Joan Hustace Walker - Labradoodles

Contents

On the surface, the answer to What is the Labradoodle? seems simple. Hes a LABRADor mixed with a pOODLE, or a Labradoodle, right? Yes... and no. The term Labradoodle is often used for a variety of iterations of the Labradoodle/Poodle cross.

In the strictest sense of the word, Labradoodle refers to the simple, straight, one-time cross between any Labrador Retriever and any Poodle. The Australian Labradoodle, or AL, is different in that it not only has multiple generations (often 16 or more!) of Australian Labradoodle/Australian Labradoodle in his lineage, but he also has infusions of other purebreds in the early generations, to create what is known as the Australian Labradoodle.

But, there are also early generation Labradoodles, Labradoodle crossbacks (a Labradoodle bred back to either a Labrador Retriever or a Poodle), and multigenerational Labradoodles. And all of these iterationsfrom the Labradoodle to the Australian Labradoodlehave unique and distinct qualities.

To understand more about how the Labradoodle, Australian Labradoodle, and everything in between came into being, it is necessary to cross the Pacific Ocean and learn about the Labradoodles origins in Australia.

The Labradoodle began as a solution to a problem. In the early 1980s, the puppy-breeding manager for the Royal Guide Dog Association of Australia, Wally Conron, received a challenging request.

A vision-impaired woman from Hawaii wrote to the guide dog association, inquiring if an allergy-free guide dog could be had from the center. She was not allergic to dogs, but her husband was, and in order to have a guide dog in the home without her husband suffering, she had to find a guide dog that her husband wasnt allergic to.

The guide dogs puppy program bred only Labradors. However, Conron thought he had a solution to the problem: train Standard Poodles as service dogs. He reasoned that Poodles had a non-shedding coat, were often not a problem for people with allergies to dogs, and the Standard Poodle, which could be up to 27 inches (69 cm) tall at the shoulder, would be sizeable enough for a working service dog.

Problem solved! Or so he thought...... after rejecting countless Poodles with various problems, some two years and 33 disappointing trials later, I still hadnt found an appropriate dog for the job, writes Conron in an article he penned in the July 10, 2007 issue of Readers Digest . In desperation, I decided to cross a Standard Poodle with one of our best-producing Labradors.

That initial crossing produced three puppies. Coat and saliva samples were sent to the couple to determine if any of the puppies would prove to be allergy-free. One puppys samples were successful. Sultan would become the first hypoallergenic service dog. Before that would be possible, however, Conron was faced with a rather desperate situation: No one wanted to be a puppy raiserthe early training and socialization aspect that is so important to the success of service dogsfor Sultan and his littermates. Even though the guide dog association, with which Conron was associated, had a three to six month waiting list of people wanting to be puppy raisers, no one wanted a mixed breed puppy to raise.