Our former neighbors had one, and a mellower dog you wouldn’t see, but small? He was at least as big as a lab.
Call ducks are mini mallards.
I think you’re on the right track.
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Sounds like your Lab is from English lines – that’s how they come, short-legged and stout-bodied. American Labs are more rangy. They’re definitely different types.
I really like the English type. The Bronx Zoo brought in a pair of cheetah cubs and raised them with a pair of English-type Labs; they’re best buddies to this day.
Not that so much as you don’t know what you’re going to get. A Labradoodle or Cockapoo are what as known as cross-breeds (not mutts). If you breed two Labradoodles you’re not going to get more Labradoodles per se but some pups that look kinda like Labradors, some that look kinda like Poodles, and some that still look like your expected Labradoodle.
If you keep breeding the Labradoodles with the characteristics you want until the gene pool stabilizes, then you have a breed.
Silken Windhounds were bred from Borzoi and Whippets starting in 1985. It was not until 2011 until they were a recognized breed by the UKC and are not yet recognized by the AKC so you can see how developing a breed can take a while.
Analogous to “field” vs “show” goldens.
To generalize, field goldens are bred for hunting. Generally significantly smaller, often redder in color. Some are below the minimum weight/height for the standard. But bred to be athletes.
Show goldens are bred for looks. Over the past decade(s) folk have become more enamored of the light-colored and massive ones. I’ve always had good sized dogs all my adult life. A 65-70 pound dog is plenty of dog. I don’t see the appeal of a dog with the same general appearance/temperament, which is just gonna cost more to feed/treat/etc.
Whether you get an undersized field golden or a giant show dog, you are pretty much getting the personality (and hair) you expect of a golden. That’s why I’ve stuck with the breed. They simply act and interact with me the way I want a dog to act. That, and I like the way they look. If I could get the same at 30-40#, I’d seriously consider it.
Is the difference between a “crossbreed” vs a “mutt” that in one case you know what you started with and the other you don’t?
If my female lab gets loose for a few days and later has pups they’re mutts, but if I breed her with my neighbors Schnauzer they are crossbreed?
I don’t have a female lab right now, just asking the difference.
I second the motion.
I think he’s describing a miniature poodle.
Simplified example of how crossbreeds work: Suppose that all dogs were defined by only two traits, color (black or white) and fur texture (curly or straight). Labradors are black and have straight hair, while poodles are white and have curly hair. Further, labradors and poodles are both true breeds, which means that whenever you breed two labs or two poodles, you get another lab or another poodle.
Well, that means that they have matched pairs of genes. If we represent the hair color genes as B and b, and the texture genes as C and c, then labs are BBcc, and poodles are bbCC. The capital letter indicates the dominant gene, so black hair is dominant over white, and curly is dominant over straight. This doesn’t matter for the purebreeds, but it will in the next generation.
OK, so now you breed a pure lab with a pure poodle. The puppies will all be BbCc, which means that they’ll all have black, curly fur. They all look the same as each other, but different from either parent. These are what are called labradoodles.
But now what happens when we breed two labradoodles with each other? The puppies could have any combination of genes. On average, out of every sixteen, nine will have curly black hair, like we expect of a labradoodle. Three will have curly white hair, like a pure poodle. Three will have straight black hair, like a pure lab. And one will even have straight white hair, like none of the other dogs. They don’t breed true.
But some of those dogs that look the same will have different genes, and until recently, it wasn’t possible to tell which were which. One of those nine second-generation labradoodles will be a “true labradoodle”: If we had nothing but true labradoodles, and bred them with each other, then we’d always get another true labradoodle, and they’d be a pure breed, just like the original labs and poodles are. But we can’t tell which ones those are. Two of the nine will be true black, but mixed texture: Breed them together, and the offspring will always be black, but some will be straight-haired. Likewise, two of the nine will be true curly, but mixed color, and the final four would be mixed labradoodles, just like their parents.
Similarly, of the three puppies at look like pure labs, one really will be, but you can’t tell which one. And one that looks like a pure poodle really will be.
And if you wanted a dog with white, straight hair, there you’re in luck, because that one puppy out of sixteen that looks that way is pure, so if you breed such dogs with each other, you’ll always get white, straight hair.
So what do you do if you want pure labradoodles, and you can’t do genetic tests? You breed two labradoodles together, and cull (kill or sterilize) all of the puppies that don’t look right. Then you breed what’s left, and repeat. And you keep track of exactly which dogs produced which puppies. Eventually, the proportion of “true labradoodles” will increase, and you’ll start getting mostly labradoodles from your crosses. Whenever you don’t, you know that at least one of the parents wasn’t pure, and so you cull whichever one seems more suspect, or possibly both of them. Eventually, you’ll almost always get labradoodles (who will all be BBCC), and then you have a true breed.
Of course, this is the simplified version, since real dogs have many more than just two traits, and you need to match all of them. So it’s a lot of work to create a new breed.
Done!
Done!
Pretty much. That and it would be PureBred-1 x Purebred-2. If you mate a Labradoodle and a Cockpoo I would hesitate calling the get a crossbreed even though you know the stock.