ADOPTION & MATCHING PROCESS
What makes us different?
At AussieDoods Australia, we believe finding the right puppy is about so much more than choosing a colour, falling in love with a photograph or being first on a waitlist. It’s about finding a little soul who will become part of your family, share in your everyday moments and grow alongside you for many years to come. 🤍
Raising our puppies is something we pour our hearts into. From their very first days, each puppy is given individual care, attention and thoughtful early experiences to help them develop into confident, well rounded companions. As they grow, we get to know their little personalities, observe their temperaments and discover what makes each of them unique. Some are adventurous and outgoing, others are gentle and thoughtful, and every single one has their own special qualities.
Just as every puppy is different, every family is different, too. We understand that welcoming a dog into your life is a significant commitment, and we want to help you find a companion whose temperament, energy levels, needs and personality genuinely complement your lifestyle for years to come.
Our Adoption Process has been thoughtfully designed around this belief. We take the time to get to know our families, listen to what you’re hoping for and carefully consider each puppy as an individual. While we absolutely welcome your preferences, our priority will always be creating a meaningful, long term match where both puppy and family can thrive.
We know how exciting it is to dream about your future puppy, and we want you to feel supported, informed and involved throughout the journey. From joining our Waitlist to the moment you finally welcome your little one home, we’re here to guide you every step of the way.
Here’s how it all works! 🐾
01. Joining Our Waitlist
Joining our Waitlist is the beginning of what we hope will be a very special journey towards welcoming your newest family member. We’re so grateful that you’re considering one of our little ones, and we can’t wait to get to know you! 🤍
Our Waitlist is an expression of interest, and there is no fee or deposit required to join. We also don’t operate on a first come, first served basis. Your place on our Waitlist isn’t determined by when you joined or how soon you’re able to place a deposit.
For us, finding the right home will always be far more important than the order in which families come to us.
Every family is different.
Some are looking for an adventurous companion to join them on their outdoor activities, while others may be hoping for a more laid back little soul who will enjoy spending time at home. Some families have young children, other dogs or particular routines to consider. Others may be looking for a puppy with specific characteristics that will complement future Therapy/Assistance/Service roles.
And that’s exactly why we believe getting to know each family is such an important part of our process.
We want to understand what matters most to you, what your everyday life looks like and what you’re hoping for in a companion. Your preferences are absolutely welcome, and we encourage you to share them with us!
Whether you have particular hopes around temperament, energy levels, adult size, coat type or even gender, these details help us build a better understanding of the puppy who may be the right fit for your home.
At the same time, every puppy has their own little personality, individual needs and unique qualities. Our goal is to bring those two together in a way that gives both the puppy and their family the very best chance of thriving together for years to come.
02. Pregnancy Announcements & Preparing for a Litter
We confirm and announce pregnancies via ultrasound at around four weeks gestation, and from there, the excitement of preparing for a new litter really begins! 🤍
Eight weeks into their pregnancy, we arrange an X-ray to help us count the puppies and assess whether a planned caesarean may be needed.
Once our little ones arrive, we give mum and her babies a little time to settle before sharing their announcement, usually a couple of days after birth.
From there, we’ll keep you updated via our socials as our puppies grow, explore the world and begin showing us their beautiful little personalities🐾
Why Work With Us
Our puppies are raised with so much love, care and intention. From their very first days, their wellbeing, development and little individual personalities are at the heart of everything we do.
As they grow from tiny newborns into curious little explorers, we introduce them to a variety of positive, age appropriate experiences to help build their confidence, encourage healthy development and lay the foundations for happy, well adjusted companions.
Every stage of their journey is thoughtfully considered, allowing our puppies to learn, explore and grow at their own pace, surrounded by the care and attention they deserve.
This includes:
- Early Neurological Stimulation (ENS) & Early Scent Introduction (ESI): Beginning from day three, we gently introduce our puppies to small, age appropriate sensory experiences. ENS is based on the U.S. Military’s Bio Sensor program, originally developed to support the development of working dogs. Through gentle exercises and exposure to different scents, we introduce brief, carefully controlled stressors in a safe and supportive environment. These small early challenges are intended to help build the foundations for confidence and resilience, preparing our puppies to better navigate unfamiliar experiences as they grow. 🤍
- ESI introduces puppies to different scents, encouraging early exploration through their developing sense of smell. Together, these experiences provide gentle sensory stimulation and form part of our efforts to support confident, adaptable puppies as they begin discovering the world.
- Sensory Development: As their little senses awaken, we introduce different textures, surfaces and sensory experiences. These opportunities encourage curiosity, help puppies become more comfortable with new sensations and lay foundations for confident exploration as they grow.
- Crate & Toilet Training Foundations: Around two to three weeks of age (when they open their eyes!), we introduce Open Door Crate exposure and grass toilet mats. This allows puppies to begin exploring these spaces naturally, becoming familiar with their purpose and building positive associations before more structured training begins.
- Sound Desensitisation: From approximately three weeks, we gradually introduce everyday household sounds at a comfortable volume. This helps puppies become familiar with the noises they may encounter in family life, supporting their ability to approach new sounds with greater confidence rather than uncertainty.
- Household & Grooming Exposure: We gently familiarise our puppies with everyday sights, sounds, handling and grooming experiences. From being touched around their paws and ears to experiencing brushes and different household activities, these positive introductions help make future grooming, veterinary visits and everyday care feel more familiar.
- Outdoor Exploration: Around five to six weeks, depending on the weather and each puppy’s developmental readiness, we introduce supervised outdoor play. Exploring new environments, surfaces, sights and smells encourages curiosity, coordination and confidence while allowing puppies to experience the world in a safe and positive way.
- Individual Crate Training: From around six weeks, we begin introducing individual crate time. This helps puppies become more comfortable spending short periods in their own space, encourages independence and begins building the foundations for settling and travelling safely in a crate.
- Veterinary Care: Around six to seven weeks of age, our puppies attend their first veterinary appointment for a thorough health examination, first vaccination and microchip. This is also an opportunity for them to experience gentle handling in a new environment, helping us monitor their health and wellbeing as they prepare for their next chapter. Fit to fly certification is also arranged when applicable for interstate travel.
Each of these experiences is introduced with patience, care and plenty of positive reinforcement. Our goal is never to rush their development, but to give each puppy the opportunity to grow into a confident, curious and well adjusted little companion, ready to begin life with their new family. 🐾
Our puppies are weighed daily during their first week and then weekly from two weeks of age. They are also wormed every two weeks from two weeks of age.
04. Getting to Know Each Puppy
As the puppies grow, we begin to see their individual personalities emerge.
Some are naturally more outgoing and adventurous, while others may be quieter, more thoughtful or more independent. Some are highly people focused, while others may be more motivated by play, exploration or food.
We carefully observe and record each puppy’s development and temperament, looking at characteristics such as:
● Confidence & Resilience: How readily a puppy approaches new experiences, recovers from unfamiliar or surprising situations, and adapts to changes in their environment.
● Energy Levels & Activity Preferences: Whether a puppy is naturally active and adventurous, enjoys frequent play and exploration, or tends to have a more moderate energy level.
● Drive & Motivation: What naturally motivates each puppy, whether it’s toys, food, interaction, chasing, exploring or engaging with their environment. We also observe the intensity of these interests and how they may influence training and enrichment needs.
● Off Switch & Ability to Settle: How readily a puppy transitions from excitement or play into a calmer state, their ability to relax after activity, and whether they naturally seek out rest or need more support settling.
● Vocalisation: How frequently a puppy vocalises, the situations in which they may bark or whine, and whether they tend to be more vocal or quieter in their interactions.
● Mouthiness & Play Style: How a puppy uses their mouth during play, their response to redirection and their developing ability to engage appropriately with people and littermates.
● Sociability & People Engagement: How a puppy seeks out human interaction, responds to attention and handling, and engages with familiar and unfamiliar people.
● Social Play & Communication: How they interact with their littermates, including their play style, confidence during interactions and ability to respond to social cues.
● Independence & Exploration: Whether a puppy is comfortable exploring independently, enjoys having their own space, or prefers to remain close to people or littermates.
● Sensitivity & Environmental Awareness: How a puppy responds to different sounds, surfaces, handling and unfamiliar surroundings, including whether they are more observant, sensitive or naturally curious.
● Problem Solving & Frustration Tolerance: How they approach new objects and challenges, respond when something doesn’t go as expected, and recover from small frustrations.
● Training Progression & Learning Style: How readily a puppy engages with early training, responds to different forms of motivation, learns new foundations and maintains focus during short, age appropriate sessions.
● Handling & Grooming Responses: How comfortably they respond to being touched, held, brushed and introduced to everyday care experiences.
● Suitability for Different Households: We consider each puppy’s observed temperament and behaviour when assessing potential compatibility with families, including households with children or other animals. We look at characteristics such as confidence, sensitivity, play style, energy levels and comfort with handling.
● Potential for Therapy, Assistance or Working Roles: For families exploring these pathways, we pay particular attention to characteristics such as environmental confidence, recovery from unfamiliar experiences, people engagement, motivation, focus and adaptability. While these observations may help identify puppies with promising qualities, suitability for a specific role cannot be guaranteed at this age and requires ongoing development, training and assessment.
We use these observations to build an individual profile and temperament assessment for each puppy, helping us understand their unique qualities, preferences and needs.
Of course, puppies are still developing at this age, and their personalities will continue to grow and change as they mature. Our assessments are not about placing puppies into rigid categories, but about understanding who they are at this stage of life and identifying the environments and families in which they are most likely to thrive.
Every puppy has something special to offer, and our role is to help each one find the family who will appreciate, understand and nurture those qualities. 🐾
05. The Adoption Email
At approximately six weeks of age, or once we feel confident in our understanding of the puppies’ individual temperaments, families on our Waitlist receive an Adoption Email with information about the litter.
This is such an exciting and important part of the journey! It’s the opportunity to get to know our puppies beyond their little faces and begin imagining which one may become your newest family member!
Each puppy has their own individual profile, sharing our observations of their growth and coat development, temperament and emerging personality, alongside important information to help you understand what life with them may look like.
Their profiles include pricing and travel information, details about their expected adult size, coat type and grooming needs, exercise and enrichment requirements, early training progress, health and development, and the types of homes and lifestyles they may be best suited to. Where appropriate, we may also share observations of qualities that could be promising for therapy, assistance or working roles, while recognising that suitability can never be guaranteed and requires further training and assessment.
We also love sharing the little details that make each puppy special, from their favourite activities to their individual preferences and quirks.
We encourage families to take their time reading through the profiles and considering which puppies may best suit their lifestyle. We ask you to share your top three choices, along with what draws you to each puppy, so we can better understand your preferences.
This is one of the most important steps in our matching process, and we really encourage you to answer every question as thoughtfully and honestly as you can. There are no right or wrong answers, and everything you share helps us better understand your family, your lifestyle and what you’re hoping for in a companion. The more we learn about you, the closer we can get to finding your pawfect match.
While these profiles provide a wonderful insight into our puppies, they are only one part of our matching process. We consider the information you share with us alongside our own observations to help guide our final matching decisions.
06. Getting to Know Your Family
Just as we take the time to understand our puppies, we also want to understand the families who are hoping to welcome one into their lives.
We may ask questions about your lifestyle, household, previous dog experience, current pets, daily routine, activity levels and what you are hoping for in a companion.
These details help us understand what type of puppy may complement your family.
Our dogs are intelligent, active working and herding breeds. They are incredibly rewarding companions, but they also require ongoing physical exercise, mental enrichment, training and engagement.
We want to ensure our families are prepared for the long term commitment of raising one of these wonderful dogs.
Not every household will be suited to every puppy, and that is completely okay. Finding the right match is what matters most.
07. Colour, Coat Type & Finding the Right Dog
We completely understand why families are drawn to particular colours and markings. Merle coats are beautiful, and we know they are incredibly popular.
And of course, having preferences is absolutely okay! 🤎
Whether you’re hoping for a particular temperament, energy level, adult size, coat type or even gender, we encourage you to share what you’re looking for. These are all important considerations when finding a companion who will genuinely complement your lifestyle.
However, we believe colour is one of those things that should be a secondary consideration, rather than the deciding factor.
Your puppy’s personality, temperament, energy levels, grooming requirements and individual needs will have a far greater impact on your day to day life together than the colour of their coat.
Unfortunately, the majority of enquiries we receive are from families who are interested in our puppies primarily because of their colour, and we want to be transparent about something that is incredibly important to us.
If colour is your only priority, we may not be the right breeder for you.
We encourage every family to ask themselves:
If I were matched with a puppy who wasn’t my preferred colour, but had the temperament, size, coat type and energy levels that perfectly suited my lifestyle, would I still be genuinely interested in welcoming them into my family?
If the answer is yes, you’re approaching the process in exactly the way we hope our families will.
If the answer is no, we would gently encourage you to reconsider whether our adoption process is the right fit.
We want our families to fall in love with their puppy’s personality, not simply their appearance. After all, the perfect puppy for your family may not be the colour you initially imagined, but they could be everything you never knew you needed.
08. Our Matching Process
Once you have received your adoption email and had the opportunity to learn about the puppies, we ask families to share their top three choices, along with a little information about why they feel each puppy may be a good fit. We carefully consider your preferences alongside our own observations and temperament assessments.
Our priority is to create the best possible match for both the puppy and their future family.
We understand that choosing a puppy is an emotional experience, and we want you to feel involved and excited throughout the process. At the same time, we have a responsibility to each puppy to ensure they are placed in a home where their individual needs can be met.
Temperament based matching is something we have found to be incredibly important for long term compatibility.
Once we have made our matches for each puppy, we then go through and contact the families who were successful in adopting from that litter. We offer them their puppy and if everyone is happy to move forward, we then send through our information for a holding deposit as well as our Puppy Contractual Agreement for our new puppy parents to sign.
If for any reason a family chooses not to move forward, we then go onto the next most compatible family.
Once we have received confirmation from all of our new puppy parents, we then contact all of the amazing people who unfortunately weren’t picked that time around and explain where we can why they may not have been chosen, or if it was simply a case of too many incredible homes and not enough little ones to go around.
! We do not use deposits to determine who receives a puppy. Our matching process always comes first. !
We want every family to feel confident and comfortable with their decision before moving forward.
Why Work With Us
Personalized service tailored to your unique needs.
As your puppy’s go home day approaches, we want you to feel confident, prepared and excited for the next chapter of your journey together!
We provide guidance to help you prepare for your puppy’s arrival, including advice on what and where to buy, feeding, grooming, training, enrichment, socialisation and settling into their new environment.
Our aim is to ensure you feel equipped with the knowledge and resources to give your puppy the best possible start in their new home.
Every one of our puppies leaves us with a Complimentary Puppy Pack, thoughtfully put together to help make the transition into their new home a little easier. Each pack includes a special blanket carrying the familiar scents of their mama and siblings, helping provide a little comfort and familiarity during those first few days. You’ll also receive your puppy’s individual information, along with additional information booklets and helpful guides to support you throughout your first few months together.
For our local families collecting their puppies in person, your Complimentary Puppy Pack also includes food (both kibble and Lyka), toys, poop bags and a few extra goodies to help you get started!
For our interstate families, we assist with transport arrangements and guide you through the process of welcoming your puppy home from afar. All puppies travelling by air require a Fit to Fly certification within the appropriate timeframe, and we will help you navigate these requirements along the way.
Unfortunately, due to airline transport requirements, we can only provide the blanket and information pack for puppies travelling interstate. Your puppy’s aromatherapy blanket will be placed inside their travel crate with them, while their information and accompanying booklets will be securely attached in an envelope to the top of their crate. Please remember to collect both the blanket and envelope when picking up your puppy from the airport, as they contain important items and information to help you settle your little one into their new home.
We place a great deal of importance on ensuring our puppies feel comfortable and confident before travelling, particularly when they are flying interstate.
(PLEASE NOTE WE DO NOT SEND PUPPIES INTERNATIONALLY)
For this reason, puppies travelling by air are required to participate in our Individual Crate Training Program from 6 weeks of age. This allows us to gradually introduce them to spending time in a crate independently, helping build positive associations and confidence before they travel in one on a plane. Our goal is to make their journey as comfortable and stress free as possible, and we want every puppy to feel safe and secure in their crate.
We encourage all our families to visit our Puppy Parents page for more information about our Crate Training Program and the foundations we establish before your puppy comes home.
For our local families, we also offer an optional Puppy Essentials Pack, available for an additional cost. This pack has been thoughtfully curated to take the stress out of preparing for your puppy’s arrival, providing you with practically everything you could need for those exciting first few weeks together!
Our Puppy Essentials Pack includes food (kibble and Lyka), a comfortable bed, heaps of toys, food and water bowls, a harness, collar, leash, poop bags, measuring cups, a puppy playpen, crate, grass toilet mat, enrichment toys, treats and plenty of additional goodies. We know just how overwhelming it can be to prepare for a new puppy, particularly if this is your first time welcoming one into your family. Our Puppy Essentials Pack is designed to make things a little easier, allowing you to spend less time worrying about what to buy and more time enjoying those precious first moments together.
Bringing home a puppy is such a special milestone, but we understand that it can also come with plenty of questions. Whether you need reassurance during those first few nights, guidance with training or simply want to share an exciting milestone, we are always here for you.
Our commitment to your family does not end on go home day.
We genuinely love watching our puppies grow into the wonderful dogs they are destined to become, and we are always happy to offer guidance, answer questions and celebrate their milestones with you.
We are so grateful to be a part of your journey and look forward to watching the beautiful bond between you and your new puppy unfold. 🤍
Proven results that speak for themselves.