Since when did a Mongrel start getting posh names

Paradigm

DigForVictory wrote: »

I'd prefer a Heinz 57 pup with loads of potential & no known bad habits or underlying health conditions, but strangely, those don't get advertised.

Thing is if a Lab/Poodle cross was advertised as a Lab/Poodle cross I doubt many would pay a great deal for a puppy.

Give it a stupid name however & suddenly someone will pay big money. The worlds gone mad.

JencParker

livingfrugally wrote: »

I think it was also to try and breed out the hip problems of labradors whilst breeding in the non-moulting of poodles. They never used them of course, most labradoodles I've ever met are bonkers!

This just shows how wrong things can be assumed to be fact. Firstly, Labradors are far from the worst breed that has hip problems many breeds suffer far more, it is simply the vast number of Labradors around that means most have heard of a Labrador with a problem, if you look at the breed average it is at the low end.

The breeding of labradoodles had nothing to do with hips but was done in Australia at the request of someone who had allergies. Pure breed poodles were tried initially, but they failed at the training and were not reliable so the idea was to cross with the most reliable of guide dogs - the Labrador in the hope that they may get some non shedding in the litter. I believe it took 3 litters to get the three non shedding puppies they were looking for, because like any cross/mongrel, no one knows which genes they will inherit. It was purely because none of the puppy walkers wanted a cross breed and they needed the puppy walkers that Wally Conran (Breeder for Guide Dogs Aus) started a publicity campaign saying they had invented a new breed - the labradoodle - this produced the desired effect and they had plenty of puppy walkers apply. However, he himself says he regrets it now and never would have done it if he had known that it would lead to the indiscriminate designer breeding that is going on today.
The poodle/lab cross has largely been abandoned by the Guide dogs because of it's inconsistency and the most successful cross by far is the Golden retriever/Labrador cross - funny though you don't see those commanding high prices in the designer dog free ads!

JencParker

Paradigm wrote: »

Thing is if a Lab/Poodle cross was advertised as a Lab/Poodle cross I doubt many would pay a great deal for a puppy.

Give it a stupid name however & suddenly someone will pay big money. The worlds gone mad.

Exactly - google Wally Conran (the Aus Guide Dog breeder) and you will find that is EXACTLY why he promoted them as 'labradoodles' because no one wanted to puppy walk a cross breed. Something he now bitterly regrets.

Skintski

Some people are such mugs paying high figures for a cross and then giving them a silly name.

Ours is Patterdale cross springer spaniel. Maybe we should be calling her a Patterspan.;)

catkins

livingfrugally wrote: »

I stand corrected. But I've only seen labradors and flat coated retrievers as Guide Dogs. Even puppy walkers today only seem to be having labradors. I don't think they've had the big changeover from labs to labradoodles they anticipated when they first bred them. I remember hearing they were going to replace labs as the new greed of Guide Dog. I can only imagine it's because they're more difficult to train??

Yes, I am not sure how many labradoodles are used but I would not think it would be many. I was actually very surprised to see a labradoodle guide dog as I know poodles are not the easiest of dogs to train.


I saw the labradoodle guide dog on a fund raising day in my local town and there were probably about 8 dogs dotted round the town, 6 being Labradors, 1 labradoodle and 1 that I wasn't sure about!

GwylimT

Poodles like collie's are very clever, I would have thought they would become easily bored being a guide dog.

We have a bulldog, so he is stupid enough without getting a hybrid version!

I would have thought if you were crossing two pure breeds you would be fairly likely for that animal to suffer certain things that each breed is more susceptible, e.g eye problems in poodles, where as 'proper' mongrels have a wide range of inherited genes and so are less likely to have a large collection of 'duds'.

Paradigm

GwylimT wrote: »

I would have thought if you were crossing two pure breeds you would be fairly likely for that animal to suffer certain things that each breed is more susceptible, e.g eye problems in poodles, where as 'proper' mongrels have a wide range of inherited genes and so are less likely to have a large collection of 'duds'.

Outcrossing in itself isn't a bad thing, many of todays "pure" breeds are the result & are better for it.

As said by a previous poster, the Lab/Poodle cross was an attempt to combine the best of both breeds... a non shedding dog that was still able to be trained as a guide dog but it's basically a genetic lottery.

To get the required result can take years of selective breeding & there are no guarantees it will ever be totally stable. Breeding back to a Lab can undo all this work in a few minutes if the shedding gene is the more dominant.

The reason that a lot of pedigree dogs have problems can be laid squarely, IMO, at the Kennel Clubs door. The required breed standards for showing have become so exaggerated that some dogs are now nothing like the same breed of 100 yrs ago.

A perfect example is the Neapolitan Mastiff which should be a huge but lean dog but is now a grotesque, almost caricature, abomination because someone decided that wrinkles win prizes.

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fen%2F1%2F15%2FNeapolitan_Mastiff_Male_Head.JPG&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FNeapolitan_Mastiff&h=1024&w=768&tbnid=n0wYymheGwL12M%3A&zoom=1&docid=GAtruMOEYL3RiM&hl=en&ei=N5nLU7j9GoOM7Ab7qIGYDA&tbm=isch&ved=0CDYQMygAMAA&iact=rc&uact=3&dur=604&page=1&start=0&ndsp=12

That is just not right!

Let's not forget that throwing two dogs together with the only intention of making a fast buck can easily result in a litter that's inherited the worst traits/problems of both breeds.

This whole Cockerpoo/Sprollie thing is fuelled by the people that buy them for crazy money thinking they got a "designer dog"... no they didn't, they got a crossbreed & have no idea how it will turn out or even what it will look like!

Sorry for the rant but I hate the whole money making fiasco!

catkins

GwylimT wrote: »

Poodles like collie's are very clever, I would have thought they would become easily bored being a guide dog.

Yes I agree, poodles are very intelligent. A lot of people mistake trainability (not sure if that is actually a word!) with intelligence or lack of.


Just because a certain breed is easy to train does not necessarily make them the most intelligent. Quite a lot of people, myself and OH included, believe that some breeds are hard to train because they have the intelligence to "question" what they are asked to do.

Paradigm

livingfrugally wrote: »

Can I just take this opportunity to say that I am new to the MSE forum and I find some of the people on here and some of the posts towards the people who are posting really can be rude and sometimes quite aggressive and really patronising towards other people. No wonder MSE has introduced a poster system to tell people to be nice to newbies, otherwise I imagine a lot of people wouldn't stick around very long

You get used to it

It's not personal, just how some come across... probably guilty of it myself at times.
Don't forget it's the internet & not the real world

Evil_Olive

I presume a 'CockerPoo' is a cross between a Cocker spaniel and a Poodle?

How the person who named it resisted calling it a C*ck-a-doodle I will never understand - I couldn't have resisted, that's for sure