Ohio’s Australian Labradoodle breeders split into three small clusters rather than one central hub, beginning with a group of three near Akron and Canton in the northeast, followed by two more in northwest Ohio’s Findlay-Bucyrus corridor, and finally one at the southwest tip of the state in Cincinnati.
Three Programs Cluster Around Akron and Canton in Northeast Ohio
Heritage Manor, Deer Pines, and EverHeart are all breeders that reside within roughly a 30-mile radius of each other in the Akron-Canton area of Ohio.
Heritage Manor Labradoodles
Carla Zinser owns Heritage Manor Labradoodles LLC in Walton Hills, an active ALAA member since 2017. In addition to genetic testing on its breeding dogs, Heritage Manor stresses socialization and early exposure to people and environments, along with providing socialization and training support to puppy owners after placement.
Location: Walton Hills, Ohio
Website: Heritage Manor Labradoodles
Registry: ALAA
Deer Pines Labradoodles
Linda and Jerry Groden, of Clinton in Northeast Ohio, own Deer Pines Labradoodles LLC, which holds the 3 Diamond rating from WALA as well as ALAA’s Gold Paw distinction. They run a multi-generational breeding program and screen their dam and sire combinations using OFA and Paw Print Genetics.
Location: Clinton, Ohio
Phone Number: 330-329-7341
Website: Deer Pines Labradoodles
Registry: ALAA (Gold Paw), WALA (3 Diamond)
EverHeart Labradoodles
Angela Watson, of North Canton, owns EverHeart Labradoodles and raises mini and medium-sized dogs registered with both ALAA and WALA. She uses Puppy Culture and Badass Breeder methods for early stimulation and requires her dam and sire combinations to be tested before breeding to confirm they meet both temperament and physical requirements.
Location: North Canton, Ohio
Phone Number: 419-512-4560
Website: EverHeart Labradoodles
Registry: ALAA, WALA
Two More Are Based in Northwest Ohio’s Findlay-Bucyrus Corridor
Located approximately an hour apart along Ohio’s northwest corridor are two additional ALAA-registered programs based in Findlay and Bucyrus.
Labradoodles On Main
Labradoodles On Main in Findlay is co-owned by Dr. Carmela Osborne, a physical medicine specialist, and James Bell, an attorney. They hold Diamond Rewards status with WALA and raise multi-generational Australian Labradoodles bred for a low-shedding, allergy-friendly coat suitable for therapy use.
Location: Findlay, Ohio
Phone Number: 419-348-0973
Website: Labradoodles On Main
Registry: WALA
Magnolia Australian Labradoodles
Magnolia Australian Labradoodles, owned by Judy Adams in Bucyrus, holds both ALAA and WALA affiliation and has earned “All Star Breeder” and “Champion Breeder” recognition. The program is a Paw Print Genetics accredited breeder and also runs a guardian home program alongside its standard placements.
Location: Bucyrus, Ohio
Phone Number: 419-571-6471
Website: Magnolia Australian Labradoodles
Registry: ALAA, WALA
Cincinnati Rounds Out the List in the Southwest Corner of the State
As of March 2025, Erika Crosby’s Bonzer Australian Labradoodles is Ohio’s newest ALAA member. The kennel’s website is listed through ALAA’s directory, but since that site currently won’t load, prospective families should contact the breeder through her Good Dog profile or use the directory listing ALAA provides instead.
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio
Registry: ALAA
ALAA Membership Requires More Than Just Paying Dues
Every breeder mentioned in this article maintains active membership within ALAA, and that membership doesn’t happen automatically upon registration. Members are required to submit pedigrees and minimum health testing results for each dog used for breeding, execute written purchase agreements and health warranties on every puppy sold, register each litter produced, and adhere to ALAA’s code of ethics in how they run their business.
Members of ALAA can earn Platinum, Gold, and Silver Paw designations based on testing above and beyond ALAA’s minimum requirements, and these designations must be maintained through continued testing. Deer Pines Labradoodles’ Gold Paw designation and Magnolia’s Champion Breeder designation both indicate breeders who have completed multiple rounds of testing to earn and keep those distinctions. ALAA also advises that its logo sometimes appears on websites belonging to breeders who were never actually members of the organization, so buyers should always verify a kennel’s membership status directly with ALAA through its own directory before submitting a deposit.
Ohio Has No Puppy Lemon Law, Only a Licensing Rule for High-Volume Breeders
Although more than twenty states have enacted pet purchaser protection acts offering guarantees like refunds, exchanges, or reimbursement of veterinary costs if a purchased puppy develops an illness, Ohio has not adopted that kind of protection.
What Ohio Revised Code Chapter 956 regulates instead is large-scale commercial breeding operations: an establishment only qualifies as a high-volume breeder subject to state licensing if it keeps six or more breeding dogs and also sells five or more dogs a year to brokers or pet stores, sells forty or more puppies a year directly to consumers, or keeps forty or more puppies under four months old at any given time. None of the six home-based programs in this article come close to that threshold, so a breeder’s own written health guarantee is the only real source of recourse a buyer has here.
Lyme Disease Has Surged Sevenfold in Ohio Since 2020
Ohio saw just 40 reported Lyme disease cases in 2010. That number climbed to 415 by 2020, and the Ohio Department of Health was tracking more than 2,800 cases in 2025, a roughly sevenfold increase in just five years.
State health officials attribute this to warmer winters, which let blacklegged ticks survive in greater numbers, higher humidity that favors those same ticks, and forest regrowth into formerly open residential areas, where both the ticks and the deer and rodents that carry them now live. The Ohio Department of Health has even built an interactive Lyme disease map so residents can track how the spread has moved county by county over the past decade. New puppies in Ohio, especially ones being raised in the heavily wooded areas around Akron, Canton, or the Findlay-Bucyrus corridor, should be on a tick preventive year-round rather than just seasonally.
A Guide Dog Request in Hawaii Is Where This Breed Actually Began
A single specific need led to the creation of the Australian Labradoodle. A woman in Hawaii needed a guide dog, but her husband was allergic to nearly every breed her local guide dog school normally trained.
Wally Conron, who worked for the Royal Guide Dogs Association of Australia, tried to solve that problem by crossbreeding a Labrador Retriever with a Standard Poodle in the 1980s. The offspring had the temperament guide work required, but their coats still shed, so breeders later introduced Cocker Spaniel, Irish Water Spaniel, and Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier bloodlines to fix that.
By the early 1990s, Tegan Park and Rutland Manor had both stabilized the coat type and temperament that define the Australian Labradoodle today. Several of Ohio’s ALAA breeders can trace their own lines back to that same foundation stock, several generations removed.
Frequently Asked Questions
Six programs currently hold active ALAA membership in Ohio. Three are located near Akron and Canton in northeast Ohio, two more are in the Findlay-Bucyrus corridor of northwest Ohio, and one is in Cincinnati.
No. Ohio is not one of the roughly twenty states that have enacted a pet purchaser protection act. Ohio Revised Code Chapter 956 only provides licensing requirements for high-volume commercial breeders, so if you’re buying a puppy from a breeder in Ohio, a written health warranty from that breeder is your best source of protection.
Almost certainly not. That license only applies to an establishment that maintains six or more breeding dogs and also sells 40 or more puppies a year to the general public, sells five or more puppies a year to a broker or pet store, or keeps 40 or more puppies under four months old at once. All six programs listed here are small, home-based operations well under that scale.
It’s grown substantially. According to the Ohio Department of Health, there were 40 reported Lyme disease cases in Ohio in 2010, compared with more than 2,800 confirmed cases in 2025. Blacklegged ticks continue to expand their range into wooded and suburban areas throughout the state, so tick prevention is worth discussing with your veterinarian regardless of the time of year.
Verify the breeder’s current status directly through ALAA or WALA’s own directories, request documentation showing both parent dogs have been evaluated through OFA testing or a genetic panel, and get a written health warranty from the breeder. Since Ohio has no puppy lemon law, that written warranty is what actually protects you.
Conclusion
Ohio’s six ALAA-registered Australian Labradoodle programs are scattered across three regions rather than centralized in one area: three near Akron and Canton in northeast Ohio, two along the Findlay-Bucyrus corridor in northwest Ohio, and one in the Cincinnati area. Each is a small, home-based operation well below the size that would trigger a state breeding license.
Because Ohio has no puppy lemon law, a written health guarantee from the breeder carries more weight here than it would in a state with statutory buyer protections. With Lyme disease cases climbing sharply statewide, new puppy owners should also treat tick prevention as a year-round priority rather than a summer-only concern.
Australian Labradoodle Breeders In Other Places
| Alberta | British Columbia | Nova Scotia | Ontario | Ottawa |
| Australia | New South Wales | Queensland | Sydney | Victoria |
