder that they were carried around by a three-year-old or something like that. And so really making sure that we are making a good match with the family and what you can do and talking to families. A lot of families that I talk to say, nobody’s ever taken the time to really find out, you get the form and you fill it out or whatever.

And then it’s like logistics are like, okay, well here you can send me this money or whatever. But, you know, I like to really find out a lot more about what they need. And so I think we could benefit from that.

And it does take a lot of time.

Julie Swan | 1:24:19

Have you noticed that doing some marketing, because I know you did a lot of work on your website to kind of get situated with everything. Did you find that shifting some of that marketing had helped you once you were aware of the ideal puppy buyer you were working with?

Kari Roach | 1:24:32

Yeah, absolutely. And the same with Instagram. Any, I think, social media.

You don’t need thousands and thousands of followers. The idea is not to grow your Instagram so big. I remember, and a lot of breeders still do this, they’ll run contests and it’ll be like, $50 if you comment and like and share or stuff like that.

Their idea is they think if they just keep growing their Instagram and making it bigger and we get more followers. The problem is, a lot of those followers, they’re not there to buy a puppy. They don’t have any intent to purchase from you or learn from you.

And people don’t understand those become ghost followers. And so they actually hurt your social media. And so you don’t want to do those kinds of things.

You want to find followers that really care about what you’re doing and about what you’re all about. Not just about growing your Instagram and making it bigger. You want to grow with the right people.

And so, if you only got five new followers a day or a week, nobody these days gets five new followers a day, a week or something like that. You only need one of those to love your program and get on your wait list. And so I think that is really important when people are like, oh, my Instagram’s really not doing anything or I’m not really growing.

It’s really hard to grow right now. But you want to have the right kind of followers, not just numbers.

Julie Swan | 1:26:14

Yeah. Oh, that’s such an important point. So yeah, I’m so glad you brought that up.

So good.

Kari Roach | 1:26:20

Yeah. And I really haven’t seen, I know we talked about the website, trying to grow an email list. That’s always a good idea.

And a lot of the things in the Dog Breeder Society, you really help people set up a structure. It’s all these different pieces that really need to work together.

I think I found Dog Breeder Society, I may have told you, from HoneyBook. I was like, okay, I have all these applications and they’re just in my email. And so your email comes in and it’s cluttered.

And then how do you find an application? And then you’re going back and forth. And now you can’t find an email and you put it in a folder.

And so all of this stuff from management. And then I was like, okay, there’s got to be a better way to manage people and systems and contracts. And that’s where I found HoneyBook and then I found you and the MasterClass.

But digging in, you just have all these other infrastructure things for dog breeders to help them, whether it’s social media, email, website, stuff like that. Because you need all of those pieces to work together to really streamline your business. And my business is pretty streamlined now.

So if an application comes in, it comes to HoneyBook. I have an automated email that goes out, and then they automatically can schedule a time to talk to me, before I was texting people. Like I’d get an application and email and I’d text back and forth.

And again, clearly that was a lot of work and took a lot of time. And then what time is good for you? I can do this time.

Oh, that time doesn’t work well for me, you know? And I was like, okay, there’s got to be a better way. So let’s set up the automated scheduling.

So there’s a little bit of maybe impersonal amount, but I think people realize that they pick a time that’s good for them. And then if they cancel or something like that, it’s like, oh, okay, no worries. But just streamlining some of that stuff is really nice.

Julie Swan | 1:28:41

Yeah. And I would actually say that a lot of buyers, I think the last few years, ever since COVID are very appreciative of those things. They love the fact that at 11 o’clock at night, when they finally are going through their email, they can click and schedule that call with you without texting you and waiting for the response.

And so I’ve found them to be, even though it’s in theory less personal, it’s actually become more catered to them and they’re pretty happy about it.

Kari Roach | 1:29:06

And, you know, just the automated emails or I send out a brochure. Some people send long emails. I find that a lot of people don’t read emails.

They’d rather have a pretty picture of a puppy.

Julie Swan | 1:29:20

Visual.

Kari Roach | 1:29:21

Yeah, a little bit of visual and stuff like that.

And it’s just not overload. Like a wall of text, a wall of text on social media. People don’t read that.

They do a lot better with speaking. If you’re doing a voiceover on a Reel, that’s easier for them. If they’re listening in the car or they have their AirPods in or something like that.

A lot of breeders will make this little, little tiny font on there. And I’m like, look, I am way too old. I have to take a picture and zoom in.

So just think about those things. But I think the biggest thing that you can do to stand out is to bring in that personalization and reach out to people. And then, like I said, not a huge wall of text. Because again, we’ll send out our emails, and then we’ll talk about, and we’ve talked about this in Dog Breeder Society before, and then you’re re-explaining things that I know I sent that in my email before and remind them. Even in Go Home, I have a pretty unique thing called a Go Home meeting, because even though I’ve spent eight weeks sending emails about dog food and vaccinations and stuff like that, we still touch base before the puppies go home and remind them, because I will get those calls, like, oh, what was the food I was supposed to buy?

Julie Swan | 1:30:56

Yep. Oh, I know. I know. Yep.

No, I think it helps. But I love it too, because HoneyBook, if they just need the dog food information, you should quickly send it to them.

Kari Roach | 1:31:07

That probably has been one of the biggest game changer things for me in organization. You know, I can move things along. I can see when the contract is signed.

It’s right there. All the contact information, as opposed to searching through your email, then you didn’t put it in the folder, or you didn’t tag it or, I mean, I don’t know if it’s just me, but things evaporate into mystery email. I don’t know where they go.

They just disappeared. So, yeah, HoneyBook keeps things really nice. Management-wise, I can pull that backup with a mom and have it labeled, and I can find what litter it was easily, stuff like that.

Julie Swan | 1:32:00

Yeah, I love it. I just love it for the simplicity. I mean I was in that place where I was like, man, I’m going to have to hire someone.

This is becoming a mess. And then I was like, I don’t have a system to even hand them. It would not be any better.

Kari Roach | 1:32:11

Right. So, yeah. I still use, do you use a management tool for your dogs yourself with heat cycles and family trees and stuff like that?

Julie Swan | 1:32:32

I don’t, but I don’t have a large enough program that it’s probably not that big a deal.

Kari Roach | 1:32:39

So, you don’t have, like, Dog Breeder Pro?

Julie Swan | 1:32:43

I kind of know, all my dogs pretty much cycle on six months.

So, it’s very easy because I’ll be like, oh, the puppies went home on this day. Oh, I know that they’ll be coming in heat in four months. And it’s pretty easy.

I’m lucky that way, but I’m only managing about eight females. So, it’s not too bad. Yeah.

Kari Roach | 1:32:58

And how about pedigrees or whatever?

Julie Swan | 1:33:02

I have a weird ability to remember everybody who I’ve bred ever. I know I’m weird that way. So, I don’t really, like, people can be like, oh, I got this dog.

I’m like, oh, yeah, I remember that’s Socks and Boot. It’s just weird. So, I’m lucky.

But I also have a structure in how I did breeding. So, it was very systemized, I guess. So, maybe that helps, but I am weird.

Kari Roach | 1:33:27

Yeah, I think because your lines are pretty established now?

Julie Swan | 1:33:33

Yes, I’m definitely doing line breeding, going back in generations and bringing some stuff in or outcrosses and bringing them back. Like, things I’ve been planning for three or four years are coming to fruition. So that’s nice.

But I would say that my stuff is much simpler than, well, I think you’re in multi-gens, I’m imagining now.

Kari Roach | 1:33:51

Yeah, we’re getting to multi-gens. I should speak to that. That’s my goal is to have Cavapoos that are free of IVDD.

That’s something I’m actively trying to breed out in the breed. That would be my long-term goal. So, all fully furnished, wavy coats, wavy or straight coats, so that we get those allergy-friendly characteristics of the F1B.

But I want at least 50% Cavalier genes for personality-wise. So, I really want to have the most Cavalier with the least amount of the Cavalier health issues, whether it be DM, back problems with IVDD. Of course, we can’t get completely rid of it in an F1 because all Cavaliers carry that gene.

But my goal is pretty much clear multi-gens. I spent the first year trying to wait for that unicorn, the stud that was fully furnished, wavy, clear, it just never happened. So, I was like, okay, it’s going to take a couple generations and I’m going to just have to make my own.

So, it is a long process to get there. But yeah, those are my goals. I love F1s.

I love the temperament of them. I love the wavy coat for my families ease and the look. And a lot of my families, they love F1s.

But I would say over 50% of people have applications that I get that are looking for a doodle because they have some amount of allergy or sensitivities. And they’ve been told that we have to have an F1B. And I said, you know, I can get pretty darn close with my F1s.

Usually, as long as the parents, the Cavalier, have two low-shed genes and then the Poodles also do. Most people do fine enough with that. But I do want to just get to that multi-gen to hone in on that.

So, those are my long-term program goals. If I could have Cavapoos that were all clear, I think that would definitely, I would say, be a big thing in the Cavapoo world. And how do I want to say this with being nice?

But people that don’t agree with breeding doodles. They just are opposed to breeding doodles, I would say I really made a big difference in breeding to improve the breed, if I can do that.

Julie Swan | 1:36:51

Absolutely. You do such a good job anyway. But in all fairness, look at what you’re dealing with.

Every single one of my dogs is a low shedding dog by the genetics because that’s a short hair. But it’s just what it is. And it’s the same in my Rat Terriers.

So, I mean, my stuff is so much simpler. So, when I look at everything you’re putting together, it is, it’s generations of goal coming together.

Kari Roach | 1:37:13

But you were looking for more personality characteristics. Like, you were looking for that lower prey drive dog.

Julie Swan | 1:37:24

I needed a dog that was birdie, that had an off switch, but would still make the guys look good in front of their friends when they didn’t train them. So that was my goal. I got to it.

I was very lucky with my foundation stud. He was that dog. He was just, his metabolism was so high.

He was 55 pounds, I had to feed him like he was 85 pounds. So people would take him out hunting, and the day they’d be like, he’s so skinny. And they were, they would lose so much weight in 24 hours just running in the heat.

They were burning energy. It was one time I remember calculating he ate as many calories in a day as I did. And I weighed three times what he weighed.

So anyway, then I brought in German lines, and that brought the metabolism down. And so that really helped. But then they got big again, I had some huge dogs, then I had to bring it down.

Kari Roach | 1:38:21

Luckily your people probably aren’t as concerned with the size though.

Julie Swan | 1:38:28

Correct. I can have a litter. This is so crazy. I can breed a female who’s 40 pounds to a stud who’s 80.

No problem at all in my dogs. And they will be fine whelping 11 puppies that way. And then when my buyers are looking, they don’t care at all.

Like if the right dog for them is 15 or 20 pounds heavier than what they originally told me they want. And they’re like, whatever.

And they know that’s completely unfathomable for a lot of breeds, like my Rat Terriers. If I was like, well, this one’s 20, this one’s 40, people would be like, what?

Kari Roach | 1:39:01

Well, they’re not trying to stuff them under the seat of an airplane either.

Julie Swan | 1:39:05

No, no, no. They’re just more like, I don’t know that I want to have an 80 pound thing that can jump six foot walls.

Kari Roach | 1:39:14

Yeah. Yeah. But so sometimes it’s a little bit easier for me in terms of things I can test for and see, you’re looking more on like, abstract.

Julie Swan | 1:39:27

I have to watch. Yeah, yeah, I’m always watching. I think my big goal this upcoming year is to create a way for people to design their own temperament tests. Because I don’t use a rubric.

I’m like, oh, I just watch them. People are like great, Julie, that’s very helpful, not helpful at all. But I know what I’m looking for.

But I have to articulate it. But I think every breeder can get to a place where they have their own temperament test. If I was to say who’s the most cuddly of your dogs, you would know. And who’s your biggest eater, you would know.

And so if we started to put it all together, you could track all those things. You probably know them.

Kari Roach | 1:40:04

I know them. And then something that I talked about, too, is just the way that I do things and the families have watched for so long that a lot of times I don’t let those extremes get too far stratified, for example. So if I see a quiet puppy, or a little bit shyer puppy, the way I’m structuring the day’s activity, we go back and we take a step back, and we try to hit the same learning objective in a different way.

And usually I can get that puppy up to the litter mates with a day or two. So I really am able to bring a lot of those down more towards the middle.

Julie Swan | 1:40:59

You’re using essentially training and socialization to adjust temperament differences, so that everybody ultimately gets a dog that they enjoy, which I think is great. And me being the idiot I am, or was in the beginning at least, I didn’t really understand how that would play into it. So all I knew to do was watch.

And if I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t keep it. So then I ended up keeping a temperament that I fell in love with. So now my dogs are very repeatable.

You can kind of get anyone in the litter and it’s whatever.

Kari Roach | 1:41:27

And there is definitely definitely something to that. Like, I know that certain moms, pairings, all of the puppies, I’m like, I could keep every single puppy in this litter. And they have gone home and we’re on litter three and have had zero issues from that.

So that as breeders are beginning, and you don’t know exactly what you get. Sometimes you have to go through a couple moms, and a couple pairings, before you hone into that.

I think there is something about keeping your own dogs versus just keep buying and bringing things in, I would say to really try to keep your own and then work within that. And that’s where we’re getting into. A couple of them are going to be on second or third generations for me. For example, I’ve used the stud from Maple, the Goldendoodle that’s now retired.

We kept a boy from her. And he has been in my program a little bit with some golden Cavapoo’s. And so those are temperaments that I’m going to add back in.

I’ve only done golden Cavapoo’s with a few of my moms, mainly that they were really small. And I had a really hard time finding a stud in a Cavapoo that worked with that particular mom, because Cavaliers by nature are a lot bigger. And I don’t like to mix those really big Cavalier genes.

And Cavaliers about the smallest, I think the smallest studs that we can find around here are maybe listed at 12. I don’t know if that’s really actually true. They probably are maybe a little bit closer to 14.

But even when they have, maybe they’re listed at a certain weight, they still maintain the bigger Cavalier genes. So if you go back to Embark, they still say they have genes that could be like 19 pounds. And so they’re going to breed a lot bigger.

Julie Swan | 1:43:40

A lot more variety. I know it’s interesting because I’ve had a couple Embark situations where I had a dog, he’s 55 pounds, and I would consider him a small stud. They tell me on Embark, he’ll be 72 pounds.

I’m like, well, he’s two and a half. He’s not getting any bigger. So it is weird, but a lot of times you’re right.

When you see that larger number, you can get that outcross later.

Kari Roach | 1:44:02

And does he throw, he’s probably thrown some big puppies.

Julie Swan | 1:44:05

He did. I had two in the last litter that’ll probably be 65, 70 pounds. Yeah.

Kari Roach | 1:44:09

Yeah. And so that’s what I use that number for from Embark. Most of my moms, for example, are hitting a very similar number, because I think what that means is the amount of small poodle, or the amount of smaller genes in there is telling Embark that that’s small. But if they have that potential to be in there, then I had a litter where the boy was like 19 and the girl was like seven.

It was an insane difference. But the stud was listed at being bigger. And even though he was himself small, he was just the smallest in the litter and his litter mates, I don’t know what they were, but they were probably bigger.

So yeah. Yeah.

Julie Swan | 1:44:56

Yeah. I think definitely two generations of selected small dogs makes a lot of ground. I’ve seen that, but it does take a second. It takes a second, but I do.

I love the 40 pound GSP. Because you can just scoop them up and take them with you. They’re just easy.

Kari Roach | 1:45:18

But you have a truck, and you have land and stuff like that. So yeah. It’s much easier.

Like our house, like with Gouda, because she’s about 45. So she’s a Lab. Did I, did I speak to that? Did I talk about the Lab?

Julie Swan | 1:45:34

All of your dogs are making me hungry. You’ve got Gouda and Bagel and Maple.

Kari Roach | 1:45:39

That’s so funny. Well, Gouda, the interesting thing that some people might not know, is Gouda is a guide dog in training. My daughter always wanted to do this program at her school where the class is that the kids get these guide dogs and they get to be puppy raisers for them.

And so Maddie had always wanted to do that since she was in middle school. And so she went to a high school that had that program and we did one and that was Kiko. That was our first experience.

And she did make it. She is a working guide dog in California. So Gouda is our second one.

All of the puppies in the litter, how they do it is it’s on a letter. And so that whole litter will be G names. And so she came from the G litter and she’s Gouda.

Then that name stays with them forever. I’m trying to remember what other things, it was a really fun process the first time around, because Guide Dogs for the Blind would send out this puppy truck, and then the kids would go and meet the puppy truck. And then this little guy came out and he would give clues as to the name.

So you don’t know the name of the dog that you’re going to get. And he would give clues and the kids would try to guess and stuff like that. So I can’t remember what the clues were for Kiko.

And then Gouda, it wasn’t quite as much. I don’t think they are doing the puppy truck anymore. I can’t remember why that is, but it’s something interesting with Guide Dogs for the Blind.

So they’re all named after a letter in the litter.

Julie Swan | 1:47:28

So fun. It’s quite possibly my favorite cheese too. So there’s that. Yeah.

Well Kari, thanks so much for coming on the show. It has been such a pleasure hearing your story and learning, and thanks for answering all my questions, because I’ve had a lot of questions this time around. But before we go, can you share with us advice for new breeders, people just getting started?

Kari Roach | 1:47:51

Yeah, I think the biggest thing that I take away from my experience over the past couple of years, this is a philosophy that I keep now, don’t just produce dogs to produce dogs. Really reach out to your families and find out what they need. And do a really, really good job focusing on meeting their needs and raising really, really good puppies. And then show your families and show the world why we’re doing a good thing and make connections. That’s the biggest thing that for me is my why, is the people that I meet, the stories that I hear about. I have made a couple really impactful connections for people, just very moving stories, probably people that will be lifelong friends forever.

And that’s what keeps me going, doing better. If we’re going to raise these puppies and take care of them, and give them a better life for these families, just do the best job that you can and don’t get wrapped up in numbers and growing. I think too many breeder think about growing too fast and they just want to just, let’s just have another litter.

They’re always looking ahead to the next litter or something like that, and focus on doing a really good job with the puppies and the families and they’re going to come back. They’re going to tell their friends. I mean, now I’m getting a lot of people that, you know, I’ve met your dogs out, my neighbor has a dog of yours, my daughter has the puppies.

Your name and what you’re doing for families is kind of the best marketing that you can do. And I think seasoned breeders that have done that would tell you the same thing, like my dogs almost sell themselves for me. People love to talk about their dog, and how great of a start they had, and what a great breeder they came from.

So love your dogs, love your families and really work hard to do the best for them.

Julie Swan | 1:50:23

Yeah. Oh, I love that.

So, so good. Such good advice.

Kari Roach | 1:50:27

Thank you. It was so much fun.

Julie Swan | 1:50:30

Yeah, it was fun.

Tell us where people can find you.

Kari Roach | 1:50:33

Instagram is where most of my magic happens. It’s @choice_paws.

I do have a little bit on Facebook. I don’t know, Facebook doesn’t love me. And my website, but really Instagram. I think if you want to see what we do, how I do it, what it looks like to show things that I am doing, or what you’re doing and just kind of how to put that out to the world.

I think a lot of what people do is they just show the cute little picture and show the puppy. I think we can do so much more, and families really love that. There’s some awesome buyers over on Instagram.

There’s some people that are like, I never get any leads on there. But they’re there.

Julie Swan | 1:51:31

Perfect. Thank you so much.

Kari Roach | 1:51:33

And then come join the Honest Dog Breeder Society. Right.

Julie Swan | 1:51:36

Hey, yes, absolutely. Come see us on the inside.

Kari Roach | 1:51:39

Exactly.

Julie Swan | 1:51:41

You make the time to show up to the live calls.

Kari Roach | 1:51:47

I love that community. I message people back and forth, and we just have a really great core group that seems to show up there every time, and very helpful. It’s a small group, but I think it’s a pretty close knit group.

So I really like it.

Julie Swan | 1:52:04

I agree. Yeah. No judgment.

It’s just easy. Bring whatever you need.

Kari Roach | 1:52:08

I can’t wait to see who else you find. Okay.

Julie Swan | 1:52:13

Oh yes. They’re going to be good. They’re doing good.

Kari Roach | 1:52:15

What a great idea. Well, thank you, Julie, for having me. I really had a great time.

Julie Swan | 1:52:19

Yeah. Thanks for coming on.