Medium Australian Labradoodle

Pick a food meeting the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) standards and matched to life stage, and keep water available. A Medium Australian Labradoodle on a complete diet should not need supplements unless a vet recommends them.

Feed an adult twice a day. Puppies under six months generally need more frequent meals than that. Twelve-hour intervals suit a dog of this size well: once-a-day feeding tends to produce anxiety and a fixation on the next bowl, and smaller, more frequent meals mean a dog that eats less at a sitting and usually more slowly.

At 30 to 40 pounds this size is easy to overfeed, and the coat hides it. The clubs prize an athletic, well-muscled dog with a good tuck-up, and that is a useful body-condition target to check your own dog against at home. Keep treats to 10 percent of daily calories, and skip table scraps.

A slow feeder helps a fast eater and buys a few minutes of mental work at the same time.

A settled adult Australian Labradoodle coat needs combing out at least once a week, and the club is specific that the eight-to-twelve-month adolescent transition needs weekly attention without gaps. That transition is when most bad matting starts.

Which coat your dog has changes the work. The fleece coat is light and silky and can look almost straight or deeply waved; it rarely if ever sheds. The wool coat is denser, hangs in loose spirals, and is the more allergy-friendly of the two, but it is also the heavier grooming job. Neither should be thick, dense or tightly curled by the standard's account.

Get the comb to the skin, not just through the surface, and check where the coat rubs: behind the ears, between the legs and around the rear. The standard caps the coat at about four inches and asks that it not look overly groomed, so this is upkeep rather than sculpting. Sun bleaching is normal in an outdoor dog and is not a fault.

Keep the ear canals free of excess hair, which both standards call undesirable, and clean the ears after baths and swims.

This is the size that does most things without compromise. A Medium Australian Labradoodle is substantial enough for a long hike and light enough to lift, and both club standards describe a dog whose trot should look purposeful and elastic, as if it were going somewhere.

Give it a solid hour most days, split however suits you. Walking, hiking, swimming, fetch and dock diving all fit, and agility fits particularly well because the breed is both quick to learn and built to move. The standard's line about being energetic when free and quiet when handled is a fair description of what you get in return for the hour.

Watch the growth window in a puppy. The ALCA warns that rapid growth in the larger sizes leads to structural problems, and while a Medium is not a Standard, the same caution applies to hard, repetitive exercise on a young dog. Build distance gradually.

Mental work counts. A clever dog with an unfilled day fills it itself.

Keen and easy to train is what the standard says, and it holds. Positive reinforcement is the method; the standard faults nervous, yappy and highly-strung temperaments and treats any aggression or dominance as a major fault, so nothing about this dog calls for a heavy hand.

Teach grooming tolerance early and keep teaching it. A weekly comb-out for the dog's whole life is a lot of handling, and a Medium is big enough to make a fight of it if it decides to.

Socialise across the board. The temperament clause asks for a dog that approaches people happily and holds eye contact, and that is built by early, unhurried introductions rather than assumed. Rushed meetings with other dogs are the usual source of later problems.

This size is a common choice for therapy and assistance work, which comes from the intuition the standard asks for. If that is the direction you want, start the public-access socialisation early and work with a trainer who does that specific job.