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.
Bill Wyatt & DubDub Danes
In this 12 Days of Breeders interview, we welcome Bill Wyatt of DubDub Danes in Bentonville, Arkansas. After a career in high-level sales, Bill applies his deep customer service acumen to breeding, expertly guiding buyers so they feel supported, not sold to. Bill shares his lifelong love for Great Danes and gives an honest look at the immense logistics of managing a breeding business for giant dogs, covering everything from the astronomical feed (and poop) to a size-appropriate socialization protocol. You’ll learn how he uses professional business standards to structure the entire customer journey and why his experience with Great Danes has made him passionate about temperament in breeding selection. This episode is a great listen for any breeder navigating a niche market or looking to transform their customer relationships.
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.
Today we have Bill Wyatt of DubDub Danes in Bentonville, Arkansas. Bill, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Bill Wyatt | 0:33
Great, thank you for having me, Julie.
Julie Swan | 0:35
This is going to be a good one. You have such a fun story. All right, so tell us, a love for Great Danes doesn’t just spontaneously happen.
You’ve got to meet one. So where did you first fall in love with Great Danes?
Bill Wyatt | 0:48
Yeah, so you’re absolutely right. You do have to meet one. At some point in your life, if you have not met a Great Dane and been face-to-face with one, that should be on your bucket list.
But my Great Dane adventure started in Los Angeles, California, in the late 1960s. I was a very young child. This is one of my first memories in life.
I walked out into the backyard of our home and I saw the biggest hole I could imagine as a little guy. I looked back at the pool behind the fence on the other side of the yard and I thought, “why is dad building another swimming pool?” As I stood there and looked at that hole in the middle of the yard, it was big.
It was really big, especially to a two-year-old guy, or however old I was at that point. I walked over toward the hole, and as I got close to it, all of a sudden, Suzy, our fawn Great Dane with a bad cropped floppy ear thing going on, comes up out of the hole, and puts her little paws up on the side of the hole and looked out at me. She had dug a hole so deep that she had crawled down in it and was taking a nap.
I guess she was trying to get down to the cooler level of geocooling or something. She was taking a nap, and when I came out, she popped up out of it.
That was just the most amazing thing I could ever imagine, that this dog had done the work of a backhoe in our backyard. That was Suzy.
Julie Swan | 2:34
And that was Suzy. Your parents just brought Suzy in and you just kind of…
Bill Wyatt | 2:39
Well, Suzy was a rescue dog. My mom came up with Suzy somewhere. I don’t know the whole story, but she brought Suzy home, and Suzy was constantly in trouble.
She was in the trash. I remember one time when she ate an entire weekend soiree of chicken bones and had to go to the vet and have her stomach emptied. She was constantly escaping and Dad was chasing her.
She was an escape artist. That’s kind of strange because Danes aren’t usually escape artists. They chill.
They just hang out. Well, Suzy, she had to go. She just had to go.
I remember watching her crawl up between the detached garage and the side of the house, pushing on both edges to get up over the fence and crawl out of the privacy fence. It was the strangest thing, but that was Suzy.
Julie Swan | 3:37
Yeah. Sounds very driven.
Bill Wyatt | 3:39
Uh-huh.
Julie Swan | 3:41
I’m sure, after having a dog that big and that much personality, it would be hard to just get a regular dog. Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 3:49
Yeah. Dad never got regular dogs after that. I was five years old.
I was in kindergarten and went to one of those five-year-old birthday parties or maybe it was a six-year-old birthday party. I was informed after me and a friend had won the three-legged race that I had won a great Dane in the three-legged race. Of course, I think the deal was negotiated during the three-legged race, but I got a new great Dane.
Santana was a big, beautiful, black and white, harlequin or spotted Dane. He was my best friend. I grew up with Santana.
He lived a long time. He lived 15 years, which is really, really great for a Dane. I got him when I was in kindergarten, first grade, and he went with me through life.
I remember burying him. I’m going to cry. My freshman year of college during the winter, I had to come home and dig a hole in the frozen ground and put Santana in it.
Julie Swan | 5:02
He was with you through all the years. High school is always so hard. You couldn’t pay me enough to go back.
Bill Wyatt | 5:13
All through it, all through elementary, junior high, high school. Santana was my friend.
He always listened. He was always there. He laid his head over on my shoulder.
Danes want to be in your space. Your personal space is their personal space as well, if you let them do that. You can train them not to, of course, but they’re just big, wonderful lovers.
Julie Swan | 5:40
I feel like you’ve just nailed that with your lines now, but we’ll get into that. Santana, he set the standard. He’s probably on the wall as this ideal dog, right? So then did you keep getting great Danes?
Bill Wyatt | 5:57
I went to college, so I didn’t have a dog then. Went to college, got married, had a couple little kids. We were on the go.
We were moving. We were making life happen and stuff. Finally, we decided maybe we should get a dog or two.
I don’t know how we ended up getting both of these dogs at the same time, but we got a little Toy Poodle and a Pekapoo. It was a Pekingese-Poodle mix. You talk about an ugly little…
I’m sorry if anybody breeds Pekapoos. I’m not meaning to offend you, but the Pekapoo was just… It was retarded.
We found out later that it was retarded. Literally, it was a retarded dog, so it was never really right.
Julie Swan | 6:53
It was actually pretty messed up in the head.
Bill Wyatt | 6:55
Yeah. We named him Jack and Jill. Jack was a little white poodle and Jill was the little black Pekapoo.
To me, they just weren’t really dogs.
Julie Swan | 7:08
I can see that. They were like 1-100th the size of what you were used to.
Bill Wyatt | 7:12
My puppies are bigger than these dogs are at eight weeks old.
Julie Swan | 7:16
I think Toy Poodles definitely have a reputation that is very different from a Great Dane, so that makes sense as well. You’re just missing that charisma. Did you have a hard time bonding with them or they just didn’t do it for you?
Bill Wyatt | 7:30
They didn’t do it for me. No. I can’t say I really bonded with those dogs.
I think the kids played with them. They yapped and made a bunch of noise. I don’t know if I should tell this story here or not, but we had children in diapers at the time.
It was Jack’s goal in life to get in the diaper pail or the trash can. He was a little white dog.
Julie Swan | 7:59
Yeah, those are the worst.
Bill Wyatt | 8:00
Yeah, white dog eating diapers. It was never a good thing.
Julie Swan | 8:04
No. No, my Dalmatian did that. She actually ate my little brother’s diaper, and then jumped on my grandfather when he came to the door, and he was in white pants and it was so bad.
Bill Wyatt | 8:15
Oh, my goodness. Just a disaster.
Julie Swan | 8:18
Yeah, so bad. My mom never lived that one down.
Bill Wyatt | 8:21
Needless to say, the little dogs didn’t really get it for me.
Julie Swan | 8:24
Totally understand, so we cemented that, no small dogs.
Bill Wyatt | 8:25
We went through that experience and didn’t have dogs for a while.
Julie Swan | 8:29
Oh, okay. Yeah, you took a break.
Bill Wyatt | 8:32
Yeah, took a break. Once again, doing life. Then I came to the point where I rescued a dog when I lived in New York City, and he was a Rhodesian Ridgeback.
Once again, big dog. Not quite as big as a Great Dane.
Julie Swan | 8:49
Sure, for those who don’t know, they were bred to be lion hunting dogs, right?
Bill Wyatt | 8:55
Yes, they were.
Julie Swan | 8:55
They’re big. They’re not small, but they’re a lot smaller than a Great Dane. What did they come up to, 80, 90 pounds, maybe?
Bill Wyatt | 9:02
Yeah, about 80 pounds. 80 pounds is on the large size.
Julie Swan | 9:05
Okay, yeah. So they got a little bit more big dog to them. So then that was probably a relief.
Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 9:14
Yeah. So I had Waldo, and me and Waldo were great friends for many years. I trained him to walk with me on the streets of New York City when I lived there.
It was a great experience. I did the parks.
Julie Swan | 9:28
Yeah. That’s not an easy thing to do in New York City. How did you get a dog that well-trained?
Bill Wyatt | 9:36
Well, I trained the dog myself, so I became a dog trainer.
Julie Swan | 9:42
Just in your spare time. Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 9:45
Yeah. So I got the dog, and I thought, okay, we live in a small apartment on the third floor, in the middle of the city, a block away from the park.
So your dogs have to behave, or they are chaotic. And I started researching a little bit and trying to understand how to train dogs, and I got the basics down. And then I came across a book that’s called How to Be Your Dog’s Best Friend.
Julie Swan | 10:18
Okay.
Bill Wyatt | 10:19
And the monks of New Skete, New Skete is a monastery up in upstate New York, and they raise very special pedigreed German Shepherd dogs. And they had just a whole philosophy of training.
Julie Swan | 10:37
So they took their monk meditation wisdom style, and created their own dog training branch from it.
Bill Wyatt | 10:45
They did.
Julie Swan | 10:46
Wow.
Bill Wyatt | 10:46
They did.
Julie Swan | 10:47
That’s crazy. Were they raising them for anything in particular?
Bill Wyatt | 10:50
They were raising them because agriculture no longer supported their monastery, so they actually took it on as a means of financial support for the monastery. So all of the monks train a dog. And they talked about how they would bring all the dogs into the dinner hall, and all the monks are sitting around, and all the dogs had to lay down on the ground quietly and watch the monks eat.
Julie Swan | 11:26
Wow.
Bill Wyatt | 11:26
Yeah, just neat stuff.
Julie Swan | 11:27
Yeah, neat. Did you notice anything that’s different with that training, that you still use today, that is pretty different from mainstream?
If you recall, I know it’s been a minute since you read the book.
Bill Wyatt | 11:41
Yeah, yeah. I’d say I still use all the techniques. It’s not as touchy-feely as some of the mainstream training today is.
Julie Swan | 11:53
Okay, sure.
Bill Wyatt | 11:54
The dogs get a little pop under the chin once in a while if they need to be brought in. But you know, that’s very similar to like Cesar Millan’s poke.
Julie Swan | 12:04
Yeah, it’s just more of an attention-getter.
Bill Wyatt | 12:06
You poke them. It’s not a pet. It’s not a slap, but it’s a poke to get their attention.
And the monks had the thing, that’s what you did. You’re just up under the chin. Doesn’t hurt them.
You’re not being rough, but it gets their attention and focus back on you.
Julie Swan | 12:21
That makes sense. I do think dogs kind of get like monomania focused on something, and you’ve got to break that focus to get it back centered. At least with my bird dogs.
Bill Wyatt | 12:29
Like three Great Danes and the FedEx guy.
Julie Swan | 12:32
That too. Yeah, exactly. So that’s cool.
So for you, this just became your way of working with dogs. And so this is very natural for you.
Bill Wyatt | 12:42
It did. And I loved it. And of course, life went on, life moved. I moved back to Bentonville, Arkansas.
Julie Swan | 12:48
Is this where you were born?
Bill Wyatt | 12:50
I was born in Los Angeles.
Julie Swan | 12:52
Okay.
Bill Wyatt | 12:53
We moved to Bentonville, Arkansas when I was eight years old. Big culture shock. Bentonville’s grown a lot since then, but it was like, hee-haw town of 1800, let’s salute.
I’m dating myself, aren’t I?
Julie Swan | 13:12
No, it’s good. It’s good. I’m actually just like, for those who are listening on the podcast and not watching YouTube, Bill’s background has these just beautiful trees and I’m very tree envy over here.
But yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 13:23
You notice I came up out of the basement kennel today. Isn’t that great?
Julie Swan | 13:31
It is beautiful.
Bill Wyatt | 13:35
I came back to Bentonville, Arkansas, and it wasn’t long before I rescued a Great Dane. Rescued the Great Dane and trained it, and had just a wonderful experience. When I moved back, I still had Waldo.
Julie Swan | 13:53
Which was the Ridgeback?
Bill Wyatt | 13:55
The Ridgeback.
Julie Swan | 13:56
Yeah. Okay.
Bill Wyatt | 13:56
And he was so perfectly trained. I mean, he walked off leash.
I could go into the coffee shop and leave him at the door and he would sit there and wait for me. Just an amazing, amazing companion and friend. But people noticed how well trained this dog of mine was.
And then I get a Great Dane and trained it. And then pretty soon people are coming to me for their Great Dane problems.
Julie Swan | 14:21
Interesting. Okay. And what would be some common Great Dane problems?
Bill Wyatt | 14:28
Getting excited and running over all the toddlers.
Julie Swan | 14:33
Yes. That makes sense.
Bill Wyatt | 14:34
Not learning their space, and that you can’t jump on people.
Julie Swan | 14:40
Right, exactly.
Bill Wyatt | 14:42
Teaching them not to chew. Because when they chew, couches disappear.
Julie Swan | 14:50
Yes. And probably quite quickly. Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 14:52
Yeah. Yeah. Now that I’m a breeder, I have a lot of dogs, and I like to have them in my space with me.
But we do go through couches, because during the learning process, stuff happens. I cycle the couches out of the living room, and they go into the kennel where the dogs have their own couches. Yes.
Until then they go outside because there’s no couch left and they end up in the burn pile.
Julie Swan | 15:23
Yeah. I did have a dog dig a hole in my sectional and have her litter in it.
Bill Wyatt | 15:29
Oh, that’s interesting.
Julie Swan | 15:30
That was a good day when I came home from work that day. So, all right. So that makes sense.
So, yes. So training, mostly manners.
That’s the biggest thing people struggle with. I think that’s almost true with every breed.
Bill Wyatt | 15:43
I think a good place for people to think about, what does your dog need to know? And that’s it. That canine good citizen certification for dogs.
You know, sit, sit-stay, walk out of a room and not go crazy.
Julie Swan | 16:00
Yeah. Be around another dog and be okay.
Bill Wyatt | 16:03
Yeah.
Julie Swan | 16:03
All those little things.
Bill Wyatt | 16:05
Allow somebody to come into the room and leave the room without being jumped on. Those are the things that you try and teach. So, yeah.
Julie Swan | 16:14
Oh that makes sense. Perfect. Well, that’s great. That’s great.
So which dog was this that you had?
Bill Wyatt | 16:24
So Luna was a almost one-year-old female Great Dane. And very tall. She was a big girl.
She probably ended up being full grown and being one of the larger Great Dane females around. Solid black, very beautiful dog. But the family just were at their wits end.
They had young children. They couldn’t control Luna. She played so hard that the kids got hurt.
And, you know, mom and dad had had enough. So this friend of mine who knew about me, it was a family member of theirs, who said, “Hey, Bill can do that. See if Bill wants the dog.”
So I rescued Luna and I kept her for several months. And then we actually ended up giving Luna back to the family I got her from. And she just lived a great old life with them and was the perfect family dog at that point.
Julie Swan | 17:30
You kind of did a board and train maybe in an unconventional way. So yeah, that worked out really good. And did Waldo help you with that?
Bill Wyatt | 17:40
Waldo was gone just before Luna came.
Julie Swan | 17:44
Ok, I got you.
Bill Wyatt | 17:45
So Luna was a little bit of a rebound dog.
Julie Swan | 17:49
I understand. Yeah, I can understand that. So that was good.
Okay. So you have this, you got the dog, and then you thought, “Oh, well, she probably fits best with her home, with her family again.”
That worked out good. So then did you get another dog?
Bill Wyatt | 18:02
Then I was without a dog again.
Julie Swan | 18:04
Yeah. So that’s kind of not good.
Bill Wyatt | 18:06
And now the children are all gone. So it’s just me and the wife. And she dragged me down to the animal shelter one day, and we came home with a Maltese, a four pound Maltese.
And needless to say, it’s a four pound dog. We still have Chloe. She’s about 15 years old now. But once again, you know, it’s not really a dog.
Julie Swan | 18:40
Not for you at least.
Bill Wyatt | 18:42
I can’t go to Lowe’s with a Maltese on a leash.
I mean, that just doesn’t work. I did have a little sling bag I threw her in and carried her around in. But, you know, that was just different.
So then, once again, somebody was having a problem Great Dane.
Julie Swan | 19:02
Here we go. You’re starting to get a business going on this.
Bill Wyatt | 19:03
And once again somebody said, “Hey Bill, Bill, you need to talk to Bill about that.” And my wife and I, some people we had known from our past and I had gone to school with here, we went over and I met the dog and it was good. His name was Moose.
He was a solid blue Dane, very good looking dog and had bitten one of the family members on the hand is what they told us. And they thought he was a little aggressive and they were going to put him down. So we brought Moose home and I had Moose for a couple of years, just once again, a wonderful Great Dane companion dog.
Julie Swan | 19:44
Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 19:45
So here we have Moose, and Moose was my partner. He was my friend.
He goes everywhere with me. We go to Lowe’s, we go to Home Depot, we go to Tractor Supply, wherever I go, he’s willing to go.
Julie Swan | 20:00
He’s your boy. Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 20:00
Yeah. It was great. Really good dog. Very obedient.
Just great with family and people and everyone.
Julie Swan | 20:09
Anything unusual when you were training him after he had that bite incident?
Bill Wyatt | 20:14
What’s that?
Julie Swan | 20:15
With that bite incident, would you have anything unusual with training him? Or you think it was just one of those issues, random issues that happened?
Bill Wyatt | 20:22
I felt like it was something that just kind of happened. They weren’t sure if the child was maybe, they were both going for a candy bar at the same time. So I was wondering, was it a food thing?
Was he maybe being agitated or irritated by the child, teased for the candy? I wasn’t sure really what happened. And they didn’t talk like it was a huge incident.
Julie Swan | 20:52
Yeah. Probably just scared them. Because if it was a kid and the dog is so big. I’ve noticed that people who have little dogs, we all know the yappy Chihuahua that bites ankles.
That gets very frustrating because people don’t train little dogs as much, but a big dog requires training. It just has to happen. And I think it just becomes scarier.
Getting bit by a Chihuahua is not the same thing as getting bit by a Great Dane. I can understand people getting weird about it.
Bill Wyatt | 21:21
It’s not at all.
Julie Swan | 21:24
But otherwise he was just normal. Okay. So that makes sense.
Bill Wyatt | 21:25
Yeah. After having him for a couple of years, we built a new house. We were settling in and my wife decided to get me another Great Dane for Christmas.
I mean, every guy, if you have one Great Dane, you need two. And if you have two, why not have 10?
Julie Swan | 21:47
Right.
Bill Wyatt | 21:50
People think I’m a little nutty now when they ask how many Great Danes I have. But I love them. So, we took a trip to the breeder, and ended up bringing home another little female Great Dane. While we were at the breeder, of course there was conversation about maybe wanting to breed some Great Danes.
And so I walked away paying the extra for the full registration. It’s always nice to have the extra for the full registration.
Julie Swan | 22:27
Yeah. Just to give yourself the option. I understand.
Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 22:30
And so we brought Honey home. Honey’s one of the dogs we have now, a little fawn. She was just a little fawn Great Dane puppy at the time.
Julie Swan | 22:41
You’re little, right.
Bill Wyatt | 22:42
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, little as in, well, she probably weighed 30 or 40 pounds.
Julie Swan | 22:48
That makes sense when you bought her. Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 22:49
Yeah. So once again, we have to get into the training aspect of that. You’ve got a puppy, bring them home, put them in a kennel next to the bed and wake up in the morning. That puppy needs to go outside.
Puppy is squealing and scratching at the kennel ready to go. So it was great. I get up out of bed and I grab Honey and I noticed Moose did not get up.
Moose would usually be up and out at the very first time with me. Well, when I got to the door, I realized what was up. It was raining outside.
Moose hated rain. In fact, most of the Great Danes I’ve had do not like rain, and will not jump in the water. Okay.
There’s a real issue of trying to get them to go there. So here I have Honey, her first trip out in the morning with me. And I take her out off the porch, down the steps, into the driveway and put her down on the ground.
And it’s raining outside, raining kind of hard. And she freaked out like the rain was hurting her. Ran back up the steps, across the porch, in the living room, all the way across the living room, on top of the dog bed and just peed all over it.
It was a mess.
Julie Swan | 24:06
Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 24:07
So I went over and I grabbed her, and looked at her in the face and I said, no, no, no, no, no.
Julie Swan | 24:14
Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 24:14
And I was picking her up to take her back outside.
Julie Swan | 24:18
Right.
Bill Wyatt | 24:18
And she squealed like it was murder going on.
Well, about, about that point in time, Moose came running out of the back bedroom and thinking he was protecting her, actually jumped on me.
Julie Swan | 24:41
Wow.
Bill Wyatt | 24:42
And took a couple of good chunks out of my body.
Julie Swan | 24:46
Really?
Bill Wyatt | 24:47
Yeah.
Julie Swan | 24:48
Wow. He just totally crossed that line.
Bill Wyatt | 24:50
Yeah. So it was a total instinctive dog thing, because Moose felt like that puppy was his. And even though I was his owner.
Julie Swan | 25:04
And you’d had this relationship with him for years.
Bill Wyatt | 25:08
For years, we had been together and he’d never done anything like that, in any way, shape or form.
And so boom, this thing happened, and it’s like, wow, that’s a challenge and that’s tough. And I think out of that incident, I started to realize the good Danes I’d had, and the good dogs I’ve had, versus the ones that kind of had issues.
Julie Swan | 25:36
Yeah. And were you noticing like a major sort of temperament genetic component that was playing into this?
Bill Wyatt | 25:42
I believe so.
Julie Swan | 25:43
Yeah. I think so.
Bill Wyatt | 25:44
I think there’s a huge temperament component and with Danes, if you get it right, you just have the most lovable, big cuddle bug that anybody could ever imagine.
Julie Swan | 26:00
Right. Exactly.
Bill Wyatt | 26:02
Get it wrong. And you’ve got a dog that might eat you.
Julie Swan | 26:04
Yeah. Because you’re not little, like you are not a small dude.
Bill Wyatt | 26:09
No, no. I’m 6’3″, 230 pounds and the dog jumped me. Had it been my hundred pound wife, or my 85 year old father, or one of the grandchildren.
Julie Swan | 26:24
Yeah, that’s so dangerous.
Bill Wyatt | 26:25
It could have really, it could have been a disaster.
Julie Swan | 26:28
Absolutely.
Bill Wyatt | 26:29
You know, it happened to me. I’m glad it happened to me. I’m glad it didn’t happen to someone else.
Because you might’ve justified things away, and made excuses for the dog, but there was really no excuse for that. That was something deep down in his genetics and that response he had. So we ended up having to get rid of Moose, and that was hard.
Julie Swan | 27:03
Oh, I understand. You can’t risk it.
Bill Wyatt | 27:07
No, you just can’t risk that. You can’t pass that on to someone else.
Julie Swan | 27:13
You can’t pass that on as a problem to someone else. No, absolutely not.
Bill Wyatt | 27:16
Right. Or to keep that with children and grandchildren and that. So that was a hard decision.
And we went through that, and then we were back to Honey. Well, Bill started thinking about it and thought, “why not maybe get serious about this, and breed these dogs?” And so I started researching and thinking about it, and looking at it, and realized that if I’m going to breed her, we have to have a male dog, and the breeder that I’ve gotten her from basically said, “I’ll stud out any of my studs to you.
And we’re going to take the first and third pick of litter for studding it out.” And there were others, you can get a thousand dollars stud or a $1,500 stud or $2,500 stud, pay a stud fee. I thought, “you know what?
I might as well just get another dog.” Right. And have my own stud.
So we did that. I researched it and got Dobby from South Georgia. And we got Cookie. Cookie is another dog from the initial breeder that I got Honey from. So I had my little trio, two girls and a boy.
And that’s where that started a few years ago.
Julie Swan | 28:40
Yeah, that’s good. And so you’ve had a couple of litters with them, right? And I mean, they’ve all been so cool.
You’ve just done so good. Do you want to tell us a little bit about the color genetics? Because I know for you, temperament was always paramount.
Because you know what it costs, but you did really nail some of this color stuff too.
Bill Wyatt | 29:01
So one of the amazing things about the breed of Great Danes is there are so many possibilities when it comes to beautiful colors and patterns, and even the mixture of those things. Most people recognize the Scooby-Doo Great Dane.
Julie Swan | 29:24
Okay.
Bill Wyatt | 29:25
And that’s the fawn pattern. Or they recognize the big spotted black and white Great Dane.
That’s the Harlequin. It takes actually quite a bit to produce a Harlequin.
Julie Swan | 29:42
Yeah. Can you explain to us, what is the Harlequin?
Bill Wyatt | 29:45
Okay. So the Harlequin is basically the pattern that gives you the spotted dog with the white background.
Julie Swan | 29:55
Okay.
Bill Wyatt | 29:55
So the dog’s primary color, which could be black, or chocolate, it could be blue, or it can be lilac. Those are kind of the options there. Will then create torn patches.
So, a Dalmatians nice little round dots or spots, should we say. Great Danes are patchy. Some of them are great big, they’ll cover half their head or all over their body, so we call them torn patches.
It’s kind of like the color is tearing through the outside. You’ve probably seen the Danes with white spots and we call those harlequins, but then you see the Danes with spots and a darker background color. That’s merle.
Of course, there’s a lot of dogs in the dog world that have the merle gene, or the merle gene will show up in different times. You have to have the merle gene in order to produce harlequin that basically whites out the darker background.
Julie Swan | 31:04
That makes sense. You only see the top layer of the merle and then the bottom layer is a white.
Bill Wyatt | 31:09
That’s right.
Julie Swan | 31:10
That makes sense.
Bill Wyatt | 31:11
It takes that gray merle background layer, and just turns it to white, and that’s how you get the harlequin.
Julie Swan | 31:18
That’s so cool. So the dog would need to be merle, and it would need to have a copy of the harlequin gene. Is that how that works?
Bill Wyatt | 31:27
Yes, for it to show harlequin.
Julie Swan | 31:29
Because it is dominant, right?
Bill Wyatt | 31:31
Yes. It would be dominant when it shows up, the harlequin is. But it won’t show up unless the dog has the merle to start with.
Julie Swan | 31:42
It just modifies merle, really. So you’ve got to have a merle dog with this. That makes sense.
Bill Wyatt | 31:47
You could have a merle dog in your pair, and then have a solid dog in your pair. The solid dog may carry harlequin, and then you can produce harlequins.
That’s the hard way to do it. The easy way is to have a harlequin dog.
Julie Swan | 32:08
Yes, because then they’ve got the merle with the harlequin. That makes sense.
Bill Wyatt | 32:12
They’ll produce both harlequins and merles in any given litter, because you’ve got to put it all together to get harlequins.
Julie Swan | 32:19
Yes, that makes sense. Of course, we’re never breeding two merles together, so that makes sense. Oh, wow.
That’s so cool. Great Danes have all these fancy names. I remember when we first started working together, I was like, “I should know more about this.
I have no idea what these names are.”
Bill Wyatt | 32:33
Are you talking about the colors and the patterns?
Julie Swan | 32:35
Yes, the colors. Just share it because it’s just fun. Poodles have their own little fancy stuff too.
Bill Wyatt | 32:38
You have harlequin and you have merle. You also have brindle.
Julie Swan | 32:44
Can you have the brindle with the merle? I always forget that on yours.
Bill Wyatt | 32:53
The merle will block out the brindle. Yes, you can. Instead of having a solid background patch, you can have brindle patches.
We call those brindlequins.
Julie Swan | 33:13
Yes, they’re very cool looking.
Bill Wyatt | 33:16
The fawn pattern can also show up in a harlequin. You call those faunaquins. In Great Danes, they have the potential to have tan points as well, like Dobermans or Rottweilers, very common there.
That was a Great Dane color trait that had almost been bred out of existence, because some guys in the 1920s decided that wasn’t going to be an official color. Breed those things away. They can’t be in the show ring.
There are a lot of patterns and colors that Great Danes can produce that aren’t allowed in the show ring. They’re still, in my opinion, very beautiful colors, and shouldn’t be bred out of existence.
Julie Swan | 34:11
Yeah, exactly. Then you have Irish spotting. What is that one?
Bill Wyatt | 34:16
Irish spotting, but we call it mantle. It’s like the white around their neck. Okay.
Then they’ll have white on their nose. It’s kind of that tuxedo look that some dogs have. In the Great Dane, we call that mantle.
Everybody’s got their own name for it. There’s actually two. You can get the piebald gene in Great Danes too.
Julie Swan | 34:45
Does that have a special name or is it just piebald?
Bill Wyatt | 34:48
It’s pie. We just call it pie. That creates more white spotting and a different pattern, a different look.
You can have the patch over the eye and the rest of the head be white.
Julie Swan | 35:02
Right. Exactly. I know.
We have that with our German shorthairs. It’s always weird. People go, “can I get a solid head?”
“Oh, yeah. Let me just print one out for you. No problem.”
Bill Wyatt | 35:12
Right.
Julie Swan | 35:13
Okay. That’s so cool. All right.
Cool. You have beautiful colors, and beautiful dogs, and you got the temperament that you’ve been wanting. How was it getting into this?
You just are so good. You enjoy it. I can see so much you enjoy it.
How was that first litter?
Bill Wyatt | 35:34
Oh, okay. Yeah. That was pretty cool.
Now, I will have to say when I was a kid growing up, mom bred some dogs. I’ve been around it some. She had Lhasa Apsas.
Julie Swan | 35:52
Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 35:53
She had some of those little yappers, those little fur balls that look like dust mops running around. Of course, we have a small farm when we moved here from California.
We had pigs and chickens and cows and the whole works. I was around breeding and producing animals, but now it’s my turn. We put these dogs together.
I’ve done the genetic testing on them. I’ve paired the colors and the patterns to produce some beautiful dogs. Both the dogs go into heat at the same time.
Julie Swan | 36:29
Great.
Bill Wyatt | 36:30
It was great, but I wasn’t so sure Dobby was going to be able to handle two his first time around. I took one dog back to the breeder that I got her from, so she could breed with one of his studs.
Then I put Dobby and Cookie together here at home. The dog who went to the breeder didn’t have such a good experience there. She did not produce that first round.
It was Cookie and Dobby. It was my dogs that we’d raised from little pups. It was really special.
The last little time as Cookie was getting ready to have the babies, she really started bonding with me. She also was trying to nest. That last couple days, she started panting.
I didn’t realize, okay, here’s early labor. I wasn’t really prepared for all of the little details. She was panting.
Okay, you’re probably ready. You need to stay in your birthing area. I had a place in the basement set up for that.
Somehow, while I was gone at work during the day, Cookie got outside. Dobby can open doors. We have lever doors.
All the handles, the front door, all the interior doors. Dobby just pushes it with his nose and either pulls it back or pushes through. He opens doors.
I got home, and Cookie was not in her birthing area. I was like, where is Cookie?
My wife didn’t know where Cookie was. Cookie was gone. Dobby had opened the door.
Cookie went out to find a nest. We live on six acres. There’s a lot of acreage and woods around us.
I started running through the woods and the fields and calling and trying to find Cookie and this and that. There was a big pile of stumps and logs that we had cleared off our home site and stacked up in a ravine. She had gotten in under the logs, and was in the woods hiding under a stump to have her babies.
Couldn’t get her to come up out of there. She was in there. You know what I did?
I ran and got the leash, and said, hey, Cookie, you want to go for a ride? She came right up out of the hole she was in, and I got her in. It was a really good experience.
That night, I knew she was going to be having the puppies soon.
Julie Swan | 39:17
She didn’t have any under the stump?
Bill Wyatt | 39:18
No, she didn’t. I got her inside back in the birthing area before then, and had a little mattress on the floor and I was laying on the mattress with her. I fell asleep.
I woke up to hear a puppy squealing and crying. That was the second one. She had already had two puppies before I even knew what was up.
So it was a little after midnight, 12:30, one o’clock at night. We produced 11 puppies together that night. It was really, really good.
Julie Swan | 39:54
It was really good, yeah. I know you do some stuff because socialization is so important. Can you share with us some of the things that you do with your puppies?
Your buyers really give you good feedback on them.
Bill Wyatt | 40:06
Yeah, that’s great. The early things you do with puppies are just so very important. One of the things I do is the early neurological stimulation.
The first couple weeks that the puppy is born, I try and take them each day, and pick them up and rub their little paw pads, and turn them upside down, and move them around, and expose them to a cold, wet wash rag, set them on that. Those are the early things you can do before they even start opening up their eyes. It teaches them and trains them to be able to adapt to situations.
That’s one thing. But as soon as they open up their eyes, boy, it’s on.
Julie Swan | 40:54
What do you do?
Bill Wyatt | 40:55
It’s time to start bringing them up. Bring them up in the living room. Expose them to everything and everyone.
We have a huge front porch. The porch is eight foot deep by 40 foot long. It’s the front of a farmhouse style.
It’s all closed in and we’ve got gates on it. We bring all the dogs out together on the porch on a regular basis.
Julie Swan | 41:21
They’re just running around.
Bill Wyatt | 41:22
They’re just running around having a good time. The big dogs, the little dogs, the wife, the kids, the grandkids. We invite friends over.
Come play with the puppies. There are lots of people who will come over and play with puppies. They love it.
You can expose them to a lot of people. You have to be careful, but I take them out too.
Julie Swan | 41:45
Yeah. Okay. Like to town?
Bill Wyatt | 41:49
Yeah. Downtown Bentonville, it’s a nice old town style that has been completely refurbished and restored. We’ve got an old square and it’s beautiful.
Nice green turf, because it’s green year round. The Christmas lights, and just a gathering place where hundreds of people will be in the evenings and the weekends and that sort of thing. I’ll take a whole wagon full of pups out.
We take all 10 of them, throw them in a big wagon, and roll them around on the square and let them talk to people. I’ve got a video. I think it’s up on one of my Facebook pages, where I took all the puppies down and they were right at about eight-weeks old.
I took all the puppies down to the square, and there was a family there taking wedding pictures or engagement pictures or something. Well, they commandeered all the puppies, and made them a part of their photo shoot. I put that up as a Facebook ad and sold four of them.
So just trying to expose them to everything.
Julie Swan | 43:10
Yeah. The more exposure in the front yard, I just find when the dogs are outside, they do really enjoy spending their time outside.
Bill Wyatt | 43:20
They do. I live on a gravel road, and it dead ends about a quarter of a mile down from my house. So it’s one of the last little stretches of dirt road in the county here.
There’s three or four houses down the road from us. So not a whole lot of traffic, but there’s some traffic. We sit out the porch with all the dogs and we watch traffic, watch the cars.
They’re scared to death of cars initially. I’ll have them out in the driveway and then a car will come down the road. You watch them all run back to the porch.
Of course, the neighbors, I wonder what they think of us. Now, we may have 10 Great Danes on the porch, and another 10 puppies running around too. They’ve all watched this grow and happen over time.
Oh, what a beautiful dog. Oh, you got another one. Oh, there’s three.
Now there’s seven. Now there’s 10.
Julie Swan | 44:29
Right. Exactly. They probably think you’re the crazy guy next door.
Bill Wyatt | 44:32
Yeah, the FedEx trucks, the mailman, all that stuff is real. Your Danes need to be exposed to those things so that they function well with those things later.
Julie Swan | 44:45
So they’re not scared of them, for sure. That makes sense. Because didn’t you say, they’re more of a scaredy cat than they are really a bold dog, aren’t they?
Bill Wyatt | 44:55
They have the tendency to be scared of things.
Julie Swan | 44:58
Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 44:59
That’s one of the things that’s really important to teach them, not to be scared of things.
Julie Swan | 45:05
Yeah, exactly. When they freak out, that can be really dangerous.
Bill Wyatt | 45:10
Yeah, they break things or run over people.
Julie Swan | 45:14
Yeah, no, that makes so much sense. Okay, so just meeting as many people. So it’s not really a very scripted thing, it’s just like life exposure.
Bill Wyatt | 45:23
That is, that’s true even with my older dogs. I do my best to take them all on outings and continue that even now as a breeder. The other ones can go too.
Julie Swan | 45:40
Yeah, perfect. That’s so good. And you find your adult dogs are very good with your puppies?
Like the one that’s not their mom?
Bill Wyatt | 45:47
Yeah, they’ve done pretty well together. Now, mom doesn’t like it so much.
Julie Swan | 45:56
Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 45:57
So we give mom some grace for the first few weeks and keep her completely locked up away from the others. But the other adult dogs, they do well. They do very well.
And it’s such a huge difference between a eight pound puppy and 195 pound adult male.
Julie Swan | 46:19
Yes. Oh, yes. I know. I have one stud, my little Rat Terrier stud.
He likes to go to every litter box and stick his nose in. And those are mine. Those are mine. He’s such a weirdo. It’s the first stud I’ve had that was really interested in the puppies. I think it’s funny, but yeah. Okay.
So you made the decision to get into breeding. You had everything, of course, these are not small dogs. So how did you figure out facilities?
How did you get your wife on board? How did you make this all happen?
Bill Wyatt | 46:54
Well, first off, I came across this chick on a podcast called the Honest Dog Breeder. And as I traveled between appointments in my full-time sales job, I was always listening to all of your past podcasts. It was a really sad day after about a week of doing this, when I came to the end and I had to wait for new podcasts.
You shared a lot of tips and tricks, and you showed a lot of your personal experience. And at that time I hadn’t really set up the kennel area. So I had three, under one-year-old Great Danes.
Julie Swan | 47:47
Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 47:48
And they all stayed in the master bedroom with us.
Julie Swan | 47:51
Yes.
Bill Wyatt | 47:52
I remember the stories you talked about, maybe moving them out of the master bedroom might be a good idea. You’re trying to arrange space in a way that you’ve got the bed and the nightstand and maybe a chair. And then you’ve got three Great Dane beds, and who gets to sleep on whose side, and all of them want to be up in the big bed at the same time too.
So it’s kind of like, “okay, we’ve got to do something here.”
Julie Swan | 48:28
Yeah, exactly.
Bill Wyatt | 48:30
And fortunately, unfortunately, not, I’m not sure. Fortunately, yeah. Fortunately, I had an unfinished basement that was going to be my man cave, media center, all that good stuff, about 1200 square foot of my space.
Julie Swan | 48:52
Nice.
Bill Wyatt | 48:53
Yeah. Yeah. It was nice, but now it’s my kennel.
Julie Swan | 48:57
Right.
Bill Wyatt | 48:58
So that basically became the kennel and I started planning the facility. Cutting doggy doors into the walls that go outside where the kennels are and fencing in the back. It’s a walkout basement.
Julie Swan | 49:16
Oh man, I’m so jealous.
Bill Wyatt | 49:17
So I’ve got that, and I’ve taken over the garage is on that level too. And rather than park my own car in the garage, my half of the garage is another set of kennels.
Julie Swan | 49:31
Right.
Bill Wyatt | 49:32
So now I’ve got it in my basement and I use the welded wire panels that are pretty prevalent. You can run down to Tractor Supply and pick them up at any time. Whenever I need to expand or change things, I need another piece.
It’s easy. You just bolt them together. I’ve got six five-by-five kennel areas for the dogs, that can be opened up into sections of two or three or four.
So I can either separate a dog, or I can put three or four of them in a space together. The ones that get along. I’ve got the puppy pen, which directly outside of that, I’ve got another one of the welded wire kennels with turf in the bottom of it.
Julie Swan | 50:19
Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 50:20
So they learn immediately, when they start moving around and pottying, we’ve got a doggie door, and we try to have them somewhat on the way to being potty trained. When they go to their homes at eight-weeks, at least they know how to use the doggie door, because they go straight out of that. And then I’ve got two larger pens in that garage bay.
So I can manage the movement of all these dogs.
Julie Swan | 50:49
Yeah. You’ve got areas to move in and out, and keep mom and her babies separate when needed, and together when it’s more appropriate. It sounds pretty good.
I’m just imagining you taking all these puppies upstairs to your porch outside.
Bill Wyatt | 51:03
So I use bus tubs.
Julie Swan | 51:05
What are those?
Bill Wyatt | 51:07
The big grey tubs like at the restaurants when they pile up everything in.
I’ve got some deep bus tubs, and until they’re about four weeks old, I can typically carry a litter covered up in the bus tubs. But then the start wanting to crawl out.
Julie Swan | 51:21
That’s probably still 50 pounds.
Bill Wyatt | 51:25
Yeah, really. Yeah. Just the litter of puppies.
And then they start getting bigger. And when they’re close, you start grabbing them two at a time, or three at a time, or four at a time. So yeah, you’re right.
Going up and down the stairs. And it’s like, okay, I’ve got 10 of them, but I can only move three at a time now.
Julie Swan | 51:44
Yeah. Right.
Bill Wyatt | 51:45
So we’ve got all the little welded wire panels that we’ve set up for little areas in the house to keep them from going where they shouldn’t go and that sort of thing. Great thing about that is they can go up and they can come down.
So the house is not always a big kennel.
Julie Swan | 52:06
Yeah, that makes sense.
Bill Wyatt | 52:09
And only certain dogs get to go in the master bedroom. That’s kind of my wife’s take on that.
Julie Swan | 52:15
Probably smart anyway. Yes.
Bill Wyatt | 52:19
So that’s kind of the main area now. We have another house on the property here too. It’s an older three bedroom ranch-style house, that I have now started converting into the main kennel.
Julie Swan | 52:35
I love construction. Yes. Okay.
Bill Wyatt | 52:37
About 2,500 square feet. I took the sunroom off the front, and have turned that into the second stud’s kennel. So now I do have my second stud now.
Titan’s got his girls, and they hang out over there. And Dobby has his girls, and they hang out over here. They get along better that way.
Julie Swan | 53:02
Oh, I think it’s smart. Yeah. My studs don’t ever really like each other.
Bill Wyatt | 53:06
No, no. We have these ideas that we can have these big groups of dogs, and they’ll just be one big happy family. And then two males decide they don’t like each other.
Julie Swan | 53:21
Pretty much.
Bill Wyatt | 53:21
Yeah.
Julie Swan | 53:22
Or when my girls get extra hormonal, sometimes they’re not too happy either.
Bill Wyatt | 53:26
Yeah. That does happen too.
Julie Swan | 53:28
Yeah. So that’s pretty good. All right.
So then share with us too, because you really built a business in the last few years, you kind of set up everything. You got a website, we’ve got you set up on HoneyBook. What have you noticed in that process?
Did you notice any changes?
Bill Wyatt | 53:51
Yeah, sure. So kind of to go back, I’ve been listening to this dog breeder chick for a couple of years now, and getting lots of great information. Really a lot of the things I’ve done in my program are a result of what I heard and saw in the little worksheets, and the things you’ve got all over your websites and your podcast stuff.
But I was a little overwhelmed with the sheer time and management of that first litter.
Julie Swan | 54:26
Oh, it’s a lot.
Bill Wyatt | 54:28
It was me.
It’s a lot. Trying to be there every spare moment. Planning my day so I’m only gone for a couple hours at a time, because I’ve got to run home and check on the puppies.
Julie Swan | 54:41
Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 54:42
And I didn’t, I didn’t sell any of them. I wasn’t marketing.
I didn’t have a system put together. My Facebook page, I wasn’t posting, or my website wasn’t built to convert. There was no traffic coming in.
I figured everybody wants these beautiful dogs, but nobody was calling me.
Julie Swan | 55:05
That’s very normal.
Bill Wyatt | 55:07
And my friends and family were like, you’re the crazy one, you’ve got 12 of them. So I got to the point where the dogs are eight-weeks old, and I have one of a litter of 11 sold.
Julie Swan | 55:23
Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 55:24
And they’re supposed to be going home at eight weeks. That’s the story I’ve been seeing. I thought, OK, I got to figure something out.
This was this was late December, early January, about a year ago.
And so I basically called you up and said, “hey, I need to schedule.” Did we schedule a one-off session?
Julie Swan | 55:53
I think we usually do like the free session.
Bill Wyatt | 55:55
Yeah. The free session. We started talking about it, and figuring out what needed to be done, and decided to get all in with building the website, putting together the ConvertKit for the email marketing and newsletters, and the HoneyBook.
Wow. HoneyBook kind of changed my life. All of these things I was putting together to manage the money, the sales process and the contracts and DocuSign and getting all that done digitally.
Wow. What a what a huge help HoneyBook was immediately. And getting it set up, having all of your experience in saying, “this is how you run a dog business,” and the back end of it.
So that worked very well.
Julie Swan | 56:43
You picked it up so fast. It was so nice. You’re like, “oh, I’ve already sent out contracts, Julie, whatever.”
I was like, all right, great.
Bill Wyatt | 56:48
Well, part of that is that I’ve been in sales and marketing in one way, shape or form in different fashion for many years. And so I understand all of those processes and how they need to happen.
Julie Swan | 57:05
Yes.
Bill Wyatt | 57:05
The only problem is I was not a big company that had software systems and processes and marketing. So putting it together in the package like that, made it real easy for me, and affordable too.
Julie Swan | 57:21
Yeah, I think with I think it was so cool. Because what happened is you already had all the sales knowledge and skill set just from life, and I think that’s just a huge difference. I think it’s a really big struggle for a lot of new breeders, because we’re like 22-years-old, we haven’t really been in the world enough to know these things. Could you share some of the techniques that you use when you talk to people when you sell?
Because you’re very good at it. And I wanted to share some of those.
Bill Wyatt | 57:54
Yeah, yeah, sure thing. So like I said, I’ve sold all kinds of things. I’ve done all kinds of sales training.
I’ve led sales organizations. Probably the most impactful statement, that I base the way that I deal with people and customers with, a guy named Zig Ziglar, if you remember him.
Julie Swan | 58:16
Oh, yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 58:17
He said, you can have everything you want in life, if you only help enough other people get what they want. So there it is. If someone calls me or inquires about a dog, I’m trying to help them get what they want, if I can provide that for them.
So it’s really about asking them questions and listening to them. And then my dogs are my inventory. So you have to match your inventory to your customer.
You find out what they like, what visually they are, maybe a male or female, what kind of temperament, and there’s some conversation that goes on.
Julie Swan | 59:15
Yeah. And when you’re saying you’re asking them questions, you’re not like meaning interrogating them, you’re coming at it from a curiosity approach. Like, let me understand you better.
Is that what you mean?
Bill Wyatt | 59:25
Yeah, just to understand better. Absolutely. Yeah.
You have to be careful about. Yeah, that’s a that’s a good point.
Julie Swan | 59:33
Yeah, how do you walk that line?
Bill Wyatt | 59:34
I’m trying to understand you.
Julie Swan | 59:37
Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 59:38
If I’m going to ask you, “ok, well, so tell me about your house and where is your dog going to be?” “What’s your yard like?”
Julie Swan | 59:48
Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 59:48
“Do you have children?” Or is it an older couple? Is it a younger couple? Is it a family?
And then helping them understand how this small puppy that’s going to become a huge dog, can help them have that family life that they want.
Julie Swan | 1:00:09
Yeah, that makes sense. So you’re learning about their situation, maybe to see where they will struggle with a puppy, and then you’re helping them recognize that. And then here’s the solution.
So you just make it so easy.
Bill Wyatt | 1:00:23
It’s easy. I like to talk. I truly enjoy the engagement and the interaction with people as well, too.
So if you don’t enjoy people, you probably shouldn’t be selling things.
Julie Swan | 1:00:39
That’s a great statement, because it’s so true. All those breeders who get into dog breeding to avoid people, nope, not going to work.
Bill Wyatt | 1:00:48
You’re not going to be a great dog breeder. I mean, you might breed some great dogs. But you’re going to be limited, because you can only get rid of so many of them if you don’t like people.
Julie Swan | 1:00:57
Yeah, that’s so true. It’s so true.
Tell us that story. You had that one couple that reached out to you. You have to tell us, it was so good.
Bill Wyatt | 1:01:08
Sure. Sure. So, I think a lot of people when they experience me as a dog breeder, it may be a little different from what they’ve been experiencing on social media, or the people they’ve reached out to or talked to.
Julie Swan | 1:01:27
What’s normal? What are a lot of people experiencing maybe before they came to you?
Bill Wyatt | 1:01:33
I think a process that’s real interested in getting a check from people.
Julie Swan | 1:01:38
Yeah. I can see that.
Bill Wyatt | 1:01:39
Because ultimately, you don’t have a sale until you get paid. So as a salesperson, you have to keep that in mind.
But it’s almost like a fishing trip. You don’t just come in and say, “you can send me your deposit right away, and I’ll get one of these reserved.”
Julie Swan | 1:02:00
Right.
Bill Wyatt | 1:02:00
I think there are a lot of breeders out there. And then there’s a lot of the scams out there, that are taking advantage of people, and getting deposits or getting a transport fee, so people are geared into kind of getting that fee. Well, I had a couple that reached out to me last year.
Off of a Facebook ad, I do some of my advertising on Facebook. It’s been good. It gets people reaching out to me.
We can talk about that more.
Julie Swan | 1:02:31
Yeah, we’ll talk about that in a minute. Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 1:02:33
So I had a couple, a couple about my age, who was looking to get another Great Dane. They have two Huskies and a Great Dane already. They’re wanting another Great Dane companion, a couple of the dogs are getting older.
And so they reached out to me, they saw a picture of a one of my black and tan males, beautifully marked, beautiful dog. And they just loved it from the moment they saw it. But we started interacting and talking and texting back and forth.
I set up a Zoom call with them to meet the puppies. They loved that. And we were back and forth for hours, all said on everything.
And then they finally said, “ok, we want to send you a deposit check.”
Julie Swan | 1:03:25
Wow.
Bill Wyatt | 1:03:26
And they said this. “We’ve talked to several other breeders. Nobody spent the time with us that you did and never asked for a check.”
So I do ask for checks. But there’s a time when you’ve established a little bit of a relationship, a rapport back and forth and where people trust you. So have we developed enough trust in our customers, that they actually want one of our dogs.
They want to be a part of what we’re doing.
Julie Swan | 1:04:13
Do you find there’s a moment in the conversation that hits you where you’re like, oh, now’s the time to take that next step, to make that transition and ask?
Bill Wyatt | 1:04:24
There is. And it’s almost a little bit of an art form. You have to ask for the deal.
Julie Swan | 1:04:31
Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 1:04:32
There comes a point where you’re going to ask for the deal. And of course, the steps along the process, a lot of times you can go by have they filled out the puppy application yet.
It’s just all these steps of getting a lot of little yeses along the way.
Julie Swan | 1:04:56
Yeah. You’re like building it up to the final ask.
Bill Wyatt | 1:04:57
Yeah, you’re building up. And that’s just a very effective sales technique, no matter what you’re doing. Get people used to saying yes to you, before you ask them for the order.
Julie Swan | 1:05:10
Right, that makes sense. Yeah, I know with mine, I feel like we get to that place where I’m like, “ok, what questions do you have?” Ok, let’s answer them. “Ok, what else do you need to know?”
Ok, I’ll answer that. “Here’s what I have.” Ok, great.
And then and they’re like, “great, it looks good.” And you’re like. . . And then you wait for them to reach out. . .
Bill Wyatt | 1:05:31
Or one of the things that I find works there, too, now that this is part of my process, is I do the early selection waitlist, and I utilize that as the hook that makes it a little easier to ask for a deposit.
Julie Swan | 1:05:54
Ok, now tell us about the early selection. Are you talking about selling first pick? Are you talking about picking earlier?
Bill Wyatt | 1:06:00
So we have the litter, or we don’t have litter yet. You can take the deposits on an upcoming litter as well. But with the early selection waitlist, I allow the potential buyer to select a dog in that four- to five-week-old range.
They go on the selection list based on the sex of the dog they want. So I run two lists.
I run a male list and I run a female list, in the order that deposits are submitted to me.
Julie Swan | 1:06:40
Perfect. Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 1:06:42
The puppy application doesn’t get you on the list.
Julie Swan | 1:06:45
Right. Right, the deposit does.
Bill Wyatt | 1:06:46
The puppy application is the first step. “Wonderful.
Looks like this is great. Now I’ll tell you how the early selection wait list works.
I currently have. . .” and I’ll tell them how many male or female buyers are in front of them, that will get to select before them. And then I can use that sometimes in talking with people.
Ok, if one of them says, “well, I want a black and tan.” Well, I have two black and tans, but I think the first pick is going to be taking one of those dogs. So there’s still one available.
If you get on the list now, then then you’ll probably get that one. Or somebody says, I want a harlequin. I want a male harlequin.
Well, I’ve got one on the list ahead of you, but we have three male harlequins.
Julie Swan | 1:07:39
Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 1:07:40
And what I do, is I build the list for the early selection based on the order I receive deposits in. So that gets it in their own head. “I’m going to have to put a deposit down to guarantee I get the dog I want.” And a lot of times you still don’t have to ask for it. You’ve just told them this is how I do this.
This is how people get dogs from me. This is how people get to pick the dog that they see on this Zoom call that they want.
Julie Swan | 1:08:15
And so by discussing your process, and being transparent with your process, then they naturally come to the conclusion themselves of, ok, and I need to take this step. But at the same time, you didn’t come at them asking for money. And so it doesn’t feel slimy.
And I think that’s a well-articulated place, because I know that’s how that works for me when I’m doing it. But I just never really broke it down into words. So I love that.
But what we would also say, is you have to know your process ahead of time. I think a lot of breeders don’t know their process in the beginning.
Bill Wyatt | 1:08:48
You’re right. You’re right. So then it does become awkward and weird when you’re saying, so why don’t you send me a check?
Julie Swan | 1:08:56
Right. Exactly.
Bill Wyatt | 1:08:58
All we’ve got to do now is get some money from you.
Julie Swan | 1:09:01
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Bill Wyatt | 1:09:03
And you know, you don’t really have to do it that way. Your setup, the way you setup my website and helped me put the process in place on that. That’s a really good way to communicate with people back and forth, too.
Especially when they’re reaching out to me on Facebook or those things, I can send them links to their answers on my website.
Julie Swan | 1:09:32
Oh, yeah. Or even those automated questions on Facebook. You can have them on there.
Bill Wyatt | 1:09:37
That’s right, you setup the automated questions, so that while I’m waiting, or I pick a response to their questions. They’re frequently asked questions. I’ve got them all set up as automated responses that I can either pick, or will automatically go out when they ask the question.
So if I’m unable to be right there and then. You’ve got to be careful with that there, because sometimes AI doesn’t get it quite right.
Julie Swan | 1:10:02
There is that. I know I’ve had some weird ones. You had some pretty good success with how you use Facebook, because that is the pain, right? You get a new website and there isn’t yet traffic to it.
Google doesn’t recognize it very well. And so as you’re building that rapport with Google, you use Facebook in lieu of that, and you had some pretty good success. Can you tell us a little bit of what you did to make it so useful?
Bill Wyatt | 1:10:25
Sure. So the first thing you don’t do, is ever say that you are selling a dog on Facebook. That will get you put in Facebook jail and shut down immediately.
Okay. You have to be so careful with the way you word it, or the way you put yourself out there.
I’ll make it a litter announcement. Here’s the litter announcement for more information on how to adopt one of our puppies. You’ve got to use that word on Facebook or they get you.
You’re adopting. Yeah, you’re going to pay good money. But people pay good money for kids when they adopt them, too.
I mean, come on. Adopting doesn’t mean I’m giving you something for free. Anyways, that’s how I justify that.
So, message me if you’d like to know more about how to adopt one of our puppies. So I set up the Facebook ad to typically direct message me. And then that way, I get the message pop up on instant messenger.
I use the Meta business suite. So they’ve got an application that enables you to manage all of your postings, and your advertising, and your responses. And it’ll post it across from Facebook and Instagram.
And you can just keep it all going from there. I started with a fifty dollar ad picture of some puppies, picture of mom and daddy. So it was a multi-picture post that was making the litter announcement.
And I floated this thing out there, put fifty dollars on it. And my phone started blowing up.
Julie Swan | 1:12:16
That’s good.
Bill Wyatt | 1:12:16
You know, that was really good. I was shocked. I was amazed.
For a few days there, I was just answering all these questions and re-answering all the same questions. And I didn’t have all the responses set up in that. But off of that first fifty dollar ad, I think I got two or three deposits.
Julie Swan | 1:12:37
Wow. That’s really good.
Bill Wyatt | 1:12:38
Really good. I have really good ratio numbers to my spend.
In two litters, I have spent less than $700 to sell 20 dogs.
Julie Swan | 1:12:54
That’s really good.
Bill Wyatt | 1:12:55
So I’ve been real pleased with that.
I think a lot of that, a lot of being effective on that, I’m getting them to message me, and then I start that process of talking.
Julie Swan | 1:13:11
Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 1:13:12
And it’s a process.
You’ve got to spend some time with people. With Facebook, now I’ve got to get them out of Facebook and onto my website.
Or I’ve got to get them out of Facebook and onto my email list.
Julie Swan | 1:13:32
Yes.
Bill Wyatt | 1:13:32
I’ve got to get them out of Facebook, and I need your phone number. So you can’t just turn me off. So there’s that whole process going on.
And a lot of it’s establishing trust, and just being real and being authentic, and having good dogs and being proud of what you do.
Julie Swan | 1:13:56
Yeah. I mean, you always started there. You always had the product.
So it was easy to sell a product you love and adore. Do you think, too, we kind of talked about it a little yesterday, that practice talking with people because, to me, having that many people contact me would be very exhausting right now. But in the beginning, when you’re first getting used to it, do you think that’s really valuable time spent?
Bill Wyatt | 1:14:21
It is, because you learn.
Julie Swan | 1:14:24
Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 1:14:24
You learn the effective go ahead responses for people. Because you can you can answer a question one way, and people say, I don’t want to deal with you. Right. Or you can answer the question another way and it leads you to the next step down that sales process.
Julie Swan | 1:14:46
Did you find yourself experimenting with a couple things here and there as you were going?
Bill Wyatt | 1:14:49
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I think that’s good for people to understand, that when you have a good sales response to a question that a customer has. That’s probably a question that a dozen other customers are going to have. You learn that response.
It works. It answers the question. You can script it.
You can write it down. You can memorize it. And I used to do that sort of thing in sales.
I used to write my scripts down when I was learning how to sell and relate to people. Some people might need to do that. Some of the breeders that have never sold anything, or never been through that sales process.
Go get yourself a sales training book.
Julie Swan | 1:15:41
Yeah. It really does help, too, because I think a lot of times we get caught up as breeders, where we think this dog is so great. And when we don’t have our Ideal Puppy Buyer dialed in very well, we don’t really know how to read if those customers are right for us or not.
There’s so much. You’re trying to protect your dogs. And then you get frustrated with people, because people are people.
And there’s a lot of clunky things in the middle. And it takes a while to iron that out.
Bill Wyatt | 1:16:09
Yeah. I just thought of one of the things that happens that’s a real drain.
Of course, you’ve got all these people reaching out to you and asking things. And then you zone into a few of them, and you’re having these dialogues and these responses. And you’ve spent an hour with someone, and you finally get to the question of how much is the dog?
Julie Swan | 1:16:33
Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 1:16:34
And they immediately cut you off and say that’s too much.
Julie Swan | 1:16:38
Right. Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 1:16:41
So that’s discouraging.
Julie Swan | 1:16:44
It is.
Bill Wyatt | 1:16:44
I think one of the real important things, is to figure out how to qualify people financially, and to get the word to them how much the dog is early in the conversation. That’s something you learn. Another thing.
I’ve got that on my website. So the page on how to get a puppy, and a lot of the questions that people ask, I can send them to that page. On that page they’re going to see how much the dogs are, and how much the deposits are, without me ever saying anything about that.
Julie Swan | 1:17:24
So you use it almost like here’s a quick answer. But if you want to read all the details, here it is. And then they can read all of it and get the full thing.
It saves you time. But also, like you said, it subtly pitches price. I think it’s hard for people say no sometimes when they want it, but they can’t afford it.
Bill Wyatt | 1:17:42
Yeah.
Julie Swan | 1:17:43
So it allows them to save face if they need to step away.
Bill Wyatt | 1:17:48
Yeah, they’re having that conversation with themselves reading my website, or reading that page, and they’ll ask, “ok, how do I get a pup?” And I can say, “we have a process and I’ve outlined it at the following link. You can see my process, my pricing and what we provide for our puppy buyers.”
And so I’ve got all that laid out and it’ll answer a lot of questions. Now, I don’t just leave it there and wait for them to get back with me, though.
Because sometimes they need a little something. So I’ll send that. And then shortly after I send them the link, I ask them what kind of puppy they are looking for. Are you interested in a male or a female?
Are there certain colors and patterns that you prefer?
Julie Swan | 1:18:48
Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 1:18:49
So we’re not closing for the deal or the deposit, but I was able to send them to the site to look at all that. Now let’s talk about the puppy you want. So that’s where I turn the corner, back out of that, and get back into the conversation with people.
Julie Swan | 1:19:09
Yeah. Which is back focused on them and what they need. Right.
I love that. Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 1:19:14
What they want, what they want.
Julie Swan | 1:19:15
Yeah. I like to get that.
Bill Wyatt | 1:19:17
What people want is more important than what people need.
Julie Swan | 1:19:21
Right. Yes. At least when you’re starting the conversation. Yeah.
I’ve had so many times where I, what’s that saying, sell them what they want, give them what they need. Right.
And so you get to this place where they are like, ok, cool. You’re the right breeder. You have what I’m looking for.
And then when the puppies are born, and when you’re sorting, you can say, hey, so I was thinking with you, you might want. . ., and open that door to them when it’s aligned.
Bill Wyatt | 1:19:49
It gives you the opportunity. And if you’ve established the dialogue and a level of trust.
Julie Swan | 1:19:56
Yes, exactly. And it’s not about changing what they want. It’s just that you always knew that they needed something slightly different than what they understood. It’s like people who want to go on a diet, think they need recipes, but they don’t really need recipes.
They need new habits.
Bill Wyatt | 1:20:08
That’s good. I also make it real, real easy for them to get a deposit to me. I don’t tell people “you must send me a friends and family PayPal.”
Julie Swan | 1:20:23
Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 1:20:24
My experience with breeders, when I was looking for dogs initially, that was the only thing they had out there. PayPal, and please mark it friends and family. You know, that’s how I bought my first couple dogs was on PayPal.
But with everything we’ve got, okay, one, you can take credit cards through HoneyBook. I’ve got credit card processing through my other business as well. So I can take credit cards and pay the fee and go that whole route.
But I’ve got PayPal, Cash App, Venmo, Zelle. What else is there? It seems like I’ve got something else too.
Julie Swan | 1:21:03
That’s pretty much everything. Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 1:21:04
Yeah. And I’ve got all of those things set up so that whichever one of those things somebody is comfortable with, I want it to be easy for them to get the deposit sent when they’ve chosen to do it. If you only have one way for them to send you the deposit and they are not set up on that platform, they might put you aside until it’s more convenient, which may be never.
If they have to open a PayPal account to send you a deposit, that might not happen.
Julie Swan | 1:21:44
It doesn’t often. Yeah. Like the credit unions don’t always have Zelle.
So it’s just accepting that. I love it that we can have the backup. I find my Rat Terrier customers are a little older demographic.
They’re usually retired. They’re in their 60s and 70s. And for them, some of them have Zelle, but for the most part, they maybe have heard of Venmo.
They understand I probably don’t want to take a check, but it’s a little bit of work. And so for them, sometimes the credit card, it’s something they’re familiar with. They buy online.
And so that’s fine. So we just build that into pricing to make it convenient. And they trust it.
Bill Wyatt | 1:22:21
Yeah. So make it easy for people to get money to you.
Julie Swan | 1:22:28
Make it simple. I know sometimes I joke. I think some people buy a dog from me just because it’s easier.
Bill Wyatt | 1:22:35
I think there is that. If we make it easy and engaging, and we’re going to help people own one of these puppies. You respond to them. You answer their questions.
You spend some time with them and keep that process moving.
Julie Swan | 1:22:54
I love that. I like how you’ve talked about the continuation piece. Keep the conversation open and get them to not get the yes-and-no answers.
It’s open-ended.
Bill Wyatt | 1:23:09
True. Your questions are always very important. And it should be leading you down the path toward them expressing to you what they want and need, or for them finding out that I have what you want and need.
Julie Swan | 1:23:30
Yeah. And I would even go as far as to say to help them conclude if they’re not a good fit for one of your dogs, because that’s just as valuable.
Bill Wyatt | 1:23:37
It is very valuable. I guess I talk about the 20 successful converts, but there’s 200. There’s hundreds of others that I’ve talked to, or texted, so don’t get discouraged.
I never see no as a negative when I’m in the sales process, because I have to have a certain number of no’s to get the yes. I might have to have 25 no’s in my breeding business to get the one yes. But I’m going to get that yes.
People want what I have. I know they do.
Julie Swan | 1:24:32
It’s true. You have to be in that headspace that they do want it. It’s more about just finding the right people. And I love that.
Bill Wyatt | 1:24:36
I really appreciate what you’ve done with the ideal dog buyer.
Julie Swan | 1:24:44
Oh, thanks.
Bill Wyatt | 1:24:44
Really honing in on that. Who is the person that wants my dogs? That’s really important, so I’m not wasting a bunch of time with a 19-year-old college guy that thinks a Great Dane would be cool to have in his dorm.
Julie Swan | 1:25:05
Yeah. Does it make it easier for you to identify, oh, they’re a good fit, oh, they’re not? Is that kind of where you’re using it?
Bill Wyatt | 1:25:11
It does. It does.
Julie Swan | 1:25:12
It makes it easier.
Bill Wyatt | 1:25:13
So I can sort through things on my end.
Where am I going to spend my time trying to talk to people and develop relationships?
Julie Swan | 1:25:23
Yeah, exactly. Perfect. Well, Bill, thanks so much.
So before we leave, can you share with us if you have advice for new breeders? What would you tell them?
Bill Wyatt | 1:25:35
So a new breeder, there’s going to be a lot of poop.
Julie Swan | 1:25:40
Yeah.
Bill Wyatt | 1:25:43
I guess that comes down to, most of it is just good rewarding work too.
You have to be ready to do all the things that you need to do. This lovely sitting here with 10 puppies in my lap vision of being a breeder, and people just coming to me because they find me in the ether somewhere, and they know I have these beautiful Great Danes. It’s really not like that, but it is a very, very rewarding enterprise, should we say.
And the whole process, get ready for the process, and be committed to it, because there’s times when things are hard. There’s times when things don’t go right. There’s times when the money doesn’t come in.
You just keep doing the things that you do and being consistent.
Julie Swan | 1:26:46
Yeah. That’s such good advice. It takes grit.
It’s like you said, you’re going to have those bad days. It’s not always pretty.
Bill Wyatt | 1:26:58
I’ve never stepped in so much poop in my life.
Julie Swan | 1:27:02
Well, with Great Danes, I can only imagine.
Bill Wyatt | 1:27:06
Even the puppy piles are as big as your fist.
Julie Swan | 1:27:11
Yes, I can only imagine.
Bill Wyatt | 1:27:12
So yeah, there’s a whole lot of that.
Julie Swan | 1:27:15
Yes. It never ends. I know.
Well, all right. Well, thanks so much. I appreciate it.
Where can people find you if they want to see your dogs? Check out your Facebook. What do you have?
Bill Wyatt | 1:27:24
Yeah. So DubDub Danes. So DubDub is WW, my initials, William Wyatt.
So dubdubdanes.com is my website. I’m on Instagram and Facebook under DubDub Danes as well.
You can find me on Facebook and Instagram as Bill Wyatt as well. So would love to hear from any of them.
Julie Swan | 1:27:52
Yes. Thanks so much, Bill. It’s great.
I know. I love it. I love it there.
You guys just have to go check out Dobby. He’s just, oh, he’s so beautiful.
Bill Wyatt | 1:28:00
Dobby’s an amazing dog. Yes, he is.
Julie Swan | 1:28:03
Thank you so much.
Bill Wyatt | 1:28:04
So Dobby, I knew Dobby was going to be a very big dog and I named him Dobby because he’s a house elf.
Julie Swan | 1:28:18
I love that. I know. We listened to all those books and it was perfect. Well, thank you so much. I look forward to seeing you next time.
Bill Wyatt | 1:28:28
All right. Thank you, Julie.
