A Doodle By Any Other Name

Recently, the creator of the so-called Labradoodle came out and said he wishes he could “turn the clock back.”

Eighty-one-year-old Wally Conran of Australia received a letter in the early 1980s from a lady who needed a “hypoallergenic” guide dog, due to her husband’s allergies. As Conran knew, and as many people should know, there is no such thing as an allergy-free dog, or even a hypoallergenic dog. But Mr. Conran thought that perhaps crossing a Standard Poodle with a Labrador Retriever would work. Both breeds are generally known to have good temperaments. Both breeds are generally known to be highly trainable. So Mr. Conrad produced a pup for the nice lady and it worked out very well for her.

Unfortunately, it didn’t stop there. There were two other pups in the litter, and Mr. Conran was having a hard time placing them; everyone wanted a purebred. And so,"I decided to stop mentioning the word crossbreed and introduced the term 'labradoodle' instead to describe my new allergy-free guide-dog pups," Conran writes.

Thus, the designer dog craze was born.

"Nothing ... could stop the mania that followed," he writes. "New breeds began to flood the market: groodles, spoodles, caboodles and snoodles. Were breeders bothering to check their sires and bitches for heredity faults, or were they simply caught up in delivering to hungry customers the next status symbol? We’ll never know for sure. Today I am internationally credited as the first person to breed the labradoodle," Conran writes. "But I wonder, in my retirement, whether we bred a designer dog — or a disaster!"

Place my vote for “disaster.” Make no mistake — I have nothing against Labradoodles. In fact, many of my closest friends are Labradoodles. But let's call a spade a spade: Labradoodles, or doodles by any other name, are mixed-breed dogs.  Rescuing mixed-breed dogs from shelters? Awesome. Buying them from breeders? Just add to the 3-4 million animals that are euthanized in the U.S. annually.

The sad fact is, Labradoodles are the result of unscrupulous breeding practices. People trying to make a quick buck or ignorant folks who “love dogs” or want their children to witness the "miracle of birth." Puppymillers or backyard breeders, in other words. Labradoodles can’t be shown. Breeding stock cannot be independently evaluated. Genetic traits cannot be planned for. Mixing breeds produces a mixed bag of traits.

I’ve heard lots of arguments in favor of the doodle. “I am allergic and I need a hypoallergenic dog.” Sorry, because Labradoodles and Goldendoodles and Schnoodles are mixed-breed dogs, they don’t breed true; you’ll always need a Golden Retriever and a Poodle to create a Goldendoodle, and therefore, there’s no guarantee that a Golden/Poodle cross will inherit the Poodle’s low-shedding coat. And this one: “Weren’t all breeds created by mixing breeds?” Well, sure. But it was done purposefully and over a long, long, long period of time, by people working together with no hope of profit to produce a desired result. Traits were carefully selected and bred for over periods of hundreds of years. In the case of the doodle? That ship has sailed. Too many people have their fingers in the designer dog pot, trying to capitalize on a cute name and our culture’s fascination with uniqueness. Calling a Pug/Beagle mix a Puggle doesn’t change what that dog is; all it does is perpetuate the myth that Puggles are an actual breed, thereby funneling more cash money into the hands of millers and backyard breeders who have no business being in the dog business.

If you truly want a one-of-a-kind breed, the best place to find one is still your local shelter. And it always will be.

Photo credit: Lexicog