Let's get something straight right off the bat: We're talking about a cross-breed dog. Labradoodles, as we know them today in the US, are not close to being an accepted breed by the American Kennel Club. If you're looking for a dog that will have the exact physical characteristics you expect, look somewhere else. And good riddance!
If you'd like a quick background on Labradoodles, here's some good information from dogbreedinfo.com. The one thing they have wrong over there is this: An F2 Labradoodle is typically a cross between F1 and an F1-b, instead of an F1 and an F1.
Now, I'm ignoring the Australian Labradoodle breed for the time being and concentrating on the American Labradoodle cross.
Jack is an F1 Labradoodle, bred from a white royal standard poodle and a black lab. He was from a litter of thirteen in colors ranging from cream to coffee to chocolate to black.
We decided on a labradoodle primarily because Tina is allergic to dogs, and I didn't want a poodle or some damn yappy bichon frise or the like. I wanted a dog's dog, not a lapdog. I wanted a dog I could take camping and go swimming with. I wanted a dog who would protect without getting overly aggressive, and I wanted a dog who could be trained. All that, and the dog had to be allergy-friendly.
All my life, I've been fond of one kind of dog above all others: Australian Shepherds. They're smart, lovable, trainable and protective. This would not work for Tina, though, so we used the standard assortment of online dog-breed-selectors to try to find something that would fit us both.
We kept coming back to the Portuguese Water Dog. I had never heard of these dogs. I was interested, right up until we found a breeder who was selling puppies in the area. $2500.00 for a male. Had someone gone insane? Had I been missing out on what real dogs were worth? Had someone been cheating the Dogs-for-Oil program?
Whatever the case, I wasn't about to spend that much for a puppy of a breed I had no actual experience with. They could be selling me a Jack Russell with a hairpiece for all I knew!
So, we were back to standard poodles if I wanted a big dog. I was less that thrilled. I mean, how's a man supposed to feel like a man while he's walking some mutated thing like this on a leash?
Granted, they're smart dogs and good for allergy-sufferers, but c'mon. JUST LOOK AT THAT THING.
Can you imagine taking THAT camping? It might break a nail. The hairspray could get too close to the fire and you'd have a yapping, squeaking, running ball of fire named "Fido". Everytime I see one of those things the saying about shaving its butt and teaching it to walk backwards comes to mind.
Still, I was considering it, since, bluntly, I was getting kind of desperate. I've had dogs since I was a kid, and not having one was weird and kind of depressing.
So, I'm surfing around one day looking at dogs and come across the labradoodle cross. Of course, the descriptions are basically everything I could ask for (and HAD been asking for). Tina and I talked about it, and then started looking for dogs in our area.
I found a place in Fresno, and another in Oregon, but nothing close by. So, we waited. I kept checking the papers, and eventually found an ad for labradoodles up near Placerville. We took a Saturday and drove the hour-and-a-half up to the ranch and met Jack, our future dog.
So how has he been? Well, let's break it down:
1. Allergies and shedding:
As you might already know, people are not allergic to dog hair. It's the dander that gets 'em. Many dogs who do not shed are still very allergenic. Poodles and some other dogs have the trait of producing less dander, and thereby being less allergenic, but of course, not completely hypo-allergenic.
Jack has been decent in the area of allergies. Tina can (and often does) hug him and bury her face in his fur. Sometimes she sneezes. When that happens, we bring him into the shower with one of us and wash him with allergy shampoo. That usually makes him better for about two or three weeks, and he is very good about it.
He does shed a bit. It's not bad, and I don't have to brush him very often, but we have to vacuum every week or we end up with little balls of floating black hair in all the corners. Bluntly, this is a good thing for allergies as far as I'm concerned. Without the hairballs, I might be tempted not to vacuum as often, and thereby make the allergies worse.
Other factors that contribute to allergies we keep to a minimum. We don't allow Jack on the carpets in the house. We have wood laminate flooring in the house except in the bedrooms, we have microfiber couches that don't get so dusty, and we wash his bedding regularly. Of course, he is never allowed on the furniture.
Tina is fine in our house, as are other people with allergies. Generally, those people can also pet my dog without a problem.
2. Intelligence:
Jack learns things from context. Often, he learns things even when he's not directly involved in them.
Just one example of this is that when we use the word "cute" he will often, whether we were talking about him or not, roll on his back, bow, or do something else that he's heard the word "cute" associated with.
He's the smartest dog I've owned, and Australian Shepherds are smart dogs.
He learns tricks quickly, which leads to the next point.
3. Trainability:
This dog seems to live to please. If he does something wrong, a sharp word is generally enough to correct him, and praise is as good as food for training. He has an understood vocabulary of probably hundreds of words, "dog", "frog", "squirrel", "sit", "lay down", "bow", "bang" (he plays dead), "dance", "touchdown" (he picked this up from this season's Pittsburgh Steelers. It gets him very excited for some reason), "outside", "upstairs", "downstairs", "garage", "kitchen", "bed", "dogpark" (see touchdown), "the place" (we stopped using "dogpark" for a while... didn't work), "river", "ball"... There are a lot more. I'm just tired of typing.
He has a harness, that, by California law, he is required to wear in bed of a truck, and when I ask him to jump up in the truck bed, he steps into the harness for me, and then moves up to the front to be snapped in.
He does dozens of things I rarely think about anymore. For instance, when he started getting bigger than a puppy, we didn't want him to walk between the couch and the coffee table anymore because he might knock something off. If I'm at the opposite end of the couch, he will walk all the way around the coffee table tocome see me, rather than between. I never even have to remind him.
4. Protection:
For the first year that we had Jack, I was pretty sure he was useless in this area. I figured that we had a dog who would be friendly, no matter the person, and since he never barked, I thought he wouldn't be much of a watchdog. Then, an interesting thing happened.
Late one night, around 1:30am, Jack woke us up barking on the landing at the top of the stairs. His bed is downstairs next to the couch. Tina was alert before me and woke me. Jack's barks were low and growling, not the higher pitch that I was used to when we asked him to speak, or when he was playing. I got up, put on a bathrobe, armed myself and went downstairs. Jack followed me closely, but stopped barking as soon as I came out of the bedroom. I looked out the glass back door and saw nothing, then looked out the window near the front door, and saw nothing. I opened the front door to go out, and Jack squeezed past me and ran out into the front yard, cornering a woman who had just exited our back yard. He had raised back hair, bared teeth, low bark, etc. He gave every indication that he would attack this person, but instead, stopped short and just held her there, barking, growling. I let him make plenty of noise so as to wake the neighbors, then called him. I had to call him twice, but he came to my side the second time and stayed quiet long enough for me to question the woman and send her on her way. I didn't call the police because I couldn't prove that she had been in the backyard, and there was nothing taken. Besides, she won't be back.
Jack acted exactly as I would have hoped in a situation like this. He woke us up, scared, but did not attack the intruder, and responded to voice commands while stressed. He was just one year old when this happened and has matured since then. I have no misgivings at all about him being a good watchdog anymore.
Since that time, I have seen him alert on people twice more. Once when Tina and I were at a park having a picnic and a man walked up behind me and raised his hand. he was going to ask me to use my cell phone, but got stopped short by the dog who didn't want him getting so close without my acknowlegement. The second time was a man handing out flyers on my street. This was a particular flyer I really didn't want, and I still think that Jack read my body language when the man reached out with the flyer. I settled him both times with a word and dealt with the (somewhat shaken) person.
5. Activeness:
Jack is absolutely a water dog. He loves water in a kiddie pool, in the shower, in a river, in a lake, whatever. He loves water.
When he was twelve or thriteen weeks old, we took him camping at one of the Crystal Basin reservoirs. He did some swimming while we were there, but the real surprise came when he and I had gone for a walk around the lake. He had been splashing and playing in the shallows all the way around the lake, but when he saw Tina on the other side of the lake (she was yelling something at me about dinner), he decided to swim across. The width of the water there was something in the neighborhood of 200 to 250 meters. I was sure he was going to drown and took off my shirt and dove in after him.
To make a long story short, he was spry and happy running around on the other side when I dragged my unhappy self out of the water, tired and winded.
He loves to be outdoors and has a non-stop motor. He'll fetch a ball for hours, in water or out.
I've met and worked briefly with a few other labradoodles and have gotten verification of practically every one of these points from each of their owners. The personality traits and inteligence seem to be consistent. What's currently inconsistent in this breed are the physical traits.
If that bothers you, then perhaps a nice black lab would better for you.
Click here to go to the Labradoodle picture page.