I am afraid that I can't help with the sleep incontenace thing since my cockapoo is a male, but I did want to say something. When we got Pepper (our cockapoo), we went to our vet with our new bundle of joy and asked our vet about problems to look for in the breed (at the time we thought him to be a cocker spaniel). He told us to look for ear infections and when he turned 5 yrs old we might encounter skin problems but not to really worry ourselves about it. 1 mth later began skin issues that has almost broke us financially. He was born with a compromised immune system and has been to the vet every week at least once since we got him at 6 wks old (he is 11mths old now). He is on the strongest meds they can give him and if this doesn't work he will have to go see a specialist. I guess what I'm trying to say is you can never really plan for what God gives you. Pepper has been our greatest joy throughout all the struggles with his health, and I feel like he chose us. Isn't that how it always is? Good luck with finding your new baby, and I hope he/she is happy,healthy and wonderful. Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
-----Original Message----- From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 00:04:40 To: <[email protected]> Subject: [cockapoo] Sleep incontinence? your experience. Hi all. New poster here. We lost our small cockapoo around thanksgiving and are looking for a new pup. Our big male cockapoo needs a new playmate and we are debating between a male and a female. My main reservation about getting a female is sleep incontinence. We had a beloved female standard poodle (spayed) who developed sleep incontinence when she was about 9 years old. We eventually got a handle on it using phenylpropanalamine, but sometimes wonder if that's what killed her as she died suddenly just shy of age 13. Anyway, it was heartbreaking to us to have to kick her off our bed at night when she developed this problem; we like to sleep with the dogs. I called our vet recently to ask about the prevalence of sleep incontinence among older spayed female dogs. To my amazement, they stated that roughly 50% of older female spayed dogs get this! We have had male dogs ever since, but being that the right cockapoo is hard to find, we'd like to be open to a female as well. He seems to like to play with females better also. To those who have raised female cockapoos to the end of their full lives, how many of your dogs have had sleep incontinence? Thanks in advance. BTW, you can see our dogs playing at this link. The big apricot guy is our 8 y/o 45 lb cockapoo. The little guy is the one we recently lost. http://davidhenneman.smugmug.com/gallery/6651893_crKLQ/1/#424553362_if88H-A-LB
