Tiny in her favorite spot--at Dad's feet. When he was relaxing in his leather La-Z-Boy, Tiny settled in with him.
Tiny's puppies from a Toy Poodle sire. One was white and the other turned silver.
Tiny, the family pet. She loved everyone in the family, and was always participating in some way in our activities. A poster dog for hybrid vigor, she lived to be about 15 years old, with no problems except for a bout of eclampsia with one of her litters.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
It all started back in the early 1960's. My Mom was a shrewd woman who was always looking for ways to make an extra buck to help keep her big family fed. In our family, you were useless unless you contributed. That not only included the humans, but also the animals. So, the cats and dogs were expected to labor for the good of the household. For them, labor meant, well, labor.
When I was born, I joined a family that already had a mixed breed dog named Tiny. Tiny was a small mostly white dog with a tan mask and ears, and a round tan spot on the base of her spine. Her plumed tail curled up over her back, and she stood about 13" tall at the shoulders. Mom said she was a mixture between a Poodle,Spitz, and Shetland Sheepdog. Tiny was an interesting hybrid because she rarely produced a puppy that resembled her. Mom soon discovered the beauty in Tiny's genes was almost magical: Tiny's puppies generally resembled their sire, almost to the point where they could "pass" as purebreds.
When bred to a Chihuahua, Tiny's puppies came out tiny, round-headed, fawn-colored, and shaky. Bred to a Dachshund, the two resulting offspring were dark brown, shorthaired, with long ears, bodies, and muzzles. A shaggy cream-colored Lhasa Apso sire gave Tiny 3 long-haired cream and tan fluff-balls. A silver Poodle father produced 4 curly-haired black puppies that started turning silver with their first clipping at 6 weeks of age.
Back in those days, before it became politically incorrect to breed your pet, Mom supplemented the family income by having a litter or two a year. It was never difficult to sell these cute little mongrels. Mom easily found homes for the puppies, by selling them for $25.00 a piece, or taking something in trade, like a used bicycle or books of trading stamps. People who already had one of Tiny's puppies came back for another one to add to the family.
Those Poodle-mix puppies were such a hit with the customers that Mom soon realized that if she were to have purebred AKC Poodle parents, she could sell the pups for a much higher price, and with dad getting laid off from his aerospace job every year or so, every extra buck counted. So, in 1968, Mom started looking around for an opportunity to buy an AKC Poodle. As luck would have it, she found a pair of females in the classified ad section of the local Heartland News.
