example, which is a cross between a golden retriever and a poodle. There is no such thing as a purebred mixed-breed dog. Whenever I try to set them straight, I’ve been met with fierce resistance. Some people even reference certificates of authenticity they’ve received, as if these are evidence of a purebred. I think the fervent defense of ownership of a “purebred mixed-breed dog” and the claims that custom-made dogs are better than other dogs are the result of a custom-design mania. Once celebrities are photographed with custom-designed dogs, public desire for similar dogs soars.
The demand has been met with a flood of “knockoff” dogs. As with purebreds, legitimate breeders aren’t able to satisfy the demand for custom-made dogs. Ethical and responsible breeding is a slow process, and well-educated, credentialed breeders are careful and loyal to the integrity of the breeds they produce. Illegitimate breeders, such as the operators of puppy mills (a common term for high-volume, low-quality breeding places), use less scrupulous practices. They overbreed and crossbreed to satisfy demand. They’re negligent, and their dogs are given poor-quality shelter, food, and veterinary care, or sometimes no care at all. The puppies they breed are frequently damned to a life of physical and mental illnesses from genetic flaws and poor upbringing.
Most people don’t know they’re buying designer dog knockoffs, and others don’t care. As with anything designer—such as purses, shoes, watches, and luggage—for every person who has an original, there are countless others who have fakes. People buy designer items because they like the look of the item, but they also buy them to look a certain way to others. For many people, it’s important to look the part, whether you are a genuine billionaire or an imposter.
Custom-designed dogs from legitimate breeders and knockoffs are pricey. So pricey, in fact, that their cost often exceeds the combined cost of their parents, even if the parents are purebreds. In 2017, TMZ Sports reported that NBA star Stephen Curry paid $3,800 for a goldendoodle because the puppy had green eyes like Curry’s wife. I wonder if the seller told him that a dog’s eyes change color with age! Curry can afford a pricey dog, but other people determined to own a custom-designed dog may enter into predatory financial arrangements with disastrous consequences, having to pay both the purchase price and care costs for the dog.
Chapter 2
Dawn of the Frankendog
This job of playing God is a little too big for me. Nevertheless, someone has to do it, so I’ll try my best to fake it.
—Larry Wall
The Allegory of the Labradoodle
The custom-designed dog craze began in the 1980s with Wally Conron and the labradoodle. Conron was a puppy-breeding manager for the Royal Guide Dog Association of Australia when a Hawaiian couple asked if he had any dogs who would help the woman, who was suffering from vision problems, and that the husband, who was usually allergic to dogs, could tolerate.
Conron was determined to solve this dilemma and hypothesized that if he crossbred a Labrador, a common guide dog breed, with a poodle, whose coat is less irritating for allergy sufferers, he could provide a dog that would accommodate the needs of both the wife and the husband. After he mated the dogs and the mother gave birth to five puppies, he waited until the puppies were five months old and then collected hair and saliva samples from them and sent them to the couple. The husband had no allergic reaction to the samples from one of the five puppies; the samples from the other four caused allergic reactions. Conron then repeated the experiment. Of the samples from the next litter, ten puppies, three did not irritate the man’s allergies; samples from the other seven did.
Conron gave one of the dogs whose samples did not irritate the man’s allergies to the guide dog association to train for the woman, but they refused, saying they only wanted to work with purebreds. So, as a marketing gimmick, Conron announced that the dog was a purebred of a new breed he had created. He called it the “labradoodle.”
The story of Wally Conron and the labradoodle is disturbing on several levels. First, why did the guide dog association refuse to train a dog simply because the dog was not a pedigree? Second, why did Conron assume that any one of the dogs could be a good match for the couple? It needed to be proven that the selected dog would not ignite the man’s allergy and would also be a good guide dog for the woman. Guide dogs are part of a unique pairing, rather than a mass-produced, any dog will do pairing. Third, the experiment involved seventeen dogs and what the crossbred puppies would be like was unknown. Conron could have caused fifteen dogs to be born with birth defects that would lead to a lifetime of health issues. The mother dog could have suffered or died giving birth. And then, of course, what would happen with all the other puppies? Conron planned for the couple to take one puppy, but there were no planned homes for the others. If they had been born with health problems, it would have been even harder to find them homes.
Conron’s decision to mastermind a labradoodle haunted him for years. Once his invented breed became publicly known, demand for it exploded. And this is despite the fact that, as Conron learned, labradoodles don’t breed true. Their coats can differ, their behavior is unpredictable, and most aren’t hypoallergenic. In the years since Conron’s experiment, he has frequently admitted that a mixed-breed dog cannot be considered a purebred and that he only called his puppies members of a new breed because he wanted the Royal Guide Dog Association to train one of the dogs to help the woman suffering from vision problems. In 2014, the year mixed-breed dogs were admitted into the Westminster Kennel Club show for the first time, he was particularly outspoken about his mistake.
In an interview published by Psychology Today on April 1, 2014 (“A Designer Dog-Maker Regrets His Creation” by Stanley Coren), Conron said:
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. . . .
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!
The story of Wally Conron and the labradoodle is an allegory of experiments and consequences. And though it’s not my mission to ease Conron’s conscience, it must be said that he wasn’t the first person to mix breeds to create a third breed, or a variant of a parent breed. It’s thought that the first designer dog in the modern history of the United States was born in the 1950s. It was the child of a cocker spaniel and a toy or miniature poodle, called a “cockapoo” or “spoodle.” Information about this breed’s inventor, birth location, and the impetus behind its creation is hard to reliably locate, but it does help flesh out the timeline of the custom-designed dog industry.
Celebrity owners of labradoodles include Jennifer Aniston, Barbara Eden, Christie Brinkley, Henry Winkler, and Tiger Woods, and, as usual, what celebrities have, the public wants. People pay thousands of dollars for labradoodles. Many purchasers assume they’re getting a dog that will be hypoallergenic, but find themselves sneezing when the dog comes close.
With the demand for labradoodles came the usual response from money-hungry puppy mill operators: careless breeding and ample supply. Puppy mill operators also mix a wealth of other breeds with poodles. New breeds ending with “oodle” are born left and right. Each time, two parent dogs are exploited for the experiment and offspring at high risk of genetic diseases are born. The parent dogs suffer, the puppies could be sentenced to a lifetime of suffering, possibly with short life spans, purchasers end up with expensive medical bills for their dogs, and shelters end up with abandoned dogs and must decide whether to keep them alive or euthanize them, a sad practice often performed when a home cannot quickly be found for an animal. The government
