When you are choosing a dog to be part of your life, it is important to know that the dog will match your lifestyle and household needs. Purebred dogs have consistent and predictable characteristics that allow you to make that choice.

Designer dogs

In recent years there has been much publicity given to so-called designer dogs. Many of these have been produced by crossing other breeds with Poodles and giving them snappy, marketable names such as spoodles, schnoodles, groodles, cavoodles, and of course, labradoodles.

Cross breeds that are obtained by crossing Poodles with other breeds (eg Cocker Spaniels, Schnauzers, Golden Retrievers, Cavalier King Charles Spaniels and Labradors) cannot be registered as pure bred dogs with the Australian National Kennel Council or any of its state affiliate e.g. Dogs NSW.

Health

All dogs, like people, have a chance of having hereditary illnesses or developing an illness due to their environment. With dogs, reputable breeders reduce the chances of hereditary disease by being responsible breeders. See the page Find a breeder.

Claims have been made that cross bred dogs are healthier than purebred dogs. In fact cross breeds are often produced by using Poodles (and dogs of other breeds) that were not bred by reputable breeders who health test their stock. The result is that cross breeds can combine the worst features of the different breeds that have been crossed.

Healthy dogs are not produced by cross breeding any more than by careless pure breeding. Healthy dogs are the result of responsible breeding using properly health tested breeding dogs.

Pure bred Poodles that have been bred by reputable breeders from many generations of health tested stock have at least as high, and probably a higher chance of being healthy than most other dogs.

Predictable characteristics

Such cross breeds cannot be reliably predicted to develop key Poodle characteristics especially coat quality (including the qualities that reduce shedding and are said to assist allergy sufferers), temperament and intelligence, and overall elegance.

If you want a healthy dog that will reliably have Poodle characteristics, there is only one thing to do – get a pure bred Poodle from a reputable breeder.

You can find more information about Why a Pure Bred please visit:

www.dogsnsw.org.au/puppies/why-a-purebred