By Candy Wisnieski

There are always types of pets, especially dogs, that become trendy for one reason or another—because they appear in films such as 101 Dalmatians’ or Lassie or because people think that a certain breed will be easy and not have domestic impact. The single most important thing about finding a match between dog and family is temperament. People who choose trendiness or perceived domestic impact over temperament can all-too-easily get mismatches, which causes heartache for them and a lot of work for rescue. The current most trendy dogs raise the misrepresentation bar to a whole new level. While there are always trendy purebreds, the current dog du jour is the “Designer Dog”, which is an intentional mix of two or more purebreds, one of which is usually Poodle. To sketch out the nomenclature: if the Poodle component of a mix is a Toy Poodle, the mix is a “Poo”. If the Poodle component is a Miniature or Standard, the mix is an “Oodle” or “Doodle”. The names get very silly sounding as you might imagine.

Intentional mixes have actually been around for a long time. The original was probably the Cockapoo and there have been many others especially toy sizes initially produced accidentally, later intentionally by commercial breeders and sold in pet shops. The recent history that kicked off the current trend of larger Designer Dogs started in Australia as a legitimate attempt to breed an improved guide dog for the blind by crossing the Standard Poodle with the Labrador Retriever. The Labradoodle was not successful as a guide dog because the mix was physically inconsistent and because the temperaments did not lend themselves to guide dog training. The resulting marketing caused a proliferation of oodles of Doodles all over the civilized world.

There is a common list of marketing misrepresentations about Doodles, Poos and other intentional mixes as superior and sometimes “perfect”, dogs some of which are:

Claim: They are Designer Dogs

Truth: This is clever marketing, as most folks tend to think of anything “designer” as high end

and produced with the finest skill, creativity and materials. The only designer element in

the term Designer Dog is the marketing expertise—not the dog at all.

Claim: They are brand new “breeds”.

Truth: They are not breeds at all; they are mixes. Becoming a breed is a long complex process

involving scientific breeding and record keeping over time to produce a consistent,

predictable result. Doodle-poos do not breed true as a purebred must, and the people producing them have not even begun the process of founding a studbook for them.

Claim: They will soon be registered by the American Kennel Club.

Truth: Until the above criteria are met, neither AKC nor UKC (United Kennel Club) will ever

register Doodles as purebreds.

UKC has always had a registration for mixes who wish to compete in UKC performance events.

Claim: They are produced because they are superior.

Truth: They are produced because they are profitable. Designer Dogs are often priced at

twice the price of either of the purebred parents.

Claim: They are better than either of the breeds making up the mix.

Truth: Quality of offspring is directly related to the quality of the parents. As doodles are not

produced using the best individuals from each pure breed, they are not better at all.

People with high quality purebreds don’t cross them, and the retrievers and poodles are all grand dogs in their own right.

Claim: They have hybrid vigor.

Truth: Scientifically, hybrid vigor has two essential components: genetic diversity and selection

in which unsuccessful individuals are discarded from the breeding stock either by natural selection or selective breeding. The Doodle phenomenon eliminates selection so the principal does not apply.

Claim: All the health problems of the purebred parents are solved.

Truth: Breeds making up Doodles have similar health problems, so crossing them doesn’t

eliminate the problems. Using parents that are poor specimens of their breeds without proper health clearances makes the offspring more inclined to the health problems in both breeds in the mix than good quality purebreds of either breed.

Claim: They have a perfect temperament and don’t require training.

Truth: There is inconsistency here too, but Golden and Labra-Doodles, especially if the Poodle

part is Standard and even more so if the puppy is male, tend to be wild creatures with a slow development and very poor focus. This is a difficult to almost untrainable temperament, especially in the first 3 years as the dog grows up. The ones based on Miniature Poodles have a much more laid back temperament, and a double-back-min I met recently, where a min-goldendoodle was bred back to the miniature poodle, is a delightful dog, almost as nice as a purebred Min Poodle.

Claim: They don’t shed.

Truth: These mixes are not consistent. Some of them shed a lot and others don’t.

Claim: They have no domestic impact.

Truth: They have moderate to huge domestic impact depending on the size a of the poodle

component. Standard Doodles are large dogs that chew and crash around the house leaping on people, dig holes in the yard, and can be yappy. They tend to mud wallow and roll in unpleasant things and when wet smell doggy.

Claim: They require no maintenance.

Truth: They require lots of maintenance: professional clipping at a grooming shop every 6-8

weeks, ear cleaning, frequent bathing and routine brushing.

Claim: They are hypoallergenic.

Truth: Allergies are triggered by enzymes which are present in saliva most of all and to some

extent dander. Poodles are quite low on allergenic scales because their lips are tight

fitting and they have standing grooming appointments away from home, but retrievers are very high. Doodles are inconsistent in this regard also: some are serious allergy triggers; others are moderate triggers. The larger the doodle, the more potential allergy triggers there will be. Even a very moderately triggering Doodle will be more allergenic than one of the smaller Poodles. There is really no such thing as a non-allergenic dog because dogs go outside and bring stuff back with them Any allergic person should consult a physician before acquiring any pet, and a seriously allergic person with breathing difficulty symptoms should not own a dog at all.

Claim: They are cool looking in a grunge-chic sort of way.

Truth: This is true. Some of them are really cute to downright pretty—a Cockapoo whose

parents are a parti-coloured cocker and a white poodle, for example.

There is nothing wrong with acquiring one of these mixed breeds as long as the buyer is realistic about what is dog and what is marketing; and careful about what went into the mix. One should be aware of health issues with their appropriate screenings in the breeds that make up an intentional mix and evaluate the parents of a doodle or poo as individuals before looking at puppies, just as one should with a purebred. All purebreds have health concerns in their gene pools as do all mixes and generic dogs. The difference between the purebred and the others is not that mixes are healthier but rather that that we know more about the health issues of purebreds, because breeders have studied and identified them. Use the links on the AKC site to check health issues through the national breed club and/or health foundation of any purebred that makes up a mix you are considering. Some of the concerns to get you started that I have seen in doodles in my classes are: Be aware of things such as the age of the parents: a dog must be at least 2 years old before OFA will register an X-ray for hip or elbow dysplasia (http://www.offa.org/) which are concerns in both Retrievers and Poodles. If a litter’s parents are under two years of age, therefore, one cannot certify that they have sound structure. In addition to hips and elbows, check the tooth alignment of both parents and puppies, as malocclusion is a concern in poodles and affects the long term health of any dog. If you are considering a Cockapoo, evaluate the spaniel parent carefully for temperament. There are major issues with cockers that the responsible breeders have been working very hard to breed out: cataracts, submissive urination and nasty cocker syndrome. If either parent is snappy, walk away. Luxating patellas is a concern in toy breeds, and toys can be very difficult to housebreak. Retrievers can be prone to allergies, thyroid imbalance, epilepsy and heart problems. Some time spent on homework by the buyer can avoid lots of difficulties later.

Traditional Pitfalls:

With all the new characteristics of the pet market, the same old players are still around.

The Pet Shop: or mall or highway puppy store is still around and up to its old tricks. A common but not-widely–known pitfall here is that the puppy purchased as a purebred is either not a purebred at all or not the one the buyer thinks he is buying. Many small and toy breeds are hard to produce in commercial quantities, because they have very small litters and/or are delicate and/or are rare to begin with. Many breeds resemble eachother as young puppies. As pet shoppers usually don’t know the difference between breeds or mixes whose puppies look similar, it is very easy to cheat them. These shops have puppies that change breeds several times per day depending on what the customer requests. The same puppy will be a Maltese one minute and a Bischon Frise the next or a Havanese one moment and a Shih Tzu the next and actually be a white or spotted poodle cross or none of the above.

Some of the commercial breeders who supply pet shops are more professional and the puppy will be what the shop says it is. Hunte Corp is the most well known of these. Hunte puppies are microchipped and sold under AKC registrations so that, as long as the shop gives the buyer the puppy’s own registration, the buyer can be sure that the dog is the breed the paperwork says it is. The AKC requires DNA registration of breeding stock, and the DNA– ID number of each parent will appear on a puppy’s AKC registration certificate. The unscrupulous pet shops and their puppy mill suppliers invent their own registries to get around AKC registration rules and AKC Kennel Standards. Imported puppies with foreign registrations are becoming more common in puppy shops as well. Even an AKC registration does not guarantee quality. It is up to the buyer to know how a high quality individual in his breed of choice should look and act both as an adult and as a puppy.

An exception the above comments on AKC registrations of puppy shop puppies is the Poodle. The three sizes of Poodle have a single standard, and so it is easy for the pet shop to substitute one variety’s puppy for another without having to fudge the paperwork. The difference is re-printed below in note #3.

Of course, the biggest problem with a pet shop puppy is that the buyer has no way of knowing anything about the puppy’s parents (in general quality, temperament and health) or the environment in which it was raised. All puppies are cute, but they grow up very quickly. A family looking for a dog should fall in love with the adults of the breed, rather than just puppies. The family’s new dog will only be a puppy for a short time, but it will be an adult for many years.

There is a general caveat emptor involved here beyond the caution that a puppy store is about the worst possible place to acquire a dog—

KNOW WHAT THE PUPPIES OF THE BREED YOU WANT LOOK LIKE AND BUY AN AKC REGISTERED PUPPY

The Backyard Breeder:

People who are breeding a litter to recoup the price they paid for the parent or to give the family the experience of birth and puppy rearing can easily fall into the same bad habits as a puppy mill: they are using adults of inferior quality; they are shortcutting the health screenings; and they don’t really know what they are doing. Backyard breeders tend to advertise in newspaper classifieds or on E-Bay with as text such as:” cute puppies”; “family raised”; “parents on premises”, “paper trained”