Maggie is Going to be A Mom!!!

A number of yorkie-poodle mixes come to the kennel where I work. They all have the coloring of the yorkie, but the black stays black--doesn't fade to blue, and their coats are somewhere between a yorkie coat and a poodle coat. Their coats are long and wavy, and the texture is sort of cotton-y and tends to mat up easily. One way easy way to deal with the coat is to keep the dogs shaved in a 7-kennel, but doing so isn't necessary. The trick is to get a greyhound comb in addition to a brush and to use the comb after brushing. The comb will find trouble spots that a brush will go right over. As long as the puppy owners make sure they get all the way to the skin with the comb, they'll be able to keep the coat at any length they want.

Given that the father isn't your dog and has a history of escaping, you might want to consider testing the mother, and if possible the father, for brucellosis--an STD that dogs get and the mother can pass onto the puppies. I don't think the test is particularly expensive. The disease isn't rampant or anything, so you're probably in the clear, but since you don't know what other women the father has been hanging with, you might want to think about doing the testing.

Best of luck with the puppies. I sure hope you'll post pics when they arrive. The yorkie-poodle crosses I've met have all been very cute dogs.