I was a bit naughty the other afternoon as I saw a young lady with a "Pooador" and asked her if it was a Labrador cross and she answered "no it is a Labradoodle"! Shame all the misnomers about the "breed" as the ones I have seen have all been so very different in type and coat texture so for me as an allergy sufferer I could not take the risk re the guarantee that is usually advertised as them being non-shedding.
He said this quite awhile ago. Yes he was responsible for the cross, but I'm not sure that he could've foreseen what would happen. As far as I know, I don't think he ever encouraged their breeding for pet purposes. The guide dog associations have long tried various mixes for various reasons. There was a specific purpose in mind and I don't object to that. Its the breeders who jumped on the band wagon that should be assumed of themselves, not this man.
I dont think it is fair to blame him, yes he started it all but he did it for good reasons... it failed, but he couldnt have forseen what would happen.
He's blaming himself Lozzibear, he thinks in hindsight, that it was a bad idea to call the results of his experiment, a cutsey name because that decision has inspired a cutseypoo explosion. That's what he regrets, and so he should. Here's another one.............if the 'Chocolate' coloured Labrador Retriever had been called Brown, then potentially there wouldn't be the same disaster occuring there. Dawn R.
Labradoodles - from the guy who started it. This article was in the Guardian today. If Wally Conron had known what was going to become of the labradoodle, he wouldn't have bred the dog in the first place. It was 22 years ago and Conron, now 81, was working as the breeding and puppy-walking manager for the Royal Guide Dog Association of Australia when his boss set him a tough task. A blind woman from Hawaii had written asking if it they could provide a guide dog that would not shed hair, because her husband was allergic to it. "I said, 'Oh yes, this will be a piece of cake. The standard poodle is a working dog, it doesn't shed hair, it'll be great.' I tried 33 in the course of three years and they all failed. They just didn't make a guide dog. Meanwhile, the woman in Hawaii was getting older and the boss was getting on my back." Conron decided there was one possibility left – take his best labrador bitch and mate it with a standard poodle. They created three crossbreed puppies that needed to be boarded out to be trained and socialised, but nobody would take them – everyone wanted a purebred. And that's when Conron came up with the name labradoodle. "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. No one wanted a crossbreed, but the following day we had hundreds of calls from people wanting these master dogs." The labradoodle proved to be a brilliant dog for the blind, and the woman in Hawaii was happy. Job done. So what was the problem? Ah, says Conron, it's how the dog has been used and abused, and sold under false pretences. "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." Does that happen a lot? "Get on the internet and see. 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, a lot have epilepsy. There are a few ethical breeders, but very very few." Now, the designer dog has become a status symbol. "Jennifer Aniston's got one. Whatsisname, Obama, the American president, announced he was thinking of getting a labradoodle. He didn't get one in the end, but I wrote him a letter saying what the pitfalls were. I said, if you're going to buy a labradoodle, check both parents, make sure they have a certificate. A lot of them are untrainable." Conron, who is writing a memoir about life with the labradoodle, says that despite the fact that the dogs have helped so many blind people, he regrets creating the first crossbreed. "I opened a Pandora's box, that's what I did. I released a Frankenstein. So many people are just breeding for the money." Today, people pay ridiculous prices for poodle crossbreeds, and unscrupulous breeders are crossing poodles with inappropriate dogs simply so they can say they were the first to do it. There are cavoodles (cavalier king charles spaniel/poodle), groodles (golden retriever/ poodle) schnoodles (shnauser/poodle), and even roodles (rottweiller/poodle). "A lot of them are just crazy," Conron says. "So many of them have problems. I believe that one-third of dogs bred today are the poodle crosses. People say aren't you proud of yourself, and I say, no. Not in the slightest. I've done so much harm to pure breeding and made these charlatans quite rich." Conron has a pet labrador, Rocky, and has never kept a labradoodle as a pet. "No way!" he says, sounding shocked. He only ever bred 31, each of them "perfect". "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." http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/nov/13/inventors-idea-regret
i feel quite sorry for him, it must be horrible to know that he started this and had no intention to. it was stupid to give them the name 'labradoodles' but then, he probably didnt even consider it getting so out of control. and his aim in crossing them was for a good purpose.
if he wants to blame himself then that is for him to decide (i think most people would do the same), but that doesnt mean it is his fault and others can blame him. maybe his crystal ball wasnt working that day, so he couldnt see what it would cause at the end of the day, he didnt intend for this to happen and he could not have forseen it.
