Website of the Golden Retriever Club of America The AKC Parent Club of the Golden Retriever
The Golden Retriever Club of America is dedicated to the health and welfare of the Golden Retriever breed while conserving the original breed function - that of a "working retriever." A purebred dog offers to his owner the likelihood that he will be a specific size, shape, color and temperament.
The predictability of a breed comes from selection for traits that are desirable and away from traits that are undesirable. When a breed standard or type is set, the animals within that breed have less heterozygosity than do animals in a random population The Goldendoodle is nothing more than an expensive mongrel. Because the genetic makeup is diverse from the Poodle genes and the Golden Retriever genes, the resultant first generation (F1) offspring is a complete genetic gamble. The dog may be any size, color, coat texture and temperament. Indeed Goldendoodles do shed. Their coat may be wiry or silky and may mat. Body shape varies with parentage but tends to be lanky and narrow. Behavior varies with the dog and within a litter with some puppies poodle-like in attitude and others somewhat like the Golden Retriever.
The Golden Retriever Club of America is opposed to cross-breeding of dogs and is particularly opposed to the deliberate crossing of Golden Retrievers with any other breed. These crossbreds are a deliberate attempt to mislead the public with the idea that there is an advantage to these designer dogs. The crossbred dogs are prone to all of the genetic disease of both breeds and offer none of the advantages that owning a purebred dog has to offer.
Permission to amend the Labrador Retriver Club statement to Golden Retrievers given by:
Frances S. Smith DVM, Ph.D.
LRC, Inc. Board of Directors
Diplomate American College of Theriogenology Original Author of Labradoodle statement
As I see it
by Joanne Reichertz DVM
Oodles of Poodle Crosses for Sale.
Can we prevent our Pet Puppies from
Being used to produce these Crossbreeds?
In virtually every newspaper classified section you can read, there are advertisements for Goldendoodles, Labradoodles, Cockapoos, Pekeapoos, Shihpoos, etc. In all the years I have bred poodles there have always been crossbreeds around. Most of these were accidents and the puppies were given away or sold for little more than the price of their care. Some Cockapoos were deliberately bred for Pet Shops, but the market was inconsistent, so they were not readily available. Labradors and Standard Poodles were also crossbred in Australia to produce a specific type of working dog. However in the previous few years the fad has been to produce crossbred poodles with many different breed and market them for considerable money as designer breeds that are healthier and otherwise better than a purebred. In most cases these puppies are produced for monetary gains not to develop a new breed!
The Goldendoodle is one of these crossbreds. Goldendoodles were deliberately bred in North America as a larger version of the Cockapoo, beginning around ten to fifteen years ago. Most do not shed hair heavily, and some are hypoallergenic like the Standard Poodle. This crossbred gets its name from the mix of the two breeds - Golden Retriever and Poodle. Goldendoodles are considered a hybrid dog, a first generation cross between two breeds, and as such they are supposed to exhibit a quality called "hybrid vigour" by these breeders. This hybrid vigour is more correctly called heterosis. Crossbreeding in commercial beef cattle production improves feed efficiency through heterosis. Hybrid vigor or heterosis is the added performance boost in crossbred calves over the performance average of their purebred parents. This heterosis can be used to advantage where the end product is meant to grow faster and eat less feed while doing so thus maximizing the farmers profit. It is not necessarily useful in breeding dogs. In theory the puppies will take on the best traits of both breeds. In reality, this is often false.
True hybrids are the product of breeding two different species. Breeding a donkey and a horse produces a mule, breeding a lion and a tiger produces a liger or a tigon, while breeding a wolf and a domestic dog produces a wolf hybrid. Each of these hybrid breedings is a cross of two different species. The offspring are hybrids. Domestic dogs are the same species. When you cross breed domestic dogs you are not technically creating a hybrid. Wolf/dog hybrids often have behavioral problems as the domestic dog differs greatly in behavior from a wolf. A wolf/dog hybrid can be a behavioural disaster when they mature. (See Canine Hybrid Issues Surrounding the Wolf Dog , M. Sloan, J. Moore Porter, 2001)
A breed of dog is not a separate species, it is just a family of dogs bred to exhibit certain specific traits like the coat of a poodle. When you breed a litter of purebred dogs you get predictable puppies. With crossbred puppies you do not. It takes many generations to fix traits when developing a new breed. For example after a hundred years of breeding the Toy Poodle we still get the problems of oversized individuals, long backs/short legs and soft coats (particularly in white) all leftovers from the breeds originally used to produce the Toy Poodle.
Crossbred dogs such as the Goldendoodle or Cockapoo are NOT hybrids nor are they a breed. Cockapoos may look like a Poodle, a Cocker or somewhere in between. A Cockapoo bred to a Cockapoo is not a breed. It takes decades or more to get a new breed to breed true without throwbacks occurring. People backcrossing Goldendoodles to Standard Poodles or crossing them on each other cannot predict the looks, coat and personalities of the resulting offspring. It will take many more generations before this will be possible. In addition when they breed them to each other they lose they slight health advantage which may have been gained through heterosis. These are still dogs and now we will have dogs with the health problems of both breeds. Hip dysplasia, being present in both breeds can show up in first generation Goldendoodles, so parents should be screened.
How do you prevent a puppy you sell from being used to produce crossbreds? Unless you spay and neuter them first, it is impossible to be 100% sure. In addition, we have all sold as pets dogs who later became show and breeding dogs, as many puppies grow up better than they appear to be at eight weeks of age. A good pet contract which states that there is a penalty for using the dogs to produce crossbreds is the best that we can do. The non-breeding contracts provided by the AKC or CKC are not applicable in these situations as registration papers are not important when crossbred puppies are produced. Withholding papers from new owners until a certificate of spay or neuter is provided also does not work. The best method seems to be careful interviewing of new puppy owners and the use of a strong contract prohibiting breeding of the pet puppy. However you must be prepared to follow the contract up with legal action if it is contravened.
In conclusion, while I know it is possible to develop a new breed such as the Goldendoodle, with careful selective breeding practices and health testing, many people are breeding these dogs simply for monetary reasons. They often have no regard for the health and wellbeing of the puppy produced and as a result these breeds are becoming a common commodity in animal shelters as well as in newspaper classified advertisements.
I have nothing against mixed-breed dogs--it's not the DOGS who are the problem. But people "creating new breeds" in their backyard, or just cashing in on an ill-informed fad at the expense of the dogs really angries up my blood.
That said, I can understand situations in which a dog or family of dogs excels at highly specialized work, and mixed-breeds are deliberately (and thoughtfully) bred to fill that need. These situations are exceedingly rare.
