About
Meet Kalyn Bastion
Doodle Bliss is written and edited by Kalyn Bastion — a teacher by training, a breeder by practice, and a published author on animal care. She lives in West Palm Beach, Florida, where she raises parrots and a small line of YorkiPoos in her own home.
She started out as a schoolteacher
Kalyn began her working life in a classroom, and in the important sense she never left it. Everything she has done since — raising animals, writing books, building this site — is a version of the same job: understand something properly, then hand it to somebody who needs it.
That is what this site is. Seventy-five poodle crosses, explained plainly, for people trying to work out which one belongs in their house.
Teaching animal care is the family trade
Her father was Salvador Ávila Téllez, a professor of veterinary medicine at UNAM — Mexico's national university, and the oldest veterinary school in the Americas. He taught there for half a century. He wrote books that are still assigned to students today, and after he died, Mexico's national association of cattle veterinarians named its annual congress after him: Congreso Nacional de Buiatría "MVZ, MSc. Salvador Ávila Téllez."
His animals were cattle, not doodles. What he handed down wasn't a species — it was a standard. He believed an animal's health is decided long before anything looks wrong with it: in what it's fed, how it's housed, and whether somebody is actually paying attention.
He spent his life teaching people how to care for animals. Kalyn grew up watching him do it, then went and did it herself.
She raises animals, not just articles about them
Kalyn has hand-raised hundreds of parrots at Parrot Bliss — fed through the night as babies, weaned with patience, and placed only once she is satisfied the home is right for the bird. She works with mentors in the field, including aviculturist Tony Silva.
She also breeds dogs, in her living room rather than a kennel: YorkiPoos, a Yorkshire Terrier crossed with a miniature Poodle — which is to say, one of the seventy-five crosses this site exists to explain. She does not breed the other seventy-four, and this site will never pretend otherwise.
"You raise them around real life and they grow up trusting it. That works for parrots. It works for puppies, too."
She is a published author
Kalyn writes on animal care under the pen name KB Raphael. Her parrot titles include The Parrot Bliss Bond, Parrot Safety & Longevity Secrets, 30 Perfect Apartment Parrots, and Get to Know African Grey & Cape Parrots. She has also written children's books and a coloring book, with more on the way.
How to reach her
Questions about a breed profile, a correction, or a dog you are trying to choose between two crosses — write to her here. She answers her own mail.