Doodle Doings

The First Family announced recently that the First Dog would be a Portuguese Water dog.  I have mixed feelings about this on a number of levels.

As a Labradoodle breeder, I am actually somewhat relieved that the First Dog will not be a doodle.  There are already bunches of people who have jumped on the ‘Designer Dog’ bandwagon in the last few years, hoping to charge big bucks for the dogs and supplement their income.  Little do they know how really expensive it is to breed responsibly, and how emotionally demanding.  Had the Obama’s chosen to get a Labradoodle, I am sure it would have resulted in an even larger production of poorly bred Labradoodles.

Had the choice for First Dog been a Labradoodle, I believe there would have been a great deal more pressure on the Obamas to adopt a dog from rescue. Because of all those folks jumping on the bandwagon mentioned above, there are a fair number of Labradoodles in rescue.  Most of the Labradoodles in rescue are first generation Labradoodles and therefore not allergy-friendly, so they would not be an appropriate choice for the Obamas anyway.  And like any other family with young children, the First Family needs to be extremely careful to adopt a dog with a known background in order to insure the dog is good with the kids.  This is very challenging to accomplish when choosing a dog from rescue.  But because of the availability of Labradoodles in rescue, there was pressure on the Obamas to rescue one.  It is politically much more acceptable for the Obamas to get a Portuguese Water Dog (PWD) from a breeder than to get a Labradoodle from a breeder, because of the lack of PWD available in rescue.

So even while I understand that the choice of a PWD was politically easier, and probably better for the Labradoodle community, I do feel it would have been better for the First Family to choose a Labradoodle.

Well-bred Labradoodles are bred to be family pets.  There is no higher priority for a Labradoodle breeder than to produce dogs of good temperament.  PWD breeders, on the other hand, have other considerations when they breed; they breed for the show ring, and breed towards a standard of conformation and appearance.  PWD can be stubborn, and no attempt is really made to selectively breed away from this as eliminating that trait is not the first goal of PWD breeders.  Labradoodle breeders, without the pressures of breeding for a breed standard and the show ring, can concentrate on breeding the best, most trainable, companion.  It is what we do best.  I think a Labradoodle would have been a better choice for First Dog.