I wrote this letter to send to all of those who were still listed on our original List of Reservations from our old website. I sent each one separately. If you would have expected this email and did not receive it, please check your junk folder, as our new email tends to migrate there for a few. Otherwise, please email me at lawpdoodlek9manor@pm.me to further discuss the status of your reservation with us. Thank you! Tina
OCTOBER 4, 2022
To all my Lawpdoodle K9 Manor followers and those who still maintain a reservation with us:
To say these last 2 plus years have been challenging for all of us is an understatement. I Praise God for my faith, but even I’ve allowed my faith to be challenged at times. I pray all are well and you and your family have begun to come back on the other side even better and stronger.
As some of you know that follow us, our primary business computer (a less than 2 year old iMac) froze up on us with no chance of recovery earlier this year. Most of my data has been recovered through the iCloud, but the center of my business, my website could not be recovered.
I knew there could be an issue years before when the developer of our website software, Sandvox, went awol. Although those of us with Sandvox websites (I’m part of a group on FB specifically for Sandvox users) were still able to update and maintain our websites, we were all at risk of losing everything if we lost access, i.e. a computer crash without back up. The software is no longer available to download to new devices.
Some were able to adapt to a new software program and move on. Some of us just couldn’t find enough hours in the day to commit to a new learning curve, myself being no exception. Sometimes in life things happen that force us out of our comfort zone even if we go kicking and screaming. And so began the process of developing our new website earlier this year which is still a work in progress.
Although our original website, lawpdoodlek9manor.com is still visible online, we are no longer updating it. Fortunately, I’d kept my old iMac (slow as a snail) and I was able to recover at minimum what I needed to update our litters at that time. The version I accessed was old, and therein was missing any later pages taken off line such as previous litters in recent years as well our list of reservations. Praise God I’d printed a hard copy of our Reservation List before my computer died! No doubt I relied too much on my website files to maintain important data and business record files.
I know there are many record keeping and organizational methods I could be using to keep better track of everything. However I do not have, nor can I afford, administrative support. So I’m it. 80% of my day is spent with the dogs and puppies, which leaves little time and energy for administrate work. The dogs come first!
Which brings me to this “form letter”/email for all that are receiving it. It took me most of the day, but I went through each name on the list I printed and researched on my iPad in my old email account as well as text messages to try and find everyone. Please note our current primary email address is now lawpdoodlek9manor@pm.me
Please, please forgive me if you have already received a puppy from us and I neglected to remove you from the list. We work with a lot of people, and with the loss of my normal data research, I find myself at a disadvantage in time with trying to seek out all previous correspondence.
The market has changed dramatically with puppy sales. To be honest, we are entering our 15th year and this is the worst I’ve ever seen. Some of the slowdown may be attributed to the fall out of Covid shutdowns and the hardships that followed and continue to this day. Some of it may be from the influx of breeders coming on the scene after finding themselves at home without a job or just wanting to capitalize on the short lived demand during the shutdowns when it seemed everyone wanted a puppy. It is also a strong possibility much has to do with the shakey economy and uncertainty many of us are experiencing right now. Nonetheless, we have found ourselves, like many veteran breeders, feeling the squeeze and lack of new inquiries for our puppies. Our recent website struggles and visibility (or lack thereof) on search engines has not helped, but we are still working diligently to remedy that issue.
We found it challenging to place a few litters born too close together late last year into the first half of this year. Our Saving Grace has been many of our devoted families who had obtained a puppy from us in years past and returned to us for another puppy. A number of weeks ago, we were finally in a position to put the brakes on and slow down our planned litters as we entered the latter part of 2022. I’m not getting any younger, and tackling big puppies older than I have had to keep in the past was taking a toll on me physically and mentally. I’m not ready to give up and hope our many years of experience and long standing reputation will see us through this storm. We’ve had a few glimmers of hope, but I do believe the recovery will be slow and require a lot of patience. I Praise God for my health, our home, our family and most importantly, My Faith.
Now that I’ve shared a bit of background of how things are going here at Lawpdoodle K9 Manor, I’d like to invite you to please check out our new website if you have not already. Currently, we have two litters both 4 weeks old. We have a litter of (8) F1 Pyredoodles (likely our last litter of F1’s) as well as litter of (11) F1 Sheepadoodles. Please visit our website at www.sheepadoodles.com and check our Available Puppies tab to access the pages where each litter is featured.
At this time, we are expecting 2 more litters of Sheepadoodles before the end of 2022 (one any day now). We will move into 2023 with caution and continue scaling back a bit with planned litters. Also, we have a number of adults retiring out of our program that are available for adoption.
Be sure to read our current Reservation Policy which went into effect in April of 2021. I do realize it has presented a bit of confusion for some, but we were at a crossroads with lack of timely response when contacted to pick a puppy if any response at all, and changes with regard to the market and other factors had to be made.
Thank you again for considering us as your breeder. We look forward to hearing from you soon to let us know your status with regard to remaining part of our List of Reservations.
God Bless! Tina Law, Lawpdoodle K9 Manor