Wally Conran has regrets.
“I decided to stop mentioning the word crossbreed and introduced the term ‘labradoodle’ instead to describe my new allergy-free guide-dog pups,” he wrote.
The name caught on and interest in the labradoodle soared, but he began to worry about “backyard breeders producing supposedly allergy-free dogs for profit,” Conran wrote. He felt that he had opened up a Pandora’s box.
Better to say he fell into one.
Since the animal rights racket began targeting purebred dogs about 25 years ago, a steady trickle of propaganda masquerading as exposé began to enter the media mainstream. Time magazine’s A Terrible Beauty (which includes scientific gems like “practically every species suffers from inherited diseases”) is a textbook example.
Long on weepy anecdotes and lazy research, short on balance and meaningful rebuttal, the oft stated goal was to push the pet buying public towards shelter animals. For their animal rights puppeteers, the goal was for the public to forgo “enslaving” a pet at all.
Of course, Labs had been getting out of the yard and getting it on with the poodle down the street for as long as Labs and poodles have existed. But historically, the product of such matings rightly sold for a nominal fee, or – as they grew into the 30 lbs of puppy food a week stage – for nothing at all.
That all changed when media got involved to help spread the animal rights crafted message of Hybrid SuperiorityTM.
To Time magazine and others, Labradors and poodles weren’t simply breeds developed for cold water retrieving that excel in a host of other disciplines – they were deeply flawed symbols of a corrupt and elitist social class intent on forcing artificial standards of beauty on the health and welfare of millions of innocent family pets.
Within the past century, though, and especially over the past 50 years, the most popular types have been bred almost exclusively to look good — with “good” defined by breed-specific dog clubs and the American Kennel Club (AKC). “Form has been separated from function,” says Brian Kilcommons, a dog trainer in Middletown, New York.”Styles come in vogue. The competition at dog shows is geared almost exclusively to looks.” This focus on beauty above all means that attractive but unhealthy animals have been encouraged to reproduce — a sort of survival of the unfittest. The result is a national canine-health crisis, from which few breeds have escaped. […]
“Criticize the AKC, and there will be retribution,” says one New York dog trainer. “Judges may find they are no longer getting assignments. Breeders might discover their dogs are no longer winning prizes.”
Never mind that the AKC registers only a fraction of the purebred dogs born in America, and puppies produced by competitive show lines account for only 5% of those – the few hundred dogs awarded breed ring rankings each year were responsible for the gene defects of tens of thousands of largely unrelated purebreds churned out for the commercial market. To that end, Time (along with countless others) advised;
Most of these genetic problems would disappear if Americans could somehow be persuaded to abandon purebreds in favor of mutts. While individual mixed-breed dogs have problems, the animals on average are a lot healthier than their high-class cousins.
The public was paying attention. The result was an epic backfire in mankind’s long history of unintended consequences.
With the birth of a new type of snob appeal – that of the morally superior, politically correct dog owner – came an explosion in the breeding of so-called “designer dogs”.
A puppy who might command $35 in his grandsire’s day was suddenly worth $1200. And why not? If that was the going rate for a purebred standard poodle puppy, surely a fillintheblankpoo, endowed with media-certified hybrid vigour, was worth as much – or more?
No matter that the $1200 purebred might represent thousands of dollars investment in genetic testing, post sale support, and health guarantees – along with the predictability in adult size, coat type, temperament, and trainability so critical in matching a puppy with his owner’s lifestyle and environment.
No matter that late onset defects are often the product of dominant genes, which require only one affected parent to produce disease in offspring, or that many breeds share the same disease genes for common problems such as hip dysplasia.
No matter that purebreds are so often screened for sub-clinical disease or carrier status that handy databases exist ready to be mined and publicized by their critics – while crosses receive little or no such testing at all.
And no matter that crosses between breeds of different physical types can result in grotesque malformations of structure (such as jaw alignment) and coat care nightmares.
The thing that really mattered was that they weren’t “bred to look good”.
And so, Labradoodle beget Goldendoodle, which begat Cadoodle, which begat Doodleman Pinscher, which begat Giant Schoodle, and so forth, all of them commanding prices well in excess of the original purebreds that went into the mix – for the commercially bred purebreds used in such crosses are invariably the least worthy for breeding.
After all, no one with a poodle or Labrador from generations of health tested, champion stock would consider wasting that investment in a hybridized dead end.
Puppies produced by low quality Labrador parents might command $250 in a market saturated with pet Labradors – hardly enough to merit the work involved in producing a litter or the risk of being saddled with unsold puppies.
But by simply breeding the Lab to an equally invaluable poodle, the value of their puppies could instantly quadruple. Better yet, the profit margins were huge. The Labradoodle puppy requires no more “per unit investment” than does any other mutt – bargain basement breeding stock, dog food, and a vaccination. In contrast, a comparatively priced standard poodle puppy might represent hundreds of dollars of input costs.
Wally Conran knew these things, of course. What he couldn’t have known is how a left-leaning media largely sympathetic to the animal rights agenda would turn his little guide dog experiment into a Gen X status symbol and canine cash-generating monster.
