To Doodle Or Not To Doodle
Understanding What Is Behind The Labradoodle Designer Dog Craze!
In Alignment with Poodle Club of America, Royal Hawaiian Rich Red & Rare
Standard Poodles does not endorse, condone or support designer fad dog breeding!
A Designer Dog Maker Regrets His Creation
The inventor of the Labradoodle believes he created a Frankenstein.
Published on April 1, 2014 by Stanley Coren, Ph.D., F.R.S.C. in Canine Corner
Labradoodle
I was in the lobby of a hotel in Toronto waiting to be picked up and taken to the venue where I was scheduled to give a talk. A well-dressed middle-aged woman was standing nearby with a sand colored curly haired dog. As I bent down to give the dog a friendly pat, she announced to me "Molly is a purebred Labradoodle, just like the one that Jennifer Aniston [the actress] has."
It amazes me how intelligent people can refer to an intentionally crossbred dog, such as the Labradoodle, as "purebred". The Labradoodle is a cross between the Labrador Retriever and the Poodle. It avoids the negative label of "mutt" or "mongrel" because it is a deliberate crossbreeding, and those who market such pups have come to refer to them as "designer dogs", a label designed to give them a hint of sophistication and elitism. There are many designer dogs now available and the majority involve crossbreeding Poodles with other breeds. Perhaps the earliest of these appeared in the 1950s, and it was the Cockapoo, a Cocker Spaniel/Poodle cross, which never achieved much popularity. Nowadays one can find a Goldendoodle (Golden Retriever/Poodle), Schnoodle (Miniature Schnauzer/Poodle), Cavoodles (Cavalier King Charles Spaniel/Poodle), Roodles (Rottweiller/Poodle), Yorkiepoo (Yorkshire Terrier/Poodle), Shihpoo (Shih Tzu/Poodle), Maltipoo (Maltese/Poodle), Poochon (Bichon Frise/Poodle), Lhasapoo (Lhasa Apso/Poodle) to name a few. Although there are other designer dog crosses, the Poodle is frequently entered into the mix in order to provide a non-shedding coat quality and a presumed hypoallergenic trait to the resultant pups.
Wally Conron
I was fortunate enough to be able to interview Wally Conron a few years ago. For those of you who don't know who Wally Conron is, he is the man credited with the creation of the Labradoodle. Conron was the puppy breeding manager for the Royal Guide Dog Association of Australia in the 1980s, when his boss set him a difficult task. A blind woman from Hawaii had had written to ask if they could provide a guide dog that would not shed hair, because her husband was allergic to it. To quote Conron, "I said, 'Oh yes, this will be a piece of cake. The Standard Poodle is a working dog, it doesn't shed hair so it'll be great.' I tried 33 dogs in the course of three years and they all failed. They just didn't make the grade as guide dogs. Meanwhile, the woman in Hawaii was getting older and my boss was getting on my back."
Desperation drove Conron to consider an alternate course of action. The upshot was that he took his best female Labrador Retriever and mated it with a Standard Poodle. This resulted in a litter of three pups. With a long waiting list for people wishing to foster guide dog puppies, Conron was sure that he'd have no problem placing their three new crossbred dogs with a family to be trained and socialized before being enlisted in the guide dog program. Unfortunately nobody would take them since everyone wanted a purebred dog. So that's when Conron came up with the name Labradoodle. According to him, "I went to our PR team and said, 'Go to the press and tell them we've invented a new dog, the Labradoodle.' It was a gimmick, and it went worldwide. It worked – during the weeks that followed, our switchboard was inundated with calls from potential dog fostering homes, other guide-dog centres, vision-impaired people and people allergic to dog hair who wanted to know more about this 'wonder dog.'"
Conron immediately discovered that since the Labradoodle is a hybrid and not a pure breed, the resulting puppies did not have consistently predictable characteristics. Although all Labradoodles have some common traits, their appearance, working ability, and behavioral characteristics remain somewhat unpredictable. Even in the nature of their coat — the reason why the Poodle was originally part of the mix— there is lots of variability. Labradoodles' coats can vary from wiry to soft, and they may be curly, wavy, or straight. Straight-coated Labradoodles are said to have "hair" coats, wavy-coated dogs have "fleece" coats, and curly-coated dogs have "wool" coats. Many Labradoodles do shed, although the coat usually sheds less and has less dog odor than that of a Labrador Retriever. In the Labradoodle there is also no certainty that the dog will be hypoallergenic. Conrad explains that the raison d'être for having these crosses in the first place was to prevent allergy symptoms, and that characteristic cannot be guaranteed by simply creating a Poodle cross. He complains, "This is what gets up my nose, if you'll pardon the expression. When the pups were five months old, we sent clippings and saliva over to Hawaii to be tested with this woman's husband. Of the three pups, he was not allergic to one of them. In the next litter I had there were 10 pups, but only three had non-allergenic coats. Now, people are breeding these dogs and selling them as non-allergenic, and they're not even testing them!"
He continues his lament saying, "Get on the internet and verify it for yourself. All these backyard breeders have jumped on the bandwagon, and they're crossing any kind of dog with a poodle. They're selling them for more than a purebred is worth and they're not going into the backgrounds of the parents of the dogs. There are so many poodle crosses having fits, problems with their eyes, hips and elbows, and a lot have epilepsy. There are a few ethical breeders, but very very few.
"I opened a Pandora's box, that's what I did. I released a Frankenstein. So many people are just breeding for the money. So many of these dogs have physical problems, and a lot of them are just crazy.
"You know that American president Obama announced he was thinking of getting a Labradoodle. So I wrote him a letter saying what the pitfalls were. I said 'If you are going to buy a Labradoodle, check both of the parents, make sure they have a certificate. A lot of them are untrainable, and a lot of them are no good for people with allergies.' I don't know if he was listening to me but he didn't get one in the end.
"Today I am internationally credited as the first person to breed the Labradoodle. People ask me 'Aren't you proud of yourself?' I tell them 'No! Not in the slightest.' I've done so much harm to pure breeding and made so many charlatans quite rich. I wonder, in my retirement, whether we bred a designer dog – or a disaster!"
I finished my interview with him by asking if he has ever kept a Labradoodle as a pet. "No way!" he told me in a shocked tone of voice. "My dogs are Labrador Retrievers – Rocky and Jazz. I only ever bred 31 Labradoodles. I'm on a pension and live in a little shoebox flat. If I'd gone into breeding Labradoodles for a living, I'd be on easy street. But there was no way I'd do it. My conscience wouldn't let me."
Stanley Coren is the author of many books including: The Wisdom of Dogs; Do Dogs Dream? Born to Bark; The Modern Dog; Why Do Dogs Have Wet Noses? The Pawprints of History; How Dogs Think; How To Speak Dog; Why We Love the Dogs We Do; What Do Dogs Know? The Intelligence of Dogs; Why Does My Dog Act That Way? Understanding Dogs for Dummies; Sleep Thieves; The Left-hander Syndrome
Copyright SC Psychological Enterprises Ltd. May not be reprinted or reposted without permission
The inventor of the Labradoodle believes he created a Frankenstein.
Published on April 1, 2014 by Stanley Coren, Ph.D., F.R.S.C. in Canine Corner
Labradoodle
I was in the lobby of a hotel in Toronto waiting to be picked up and taken to the venue where I was scheduled to give a talk. A well-dressed middle-aged woman was standing nearby with a sand colored curly haired dog. As I bent down to give the dog a friendly pat, she announced to me "Molly is a purebred Labradoodle, just like the one that Jennifer Aniston [the actress] has."
It amazes me how intelligent people can refer to an intentionally crossbred dog, such as the Labradoodle, as "purebred". The Labradoodle is a cross between the Labrador Retriever and the Poodle. It avoids the negative label of "mutt" or "mongrel" because it is a deliberate crossbreeding, and those who market such pups have come to refer to them as "designer dogs", a label designed to give them a hint of sophistication and elitism. There are many designer dogs now available and the majority involve crossbreeding Poodles with other breeds. Perhaps the earliest of these appeared in the 1950s, and it was the Cockapoo, a Cocker Spaniel/Poodle cross, which never achieved much popularity. Nowadays one can find a Goldendoodle (Golden Retriever/Poodle), Schnoodle (Miniature Schnauzer/Poodle), Cavoodles (Cavalier King Charles Spaniel/Poodle), Roodles (Rottweiller/Poodle), Yorkiepoo (Yorkshire Terrier/Poodle), Shihpoo (Shih Tzu/Poodle), Maltipoo (Maltese/Poodle), Poochon (Bichon Frise/Poodle), Lhasapoo (Lhasa Apso/Poodle) to name a few. Although there are other designer dog crosses, the Poodle is frequently entered into the mix in order to provide a non-shedding coat quality and a presumed hypoallergenic trait to the resultant pups.
Wally Conron
I was fortunate enough to be able to interview Wally Conron a few years ago. For those of you who don't know who Wally Conron is, he is the man credited with the creation of the Labradoodle. Conron was the puppy breeding manager for the Royal Guide Dog Association of Australia in the 1980s, when his boss set him a difficult task. A blind woman from Hawaii had had written to ask if they could provide a guide dog that would not shed hair, because her husband was allergic to it. To quote Conron, "I said, 'Oh yes, this will be a piece of cake. The Standard Poodle is a working dog, it doesn't shed hair so it'll be great.' I tried 33 dogs in the course of three years and they all failed. They just didn't make the grade as guide dogs. Meanwhile, the woman in Hawaii was getting older and my boss was getting on my back."
Desperation drove Conron to consider an alternate course of action. The upshot was that he took his best female Labrador Retriever and mated it with a Standard Poodle. This resulted in a litter of three pups. With a long waiting list for people wishing to foster guide dog puppies, Conron was sure that he'd have no problem placing their three new crossbred dogs with a family to be trained and socialized before being enlisted in the guide dog program. Unfortunately nobody would take them since everyone wanted a purebred dog. So that's when Conron came up with the name Labradoodle. According to him, "I went to our PR team and said, 'Go to the press and tell them we've invented a new dog, the Labradoodle.' It was a gimmick, and it went worldwide. It worked – during the weeks that followed, our switchboard was inundated with calls from potential dog fostering homes, other guide-dog centres, vision-impaired people and people allergic to dog hair who wanted to know more about this 'wonder dog.'"
Conron immediately discovered that since the Labradoodle is a hybrid and not a pure breed, the resulting puppies did not have consistently predictable characteristics. Although all Labradoodles have some common traits, their appearance, working ability, and behavioral characteristics remain somewhat unpredictable. Even in the nature of their coat — the reason why the Poodle was originally part of the mix— there is lots of variability. Labradoodles' coats can vary from wiry to soft, and they may be curly, wavy, or straight. Straight-coated Labradoodles are said to have "hair" coats, wavy-coated dogs have "fleece" coats, and curly-coated dogs have "wool" coats. Many Labradoodles do shed, although the coat usually sheds less and has less dog odor than that of a Labrador Retriever. In the Labradoodle there is also no certainty that the dog will be hypoallergenic. Conrad explains that the raison d'être for having these crosses in the first place was to prevent allergy symptoms, and that characteristic cannot be guaranteed by simply creating a Poodle cross. He complains, "This is what gets up my nose, if you'll pardon the expression. When the pups were five months old, we sent clippings and saliva over to Hawaii to be tested with this woman's husband. Of the three pups, he was not allergic to one of them. In the next litter I had there were 10 pups, but only three had non-allergenic coats. Now, people are breeding these dogs and selling them as non-allergenic, and they're not even testing them!"
He continues his lament saying, "Get on the internet and verify it for yourself. All these backyard breeders have jumped on the bandwagon, and they're crossing any kind of dog with a poodle. They're selling them for more than a purebred is worth and they're not going into the backgrounds of the parents of the dogs. There are so many poodle crosses having fits, problems with their eyes, hips and elbows, and a lot have epilepsy. There are a few ethical breeders, but very very few.
"I opened a Pandora's box, that's what I did. I released a Frankenstein. So many people are just breeding for the money. So many of these dogs have physical problems, and a lot of them are just crazy.
"You know that American president Obama announced he was thinking of getting a Labradoodle. So I wrote him a letter saying what the pitfalls were. I said 'If you are going to buy a Labradoodle, check both of the parents, make sure they have a certificate. A lot of them are untrainable, and a lot of them are no good for people with allergies.' I don't know if he was listening to me but he didn't get one in the end.
"Today I am internationally credited as the first person to breed the Labradoodle. People ask me 'Aren't you proud of yourself?' I tell them 'No! Not in the slightest.' I've done so much harm to pure breeding and made so many charlatans quite rich. I wonder, in my retirement, whether we bred a designer dog – or a disaster!"
I finished my interview with him by asking if he has ever kept a Labradoodle as a pet. "No way!" he told me in a shocked tone of voice. "My dogs are Labrador Retrievers – Rocky and Jazz. I only ever bred 31 Labradoodles. I'm on a pension and live in a little shoebox flat. If I'd gone into breeding Labradoodles for a living, I'd be on easy street. But there was no way I'd do it. My conscience wouldn't let me."
Stanley Coren is the author of many books including: The Wisdom of Dogs; Do Dogs Dream? Born to Bark; The Modern Dog; Why Do Dogs Have Wet Noses? The Pawprints of History; How Dogs Think; How To Speak Dog; Why We Love the Dogs We Do; What Do Dogs Know? The Intelligence of Dogs; Why Does My Dog Act That Way? Understanding Dogs for Dummies; Sleep Thieves; The Left-hander Syndrome
Copyright SC Psychological Enterprises Ltd. May not be reprinted or reposted without permission
Labradoodle creator's regrets -- says inventing 'designer dog' may have been a 'disaster'
May 4, 2010
The Australian man who unwittingly sparked the "designer dog" craze by creating the labradoodle in the late 1980s says he regrets it.
"It's not something I'm proud of'," Wally Conran, 81, tells The Australian. "I wish I could turn the clock back."
Conran first got the idea to mix a Labrador Retriever with a poodle, known for its low-shedding hair, while working as the puppy-breeding manager for the Royal Guide Dog Association of Australia in the early 1980s. He received a letter from a vision-impaired woman in Hawaii who needed an allergy-free guide dog because her husband was allergic to dogs.
An allergy-free guide dog didn't exist (and still doesn't since no dog breed is truly hypoallergenic), but Conran believed he could create a dog that would work. He decided to cross a labrador with a poodle. "The standard poodle, a trainable working dog, was probably the most suitable breed, with its tightly curled coat," Conran writes in a 2007 article explaining how he came to create the labradoodle.
After two years spent looking for a poodle with the correct temperament and trainability, Conran mated it to a labrador and produced three puppies. Hair and saliva samples from all three puppies were sent to Hawaii, where the husband of the vision-impaired woman found that only one of the puppies proved to be allergy-free.
The allergy-free labrador/poodle mix puppy was trained and sent to Hawaii, where it bonded with the vision-impaired woman. The experiment was considered a great success. Conran had created a crossbreed dog that could work as a guide dog for vision-impaired people with dog allergies.
One problem: nobody wanted the new crossbred dogs for a guide dog; they all wanted a purebred.
That's when Conran hit upon a marketing idea. "I decided to stop mentioning the word crossbreed and introduced the term 'labradoodle' instead to describe my new allergy-free guide-dog pups," Conran writes.
It worked. Interest in the labradoodle skyrocketed, but so did Conran's concerns. "I began to worry, too, about backyard breeders producing supposedly 'allergy-free' dogs for profit," he writes. "Already, one man claimed to be the first to breed a poodle-Rottweiler cross!"
He had opened up a Pandora's box of designer mixed-breed dogs, he says, and there was no putting the genie back in the bottle. "Nothing...could stop the mania that followed," he writes. "New breeds began to flood the market: groodles, spoodles, caboodles and snoodles. Were breeders bothering to check their sires and bitches for heredity faults, or were they simply caught up in delivering to hungry customers the next status symbol? We’ll never know for sure."
"Today I am internationally credited as the first person to breed the labradoodle," Conran writes. "But I wonder, in my retirement, whether we bred a designer dog – or a disaster!"
May 4, 2010
The Australian man who unwittingly sparked the "designer dog" craze by creating the labradoodle in the late 1980s says he regrets it.
"It's not something I'm proud of'," Wally Conran, 81, tells The Australian. "I wish I could turn the clock back."
Conran first got the idea to mix a Labrador Retriever with a poodle, known for its low-shedding hair, while working as the puppy-breeding manager for the Royal Guide Dog Association of Australia in the early 1980s. He received a letter from a vision-impaired woman in Hawaii who needed an allergy-free guide dog because her husband was allergic to dogs.
An allergy-free guide dog didn't exist (and still doesn't since no dog breed is truly hypoallergenic), but Conran believed he could create a dog that would work. He decided to cross a labrador with a poodle. "The standard poodle, a trainable working dog, was probably the most suitable breed, with its tightly curled coat," Conran writes in a 2007 article explaining how he came to create the labradoodle.
After two years spent looking for a poodle with the correct temperament and trainability, Conran mated it to a labrador and produced three puppies. Hair and saliva samples from all three puppies were sent to Hawaii, where the husband of the vision-impaired woman found that only one of the puppies proved to be allergy-free.
The allergy-free labrador/poodle mix puppy was trained and sent to Hawaii, where it bonded with the vision-impaired woman. The experiment was considered a great success. Conran had created a crossbreed dog that could work as a guide dog for vision-impaired people with dog allergies.
One problem: nobody wanted the new crossbred dogs for a guide dog; they all wanted a purebred.
That's when Conran hit upon a marketing idea. "I decided to stop mentioning the word crossbreed and introduced the term 'labradoodle' instead to describe my new allergy-free guide-dog pups," Conran writes.
It worked. Interest in the labradoodle skyrocketed, but so did Conran's concerns. "I began to worry, too, about backyard breeders producing supposedly 'allergy-free' dogs for profit," he writes. "Already, one man claimed to be the first to breed a poodle-Rottweiler cross!"
He had opened up a Pandora's box of designer mixed-breed dogs, he says, and there was no putting the genie back in the bottle. "Nothing...could stop the mania that followed," he writes. "New breeds began to flood the market: groodles, spoodles, caboodles and snoodles. Were breeders bothering to check their sires and bitches for heredity faults, or were they simply caught up in delivering to hungry customers the next status symbol? We’ll never know for sure."
"Today I am internationally credited as the first person to breed the labradoodle," Conran writes. "But I wonder, in my retirement, whether we bred a designer dog – or a disaster!"
What Did Einstein Say About The Thinking of CrossBreeding When Approached By Marylin Monroe? Same is True For Labradoodle Craze.
Beauty and Brains Their Secret Love Affair Marilyn Monroe and Albert Einstein
Einstein was in possession of a powerful mind, full of fantasy, curiosity and most of all, humility.
Monroe, was stunningly beautiful and extremely vulnerable.
The perfect recipe for love?
Maybe, rumors have floated around for decades that they were lovers.
Einstein and Monroe – a match made in the gossip columns
Einstein once said: “The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
Apparently Monroe became a fantasy to Einstein, just imagine Marilyn swirling around in Albert’s mind,
bumping into all those math symbols in a fight for dominance.
Einstein and Marilyn sat next to each other. After a few flutes of champagne, she cooed in his attentive ear:
“I want to have your child.
With my looks and your brains, it will be a perfect child!”
Einstein replied: “But what if it has my looks and your brains?
This is the ERROR MADE BY MANY BREEDING LABRADOODLES!
They naively think that by cross-breeding, they will get the best of both worlds, non-shedding from the poodle and hypoallergenic and personality of the lab. WHAT IF THEY GET THE WORST OF BOTH WORLDS?
In a litter, there are several combinations and options of genetic combos.
See what Wally Conron has to say about his own difficulties getting the results he was looking for in his own tried litters of labradoodles in terms of hypoallergenic and non-shedding traits.
Einstein was in possession of a powerful mind, full of fantasy, curiosity and most of all, humility.
Monroe, was stunningly beautiful and extremely vulnerable.
The perfect recipe for love?
Maybe, rumors have floated around for decades that they were lovers.
Einstein and Monroe – a match made in the gossip columns
Einstein once said: “The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
Apparently Monroe became a fantasy to Einstein, just imagine Marilyn swirling around in Albert’s mind,
bumping into all those math symbols in a fight for dominance.
Einstein and Marilyn sat next to each other. After a few flutes of champagne, she cooed in his attentive ear:
“I want to have your child.
With my looks and your brains, it will be a perfect child!”
Einstein replied: “But what if it has my looks and your brains?
This is the ERROR MADE BY MANY BREEDING LABRADOODLES!
They naively think that by cross-breeding, they will get the best of both worlds, non-shedding from the poodle and hypoallergenic and personality of the lab. WHAT IF THEY GET THE WORST OF BOTH WORLDS?
In a litter, there are several combinations and options of genetic combos.
See what Wally Conron has to say about his own difficulties getting the results he was looking for in his own tried litters of labradoodles in terms of hypoallergenic and non-shedding traits.
Breeding blunder: Labradoodle creator laments designer dog craze
A 3-year-old Labradoodle, which is a mix between a standard poodle and Labrador retriever, jumps on his owner.
He’s deemed the man who unleashed the designer dog craze, this wave of Maltipoos, puggles and shorkies.
A Doberhuahua? Not quite.
But from that new Super Bowl ad to Hollywood boulevards and nearly to the White House, these pooches with cute names are pretty popular.
Hardly what Wally Conron expected — or ever wanted — back in the late 1980s when he first bred a pair of prize canines and called the result a Labradoodle.
“I’ve done a lot of damage,” Conron told The Associated Press this week by phone from his home in Australia. “I’ve created a lot of problems.”
“Marvelous thing? My foot,” he said. “There are a lot of unhealthy and abandoned dogs out there.”
No Labradoodles are entered in Saturday’s agility competition at the Westminster Kennel Club show, but for the first time in the event’s 138-year history, mixed breeds are welcome. Called “all-American” dogs by some and mutts by many, they’ll weave, jump and run through an obstacle course.
Only purebreds are allowed in the main event, though, and more than 2,800 of them are entered in the nation’s most prominent dog event. The rings open Monday and the best in show ribbon will be awarded Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden.
Conron isn’t from the show world. He was working as the puppy-breeding manager at the Royal Guide Dog Association of Australia when he tried to fulfill a request from a couple in Hawaii. She had vision problems, her husband was allergic, and they wanted a dog that would satisfy their needs.
After a lot of trial-and-error, Conron came up with a solution when he bred a standard poodle with a Labrador retriever. The mix was a personal triumph, yet not a success outside his lab.
“I was very, very careful of what I used, but nobody wanted Labrador crosses. I had a three-to-six-month waiting list, but everyone wanted purebreds,” the 85-year-old Conron recalled. “So I had to come up with a gimmick.”
“We came up with the name ‘Labradoodle,’” he said. “We told people we had a new dog and all of sudden, people wanted this wonder dog.”
Over the years, demand grew for Conron and other breeders. Labradoodles became a hot dog — Jennifer Aniston, Tiger Woods and Christie Brinkley are among their owners — and President Barack Obama’s family considered a Labradoodle before picking a Portuguese water dog as the First Pet.
“When I heard he was thinking about a Labradoodle, I wrote to him and said to make sure he checked its pedigree,” Conron said.
There’s the problem that troubles him.
Conron said there are far too many unscrupulous people eager to make a buck at a dog’s expense. Rather than check the history and science, he said “horrific” puppy mills are springing up and producing unstable dogs that go unwanted and eventually are euthanized.
“Instead of breeding out the problems, they’re breeding them in,” he said. “For every perfect one, you’re going to find a lot of crazy ones.”
That’s a concern Conron has echoed in the past, blaming himself for opening a “Pandora’s box” and creating a “Frankenstein.”
PETA appreciated that Conron is “speaking out to stop the loss of lives that his ‘invention’ has created.”
“Breeding ‘purebred’ or ‘designer’ dogs for exaggerated physical characteristics such as flat faces or sloping hips can cause them severe health problems.
The kindest thing that anyone can do for dogs is to adopt them from a shelter — and make sure that they are spayed or neutered,” said Daphna Nachminovitch, senior vice president for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
Conron said he’s never owned a Labradoodle as a pet, and stopped breeding them when he retired 20 years ago.
Since then, he’s often witnessed the effects of his work.
“You can’t walk down the street without seeing a poodle cross of some sort. I just heard about someone who wanted to cross a poodle with a rottweiler. How could anyone do that?” he said.
“Not in my wildest dream did I imagine all of this would happen,” he said. “That’s a trend I started.”
© 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
A 3-year-old Labradoodle, which is a mix between a standard poodle and Labrador retriever, jumps on his owner.
He’s deemed the man who unleashed the designer dog craze, this wave of Maltipoos, puggles and shorkies.
A Doberhuahua? Not quite.
But from that new Super Bowl ad to Hollywood boulevards and nearly to the White House, these pooches with cute names are pretty popular.
Hardly what Wally Conron expected — or ever wanted — back in the late 1980s when he first bred a pair of prize canines and called the result a Labradoodle.
“I’ve done a lot of damage,” Conron told The Associated Press this week by phone from his home in Australia. “I’ve created a lot of problems.”
“Marvelous thing? My foot,” he said. “There are a lot of unhealthy and abandoned dogs out there.”
No Labradoodles are entered in Saturday’s agility competition at the Westminster Kennel Club show, but for the first time in the event’s 138-year history, mixed breeds are welcome. Called “all-American” dogs by some and mutts by many, they’ll weave, jump and run through an obstacle course.
Only purebreds are allowed in the main event, though, and more than 2,800 of them are entered in the nation’s most prominent dog event. The rings open Monday and the best in show ribbon will be awarded Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden.
Conron isn’t from the show world. He was working as the puppy-breeding manager at the Royal Guide Dog Association of Australia when he tried to fulfill a request from a couple in Hawaii. She had vision problems, her husband was allergic, and they wanted a dog that would satisfy their needs.
After a lot of trial-and-error, Conron came up with a solution when he bred a standard poodle with a Labrador retriever. The mix was a personal triumph, yet not a success outside his lab.
“I was very, very careful of what I used, but nobody wanted Labrador crosses. I had a three-to-six-month waiting list, but everyone wanted purebreds,” the 85-year-old Conron recalled. “So I had to come up with a gimmick.”
“We came up with the name ‘Labradoodle,’” he said. “We told people we had a new dog and all of sudden, people wanted this wonder dog.”
Over the years, demand grew for Conron and other breeders. Labradoodles became a hot dog — Jennifer Aniston, Tiger Woods and Christie Brinkley are among their owners — and President Barack Obama’s family considered a Labradoodle before picking a Portuguese water dog as the First Pet.
“When I heard he was thinking about a Labradoodle, I wrote to him and said to make sure he checked its pedigree,” Conron said.
There’s the problem that troubles him.
Conron said there are far too many unscrupulous people eager to make a buck at a dog’s expense. Rather than check the history and science, he said “horrific” puppy mills are springing up and producing unstable dogs that go unwanted and eventually are euthanized.
“Instead of breeding out the problems, they’re breeding them in,” he said. “For every perfect one, you’re going to find a lot of crazy ones.”
That’s a concern Conron has echoed in the past, blaming himself for opening a “Pandora’s box” and creating a “Frankenstein.”
PETA appreciated that Conron is “speaking out to stop the loss of lives that his ‘invention’ has created.”
“Breeding ‘purebred’ or ‘designer’ dogs for exaggerated physical characteristics such as flat faces or sloping hips can cause them severe health problems.
The kindest thing that anyone can do for dogs is to adopt them from a shelter — and make sure that they are spayed or neutered,” said Daphna Nachminovitch, senior vice president for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
Conron said he’s never owned a Labradoodle as a pet, and stopped breeding them when he retired 20 years ago.
Since then, he’s often witnessed the effects of his work.
“You can’t walk down the street without seeing a poodle cross of some sort. I just heard about someone who wanted to cross a poodle with a rottweiler. How could anyone do that?” he said.
“Not in my wildest dream did I imagine all of this would happen,” he said. “That’s a trend I started.”
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