The "doodle" craze

 Irresponsible breeding is irresponsible breeding.  This thread just happened to be about the "doodle craze".  As to the issue of titles, I'm not so inclined to think that an advanced title is necessary to prove anything more than novice titles, other than that the breeder is more heavily involved in the breed, but both tell me that the person has at least taken the time to immerse themselves in an environment where they might pick up some knowledge.  The overriding problem with any irresponsible breeder is that they are in this for the money, and not for the establishment of a new breed, or the betterment of dogs in general.  If you look at what constitutes responsible breeding, you will find that not as many of the doodle, poo, chon, etc. breeders are adhering to any kind of standard except fancy web sites and the acceptance of credit cards as their purebred counterparts.  I do NOT favor breeding practices that shrink a breed to the point where normal births are impossible, and I classify that the same way I do other irresponsible activities.  I also do not condone breeders from my own breed hiding the fact that their dogs have epilepsy.  I also think that it is the dog owner's fault as much as the breeder's fault that these practices continue, because they did not do their homework, so if people with purchased doodles come here, yes, they may just get an education they didn't bargain for.  Too bad. 

To the poster who mentioned that no doodles show up in shelters n the Northeast, I notice you are in NJ.  Open admission shelters fill up with thug dogs and dumps, mainly from the Pit, Shep, Rott group, because our spay neuter rate in New England and the Middle Atlantic is higher, and those are the breeds that usually remain intact here.  I think the reason that more doodles don't end up in shelters is that people with enough money to buy them have a sense of responsibility about keeping them (their original intentions about pet ownership were good, they just didn't do their homework, or fell for hype about hypo) - and they just pay the vet bills, training costs, erc., same way they would if it was a Lab or a Golden.  But, I can tell you that there are plenty of them that would have been dumped on the shelters had their owners been of lesser financial means...  The other thing is that when some owners do want to dump the dog, they sell it rather than take it to the shelter.  They try to find the sucker who wants a gen-u-ine Australian Labradoodle at half price, and tell the new family that they were "just too busy" for the dog.  Happens all the time here.