Miles Johns is used to the funny looks, the blank stares. When the UFC bantamweight tells people about his side business, he’s used to being forced to repeat himself.

This guy, the professional mixed martial arts fighter who has a 10-1 record inside the cage, he breeds dogs in his spare time? And not pit bulls or rottweilers or some other typical tough guy dog, either, but goldendoodles, the crossbreed with perhaps the least intimidating name ever invented? Yeah, that surprises people.

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“I just love their personalities,” said Johns, 26, who competes in the UFC’s 135-pound division. “They’re such emotionally intelligent dogs. I deal with them all through training, and it’s always amazing to me the way they can read you.”

For Johns, breeding and training dogs are as much a passion as a side gig. He was always a dog person, even as a kid. Growing up, his family had a Saint Bernard as their beloved pet. The only thing he disliked about it was when his siblings would allow the enormous dog up onto the couch, where it would inevitably leave mounds of its thick, long hair long after it had departed.

“I was always the clean person and my brothers were not,” Johns said. “It seemed like every night I was vacuuming or lint-rolling the couch because the shedding was just constant.”

Looking back now, he joked, maybe that’s when he should have known that he’d eventually fall in love with dogs that didn’t have that issue.

Goldendoodles aren’t currently recognized as a breed unto themselves, but rather a hybrid resulting from breeding a golden retriever with a miniature or standard poodle. They’re often sought by people with dog allergies, many of whom have an easier time tolerating the low-dander coats of hybrid dogs with some poodle mixed into their heritage, such as goldendoodles or labradoodles.

According to Johns, it was his mother-in-law who showed him how to turn his love of dogs into something more. She runs a similar business in Kansas, Johns said, and he began working for her before he and his wife, Hannah, were romantically involved. After the two married and moved to Dallas, working with dogs felt like a way to maintain the family connection across state lines.

“My wife’s mother, she started out with labradoodles, but with them, you just couldn’t get as much certainty as to how their coat is going to come out,” Johns said. “With the goldendoodles, a lot of people like them for allergy reasons, or because they want a low-shedding dog, or just because they like the look and the personality. But we hear from people who say, ‘My son really wants a dog, but he has such bad allergies, and this is the only kind he can stand to be around.’ It’s really fulfilling to be able to meet that need and make people happy.”

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But dog breeding as a vocation doesn’t always get the best rap, a fact Johns is well aware of. The so-called “puppy mills” that house dogs in substandard conditions while churning out purebred dogs in one litter after another until the mothers simply can’t take anymore, those give the good breeders a bad name, Johns said. That’s why the website he and his wife operate — DoodlesInTheRuff.com — goes to great lengths to assure potential customers that their dogs are ethically bred and cared for well, in addition to undergoing genetic testing to screen for inherited diseases.

Still, Johns pushes back on the insistence that both people and animals are always better served by adopting from shelters rather than going through breeders to get their dogs.

“Absolutely, let’s adopt when we can and empty these shelters out,” Johns said. “But I don’t know if people always think about the cycle of why and how dogs end up in shelters. There are so many stories of people adopting a dog from a shelter, and then a year or two later they have a baby, and it turns out the dog isn’t good with kids. Maybe it snaps at the baby and it’s back in the shelter. I think sometimes people adopt on a whim, not really thinking about what a big decision is, and it is a big decision. It’s a lifelong decision in many ways, and I wish more people would look at it that way. If you’re not sure you can care for this dog for the entirety of its life, you shouldn’t get one.”

Johns and his wife stay in contact with the owners of their dogs, he said, and it never gets old hearing updates and seeing pictures of the dogs in their new home. His own dog, Boone, started out as just another puppy in the litter, up for adoption. But after his wife fell in love with him, it wasn’t long until she convinced Miles that they should keep him for themselves.

The nice thing about blending this business with his career as a pro fighter is that both come with a certain level of schedule flexibility. Both he and his wife are trained as nurses, and Hannah currently works in the neonatal intensive care unit. He was headed in a similar direction, but just as he completed his education, his fighting career began to take off, first with a win at a Dana White’s Contender Series event, and then with a contract offer for the UFC.

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“Nursing is such an important profession, and it’s one you really have to be dedicated to,” Johns said. “I knew I wouldn’t be able to juggle both, so I’m waiting until after my MMA career wraps up to pursue that, but I love the medical field, and I definitely plan to go back.”

Now he fits in dog training duties around his training schedule, and he has even begun to recruit some teammates at the gym to help him, since he has more dog training clients than he can handle on his own and fighters, in his words, “tend to have some time on their hands.”

When they see what his life is like at home, with goldendoodles of all ages running around, sure, there might be some funny looks. But Johns is used to that.

“I just tell people, wait until you get to know one of these dogs,” he said. “They’re so gentle, not a mean bone in their bodies, and they want to be loved by everybody. It’s like having a best friend around all the time.”

(Top photo: Jeff Bottari / Zuffa)

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