Wikipedia link here - mentioned under “health” just before the article starts listing all the breed’s genetic liability. Yep - just six dogs. That family tree looks like a telephone pole.
F1 doodles are rare. And they make little sense, because the puppies will be unpredictable, whereas the doodle is supposed to combine the best of both breeds. And since the biggest selling point is reduced chance of provoking a human allergic response, the dogs will not be as advertised unless this is true:
I’m a little allergic to cats and more allergic to some than to others. I test prospective kittens by meeting them. And if i didn’t have an immediate reaction, i sniff them, and pet them, and gingerly touch my eye with the hand that let 8 the cat. I only adopt kittens who meet this test.
I don’t need a pedigree to know that. It’s helpful to start with a breed that’s hypoallergenic. But even among Maine Coons and Siberian Forest cats (two breeds that, despite having long hair, are not very allergenic) there are some individuals i don’t want to live with.
(The other way I’ve adopted cats is by fostering lots of litters, and waiting for a litter that i didn’t react to.)
If i were buying a dog, I’d look for an F1 cross between two different breeds, to reduce the risk of health problems.
What are all these Doodle breeds gonna do to the actual purebred Poodle? I imagine Poodle breeders are nervous.
I knew a cocker-poodle mix a long time ago named Pookie. (Accidental pregnancy)Nasty little dog. With massive teeth problems. I hope they’ve gotten better with modern cockapoos.
The only other designer breed I knew was a chiweenie. Now that was an adorable mix.
My Sister has a adopted shelter mix that was advertised as Chihuahua/Terrier type. Her, thinking no way it was Pit bull terrier and Chihuahua took it to mean a small terrier.
Well, she was wrong. Fully pit type dog. White with tiny dark ticking. Nekkid belly. So cute. Weighs 40lbs. Is lovey dovey, sweet. Happy as can be. Only Chihuahua thing it does is tremble. Well, that and she tries to sit in your lap. We all love Pepper when she visits.
You just never know.
I grew up with German Shepherd Dogs (GSD) and love the breed.
When I was an adult and married and we wanted a dog and I wanted a GSD. But, the breed was seriously messed up by unscrupulous breeders by that point. So much so, IIRC, US police and the military were only getting their GSDs from a few places in Europe where they were still reliable.
So, we got a Shiloh Shepherd which, at the time, was one woman’s mission to recreate the GSD to its ideals. And she succeeded after a lot of work. But, technically, it was not a GSD as would be recognized by the AKC and such. It was its own thing.
And I think that is fine. If Poodles are ruined as a breed in the same fashion as GSDs were then maybe someone can re-make the ideal of one even if not, technically, the exact same thing.
We should be aiming for vibrant, healthy pets. No need to tick a box that says you have an AKC conforming whatever (again, IMO).
I checked the Poodle Club of America web site. They list one active breeder in NewJersey, one in New York State, and zero in Pennsylvania. There are 23 total east of the Mississippi. I guess there are show breeders not on that list, but that’s likely the majority of them.
Just walking my dog confirms that doodles are now far more common than poodles. And when I was a child, doodles weren’t invented, and poodles were the most popular dog.
I think the main reason for this is that doodle breeders are primarily in it for the money. So they have an incentive to make the purchase experience easy. Poodle breeders? Well, exempting so-called backyard breeders, whose numbers are also declining, and pet shops, the number of which has greatly declined, the Poodle breeders are involved in an old-fashioned expensive hobby. They are required to screen purchasers, asking questions like whether they have a fenced yard. I’m not saying they make that an absolute requirement, or that I dislike being questioned. But it sure must discourage less confident customers who fear being subjected to a test they might not pass.
I’m not saying that for-profit pet selling is morally wrong. It can be done right or wrong. I’m just answering your question.
A lot of GSD fans get German dogs raised for Schutzhund. They seem to be the least compromised. Other people are switching to the Belgian Malinois or the Tervuren.
I hope to heaven they know what they’re doing, getting such a high prey drive, energetic, intelligent dog that NEEDS a job that engages its mind and offers lots of exercise. I admire those dogs tremendously and wouldn’t dream of owning one.
Beautiful dogs but I would never have one. They are jacked up GSDs on crack after a few Red Bulls.
I saw a video of a GSD and Malinois trained for police/military work. The “bad guy” (a mannequin) was in a gym. The dogs had to get to the bad guy and there were hundreds of folding chairs between the dogs and the bad guy (setup as they would for a performance).
The GSD ran down the aisles and wound its way to the bad guy. The Malinois literally (really literally) went right over the top/through them all in a straight line to the bad guy.
Probably great for the military but that is waaaaay too much dog for most homes I think.
ETA: I remembered the video wrong but close enough. I have to put the video link here because Discord is being a pain.
We’ve had dachshunds all my life. Only one had any back issues, and she made a complete recovery. If you’re careful and not let them jump down from furniture and make sure you exercise them to keep them trim, they’re pretty healthy. We’ve had six with no back issues at all. Ever.
ETA: I’m more upset by the mutilation after the pups are born. Boxers and Great Danes and Dobermans (Dobermen?). Surgeries for cosmetic purposes only.
This, exactly.
I have an AKC-registered pet quality dachshund. He’s almost 11 months old. He’s the liveliest dog I’ve ever had, and I’ve had quite a number of dogs. Including another AKC-registered pet quality dachshund.
I spent 2 years looking for the right breeder. When I found her, I was impressed that the emphasis in her breeding program was good health for the breed above all else. I have the pedigree that proves no inbreeding and she travels the entire country to ensure the dog parents come from different dachshund lines. She offers a lifetime guarantee to take the dog back no matter what if there is a problem with ownership.
My instructions when I gave her my wish list was 1) good health; 2) good temperament. She fulfilled both requests. He’s a little funny looking with outsized paws, but his chest easily clears the ground and he’s not too long. Nearly a third of him is tail.
Both my dachshunds were/are trained to wait to be lifted/put down on furniture. Their food portions were/are carefully measured. They were/are rigorously socialized. No biting or snapping.
I would hate to see dachshunds “outlawed.” They’re popular for a reason. They’re delightful companions when properly socialized and back problems are far more common due to irresponsible owners who feed them too much, let them jump up and down on furniture and don’t give them enough exercise. The problem isn’t the breed. It’s the pet owners.
I think the AKC fulfills what pet owners say they want. We as pet owners owe a duty of care to our favored breeds to insist that breeders breed first for health and temperament.
I suspect that for many shelters “shelter mix”, and a good deal of other terms as well, actually mean “Pit bull or mostly pit bull or at any rate looks like a pit bull, but we really don’t want to say so.”
Pit bulls are very often excellent dogs. Unfortunately it’s often difficult to convince one’s insurance company and/or the neighbors of that.
I was mostly thinking of police/security/military, which used to employ German Shepherd Dogs almost exclusively for partner work. Now it seems to be a lot of Malinois and some Tervurens, and fewer GSDs. I do 't know if that’s because the GSD breed has declined, or that the other breeds have developed iinto excellent dogs in the role and compete with the Shepherds. Maybe some of both.
Of the three, I think a good GSD makes for a better family dog. They are incredibly adaptable dogs, which is one reason they are used so often for service dogs.
I had German Shepherd Dogs when I was a kid. I love them. The only reason I don’t have one now is that the breed has issues like hip dysplasia, and they can grow quite large, and size has a destructiveness and cost of its own.
We find Border Collies to be the perfect size for us. But there aren’t many BC service dogs because they aren’t well suited to just lying down on a leash all day. GSDs will do it.
Totally.
The shelter I volunteered at was so sensitive about it. If the dog was a bully breed he was in a different area. Mainly because bad types often want to adopt them. But to protect the dogs from the tsk tsks as well, from people looking for puppies of the cute fluffy types.
It’s bad juju around here.
It can be hard to tell the difference. I frequently dog-sit my friend’s standard poodle. She looks almost exactly like the neighbors’ labradoodles, and many people ask if that’s what she is. She’s not. She’s a purebred poodle from a breeder in Seattle. Her owner has her groomed once a month or so, but like most poodles, she doesn’t get one of those topiary haircuts.
A couple of years ago, purebred poodles made it back into the top five most popular dog breeds in the US, according to the AKC. (Standard, miniature, toy, etc. are all lumped together.)
Yeah, thanks for implying my mother was a bad pet owner.
We never had a problem with any of our dogs being overweight, regardless of breed or mix.
I suspect the problem with mom’s dogs was bad breeding. My mother didn’t spend two years looking for a dog, maybe that was her mistake, trusting someone local instead of traveling hundreds of miles to a different state. You don’t see how crazy it is that you have to go to such effort to get a healthy dog of a particular breed? I’m glad you’ve had such good results but if a breed is so f***ed up that you have to spend years researching and looking for a reliable breeder and travel significant distances to get a healthy puppy there is something really, really, really wrong with the system.
The last one she had was only a few years old when he suffered a paralyzing spine injury going down the front steps of the house for his morning walk. After that she never had another purebred. Funny, though - all the mutts we had as pets after that always seemed to have a lot of dauschund in the mix… None of them had any back problems or injuries. Guess we weren’t terrible owners after all.
So, anyone who’s ever had a Dachshund with a spinal injury is a bad pet owner? Seriously?
Please rethink that statement.
Agreed. The doodles are today’s iteration of the for-profit-bred poodle.
Those ranks do not tell us the number of registered poodles.
The last year they released the number of registrations was 2008. Poodles were ranked number 6, with the number of dogs being 14,350.
Compare in the next link to the situation back in 1993, when poodles were also ranked 6, but the number of dogs was 67,850.
American Kennel Club Historical Statistics
This illustrates the collapse of the purebred dog world (aside from the non-AKC doodles, and the frenchies) that the AKC no longer chooses to document.
As part of an aggregate, unintentionally, yes. Not “bad”, but the ultimate source of the problem.
They are the demand exceeding the limited supply of responsible breeders. And if they are aware of the predisposition of the breed to these health problems and buy anyway (without going to the extremes to assure healthy outcomes chances are optimized) then they are “bad” … not bad if they are simply ignorant but they need to become informed.
I own cats, not dogs. So maybe I’m way out of touch. But the idea that you need to police an animal to prevent it from hurting itself climbing on furniture is really foreign to me.