The BS behind "Designer Dogs"

I ran across this ad this morning:

http://sfgate.kaango.com/feViewAd/16213571

If you can’t access the link, it’s an ad for Labradoodle puppies, selling for 2700.00 each.

Twenty seven hundred dollars!! That’s more than twice the average price of a genuine purebred dog, which, by definition, is “bred from members of a recognized breed, strain, or kind without outbreeding over many generations,” often hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of years. Also known as pedigreed, meaning it has a written, traceable, record of the lineage that proves its purebred status.

A Labradoodle, on the other hand, is NOT a purebred. Originally a mix of Poodle and Labrador, its initial claim to fame, that it was hypoallergenic, got great attention and a lot of folks, seeing a way to make a quick buck, jumped on the bandwagon, paired up random Poodles and Labs and sold their offspring as Labradoodles. This led to a rash of so-called “designer dogs,” an endless list of mixes with cute names such as Goldendoodles, Cockapoos, Pomapoos, Bascotties, Buggles, Malorkies, Pithuahuas, Pointsetters, Schnairedales, or the ever popular Jack Russell/Shih Tzu mix, aka the JackShiht. OK, that last one isn’t real (as far as I know), but shows how ridiculous this has become, because, again by definition, each of these dogs is an “animal of mixed breed,” or uncertain ancestry, also known as a crossbreed, half-blood, hybrid, mutt, or, the type of dog most often found in animal shelters. Did I mention those Labradoodles are going for 2700.00?

I could say it was an example of the gullibility of the American public, but it’s more than that. Over the past few years, the animal rights crusaders have done a fabulous job of downgrading purebred dogs and glorifying mutts, to the extent that adopting a shelter dog has become the only acceptable way to acquire a pet. On the other hand, people who are lured by the prestige of owning a special breed of dog, something that makes them the Paris Hilton of their community, will fall for the hype of a Labradoodle or any other cross bred “designer dog.” It doesn’t have the sour taste of being purebred, but it has the cachet of being something special, which makes them easy targets for the shysters out to make a buck (a LOTTA bucks!) off them.

What’s really sad is that by investing in “designer dogs,” these people are shelling out their hard earned cash for what they supposedly hate, backyard breeders and puppy mills, which are the main source of these animals. But what’s even worse is that even those who resist buying these mutts are still “drinking the kool-aid,” indoctrinated by the animal rights fanatics into donating millions of dollars to the Humane Society of the United States, the driving force behind the AR jihad, and thereby contributing to the fanatics who intend to remove ALL pets from our lives, no matter how we define them. Purebred, “designer” dogs, mutts, Heinz 57, every last one of them, gone forever. But that’s the subject of another blog.