How many breeds need to play a role in a pup’s make-up before they go from being a particular thing to being a dog? I mean, when do you stop saying “we have a Pomsky”, or “I’ve always wanted a Chiweenie” and just acknowledge you have a dog with a few things going on. Can you have a Dasch-heeler-dor? Or a Bull-samoy-kelpadoodle? The protocol seems to be two, but having recently purchased a puppy after many years of resisting this great inevitability, this whole thing seems a lot looser than I had previously thought. But that might be because our puppy, Ollie, is from Humptydoo.

Before we get to the great Olivia Chuggles Von Schnausen Van Hauten however, there is a little context to be explained. Since before Milo could talk, he has wanted a dog. We have a photo on our wall of Milo smooching a random cafe pug taken well before he could walk. A dog has remained a consistent request throughout his life, and he has embraced every canine or canine-adjacent animal he has ever walked past, as if it were his own.

We have resisted his pleading for many years because, you know, we don’t want our lives to be shit. But at the same time we have researched and planned and considered. I am a planner, certainly in the skinny bit at the top of the bell curve for tendency towards planning. But my wife Kuepps is really, really, really, really, really, really a planner. So we have had many variations of ‘what dog breed is right for you?’ books, pamphlets, youtube research, and dozens of probably overbearing spontaneous interviews of people walking their dogs peacefully in the park.

We never found consensus.

There is a whole genre of dogs, popular in 2025, that in our household we categorise as ‘pat your granny’. You probably instinctively know what I mean. But if not; imagine sitting on your sofa, closing your eyes and your gran comes and sits on the ground quite close to you. You start patting her permed hair. If a dog feels a bit like that it is a ‘pat your granny’, and off our list.

Unfortunately this rules out almost all of the more reasonable, non-shedding, non cat-killing dogs available today. In my view it rules out all poodle mixes, but this is not a view held so strictly by others in our house. There has always been some flexibility on this point from certain quarters, but I think I can confidently say none of us want to sit on the sofa of an evening and pat or tickle any of our grandmas, no matter how lovely they might be.

But, if you eliminate anything ending in ‘oodle’, things get pretty narrow pretty quickly. Watch some ‘Is this dog right for you?’ youtube videos and you will inevitably discover that no, this dog is certainly not right for you. It will either eat your chickens, escape from Alcatraz, round up your neighbour’s kids, run 75km a day, fall off your sofa and die, dig up your daffodils, smother your children, bark at butterflies, produce fist sized poos, suffer from myriad skin disorders, or insanity or hip dysplasia (all of them are prone to hip dysplasia, which sounds uncomfortable and expensive), or early death, or way too late death, not to mention all those dogs that simply can’t breathe!

And alas these are the ones that Milo has always wanted. The most ridiculous kinds; Pugs, French Bulldogs, British Bulldogs, Boxers, nude ones, maybe a wiener dog of some kind. Any breed that says ‘humans have dominated the wolf, suck it wolf, and now look at this comical thing we’ve made, well done us’… Milo is into it.

And so years went by. We came close on the Miniature Schnauser, probably mostly because Schnauser is very fun to say. But ultimately we could never reconcile whether the Miniature Schnauser is pat your granny or not. I’m still not sure.

Kuepps and I think we really want a pointer of some kind, a Vizsla or a German-Short Hair, a real dog. But deep down we know we aren’t real dog people. The sphincter is just too large, and the commitment too heavy.

A wienery sausagey thing was subject to way more serious conversations than it ever should have been. The idea that we would have to lift it on and off the sofa was, at various times, considered a pro or a con. In the end it just petered out. I’m not sure what it was exactly, perhaps the fact we live in an area of Australia highly populated with birds of prey. Our little wiener guy may have just been carried off one day. Or maybe the whole concept was all just a little silly.

And then one day, because my wife is very clever and patient, a ‘Jug’ found itself on the agenda (this is a Jack Russell/ Pug for those unfamiliar. I was unfamiliar). Monty has always wanted a Jack Russell (apparently – I do not recall this) and of course Milo’s love for the Pug is well documented. This is the perfect mix for us! The Jack Russell influence means the Pug can breathe a little and won’t need expensive surgery immediately and might not snore so horrendously. And, oh look there is a Jug breeder quite close to Darwin and would you believe it they have a litter available in a few weeks! Check mate.

Considering the decade of meticulous research behind us, it certainly felt we were going in somewhat unprepared when we drove out to Humptydoo the following week to meet the little Jug pups. I’m not sure we had even watched one ‘Is a Jug right for me?’ video. Well, obviously we didn’t because otherwise we would have discovered it was not.

And then, upon our arrival, we learned that these were not in fact Jugs, but Puggles (or Pugapoos). Because, in one of the most Humptydoo events ever, the Toy Poodle, who also lived at the residence, had snuck in and done his thing with the Jug mum (who is apparently 7/8 Pug) before the Jug dad could get in there. Jug dad had no hustle. One look at the Poodle dad, who was strutting about very proudly, would also tell you there was more than just Poodle swishing around in his virile loins.

But of course, a puppy is about the cutest thing that exists on this earth, and we knew that if we took our boys out to Humptydoo we were not returning without a dog, granny or no granny. So after a decade of meticulous deliberation and research and debate and spreadsheets and delay and careful planning, we agreed on the spot to purchase a pug/ poodle based-cocktail known as Ollie, from Humptydoo.

And yes, she is completely delightful.

Ollie – the Pug/ Poodle-based cocktail from Humptydoo