For the Love of Dog: Stop Doodling Everything

“We just got a new puppy and need to set up his first vet appointment”.

I was waiting in our vet’s lobby with one of our pooches for her vaccine boosters when a sharply dressed woman came in to schedule her new puppy appointment, a very responsible thing to do when you have a new furry family member. 

The scheduler asked if she knew the breed of the new puppy. 

“Yes, he’s a full-blooded doodle!”

I could nearly hear the scheduler’s eyes rolling into the back of her head as I smiled to myself. “Do you know what kind of doodle?”

That got a blank stare from the puppy’s new owner. She only knew what the breeder told her, so she didn’t have any idea what breeds had been used to create her “pure-bred doodle”. 

Let’s give her a little credit. The dog breeds we know and love today were created over many years (thousands, in some cases) of mixing different kinds of dogs to make improvements until people were happy with the dogs they had. The purpose of building a breed isn’t to see how many pretty colors we can come up with, however. The goal in developing specific breeds is now and has always been genetic predictability. 

That includes predictable behavior, which is largely dependent on the instincts of the ancestral dogs. If you were able to compress time to see the beginning to end progression of modern breeds, it would look a little like a recipe being developed. If the end result is a faithful guardian breed that can survive mountain climates, nurture young or injured livestock, and dispatch bears that try to harm those livestock then you slowly add in dogs that represent the traits you want to see in your final animal. 

Start with a sturdy pair of dogs with good longevity for health. Add a pinch of Saint Bernard for weather hardiness, a dash of Rhodesian Ridgeback for fearlessness in the face of large predators, and just a touch of English Sheepdog for loyalty and herd protection. Polish that off by “simmering” for several centuries, adding minor tweaks along the way, and eventually you’ve got a really solid recipe! We call the end result a breed, and we breed it to others of the same breed in an effort to fortify and predictably reproduce the behavior qualities we were looking for from the start.   

In modern scenarios, it seems the motivation behind this process has shifted from predictability to “let’s see what we get”. If you want to know why that’s a bad idea, go back to the recipe analogy for a moment. Head to the kitchen, grab a pot, throw in 3-4 random ingredients, heat them really quick, and see what you get! You might get lucky and accidentally concoct something delectable. Odds are better you’ll spit that junk in the sink and toss the rest to the chickens (who will also grumble about your questionable culinary choices, but probably eat it anyway). 

In the dog world, we don’t get to just “spit out” the results that don’t work so well. These are live animals that will be around for several years, so maybe you can see how irresponsible it is to grab random ingredients because they look good and then expect the public to deal with the results! 

The doodle, specifically the labradoodle — labrador/poodle — is credited with sparking the modern fad of creating designer breeds. The labradoodle was created in 1989 by Wally Conron in response to a request for a guide dog with a hypoallergenic low-shedding coat. From there the demand for intentionally mixed, or “designer” breeds, simply exploded, largely fueled by some creative marketing and half truths. Specific to that category is the concept that anything “doodle” — which means crossed with a poodle — will be hypoallergenic and shed less than the original breed. 

Remember when I said maintaining the integrity of a breed means creating genetic predictability? The problem with expecting a specific result when combining genetics is you just don’t know for sure what you’re going to get. Sure, you might get the Poodle qualities you’re looking for in that mix, but if you’re crossing it with a Golden Retriever you also introduce that breed’s genetics. Believe me when I tell you, Golden’s shed — a LOT. 

Your puppy might get the poodle traits or it might get the golden traits. That’s how genetics work, but as the designer craze continued so did the clever marketing and sales tactics that would eventually lead to a backyard-breeder boom. Breeders no longer needed to have healthy AKC registered stock to produce sellable puppies. In the first two decades of this century it became a status symbol to own one of these exotic “breeds”, and the prices they commanded would lead us into a deplorable era of overpopulation and rampant owner surrendering. 

Incidentally, Conron later publicly expressed deep regret for having created the Labradoodle, acknowledging that it opened a Pandora’s Box for irresponsible, profit-driven breeding. 

Lack of predictability in physical traits is really just the tip of the shelter-sinking iceberg. What has really spiked the incidence of owner surrenders to shelters and rescues is the lack of predictability in behavior and temperament. After working with various dog trainers and following the social media posts of several canine behaviorists, it is clear to me these crossed breeds don’t act the way their buyers expect, however if we take a closer look at the instinctual traits of the breeds in the recipe we probably wouldn’t be so surprised! 

The bottom line is breed matters. Never is this more true when attempting to combine two solid breeds to create something “cute” in order to make more money, and never has a trend been more devastating to the canine population. Doodles of all kinds (Bernadoodle, Labradoodle, Aussiedoodle, etc) and other designer crosses are being surrendered to shelters in nearing record numbers. Owners report reasons such as high grooming maintenance (a fact most dog sellers conveniently fail to disclose), intense energy levels (due to the high drive poodle required to make a doodle!), and unexpected behavior issues that owners find overwhelming. The “dumping” of these unpredictable breeds has become so severe that many in the industry refer to it as the “doodle crisis”.

I’m not knocking your pet doodle, so please don’t flood us with examples of how wrong all of this is. Individual experience notwithstanding, the crisis in the shelters and the stories from dog trainers across the nation tells the true cost of designer breeding. 

At your wits end when your own doodle tale? We may be able to help. Training scholarships are available to those who qualify, our own trainers may be able to offer up some advice, and it might interest you just to know you aren’t alone if you fell for the designer breed sales pitch. 

Breed matters. Only you and your family can determine, with education and patience, which breed is right for you. We’re here to help you decide when you’re ready. 

In the meantime, for the love of DOG — Stop Doodling Everything!