Oodles of labradoodles

Alist of new designer-bred dogs reads like the inventory of an Edward Lear menagerie: golden doodles, schnoodles, cavoodles, roodles (rottweiler crossed with poodle), yorkiepoos (yorkshire terrier/poodle), shihpoos (shih tzu/poodle) and poochons (bichon frise/ poodle).

All can be traced back to the 1980s, when Wally Conron, puppybreeding manager for the Royal Guide Dog Association of Australia, was asked to find a non-allergenic guide dog for a blind woman in Hawaii. The poodle part of the equation was easy – they are working dogs; they don’t shed hair. But it took three years to find the right mate, the trusted and trainable labrador retriever. The resulting litter of labpoodle crosses seemed to hit the mark, but there was a snag – those who usually fostered guide dog puppies before they underwent training did not want to look after a “mongrel”. They wanted a purebred.

In desperation, Conron came up with a new name, announcing to the media the arrival of the new labradoodle. Demand soared. But as he later complained to University of British Columbia psychology professor Stanley Coren, the clever marketing tool opened the way for a new species of backyard breeders keen to cross any kind of dog with a poodle without even checking the health of the dogs’ parents. There are undoubtedly some ethical breeders of poodle mixes, he said, “but I released a Frankenstein. So many people are just breeding for the money … I’ve done so much harm to pure breeding and made so many charlatans quite rich.”

“I released a Frankenstein. … I’ve done so much harm to pure breeding and made so many charlatans quite rich.”