Are Designer-Crossbred Dogs Healthier Than Purebred Dogs?

A labradoodle

Source: Julissa Helmuth / Pexels

Have you noticed how many varieties of doodle and poo dogs are around nowadays? These are all deliberate hybrid crosses between a poodle and another purebred dog. You can find labradoodles (poodle and Labrador retriever), cockapoos (cocker spaniel and poodle), cavapoos (Cavalier King Charles spaniel and poodle), goldendoodles (golden retriever and poodle), aussiedoodles (Australian shepherd and poodle), maltipoos (Maltese and poodle), schnoodle (schnauzer and poodle), and dozens more. These are not actual dog breeds but are so-called "designer dogs," a term used because it is classier than the more pejorative labels of "mutts" or "mongrels," which purebred dog enthusiasts are apt to use.

The Origin of the Craze for Designer Dogs

The designer crossbreeding craze is widely considered to have started in Australia in 1980 by Wally Conran. While working with the Royal Guide Dog Association, he was tasked with finding a nonshedding guide dog for a client whose husband was allergic to dog hair. To achieve this, he purposely crossed a Labrador retriever with a poodle. This was successful, but he was left with the problem of finding homes for the remaining puppies in the litter. No one wanted to adopt a "mongrel." So he used some basic marketing principles to create public interest for these crossbred dogs. First, he invented a new, attractive name, and then he offered a positive sales pitch that claimed that this new breed of labradoodles had coats that were less likely to shed and the pups were apt to be particularly healthy canines because of "hybrid vigor." The latter term refers to the fact that for inbred populations of animals (such as a pedigreed breed), a crossbreed is likely to have qualities superior to those of either parent.

Conran's marketing pitch worked, and a huge demand sprang up for his poodle crosses. Soon poodles were being crossed with a variety of other breeds and sold at very high prices as "designer dogs," along with claims that went well beyond the modest suggestions that Conran used to find homes for his original litter of labradoodles. Subsequently, designer dog breeders boasted that these crossbred dogs had remarkable temperaments and intelligence, were hypoallergenic, and, perhaps most importantly, had superior physical health (none of which was supported by any experimental evidence).

Are Designer Dogs Healthier Than Their Purebred Parents?

Recently a team of researchers from the Royal Veterinary College at Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom decided to test the claims of better health in these designer crossbred dogs. They focused on the 57 most common health disorders in dogs, ranging from relatively mild conditions such as skin problems like eczema to more serious conditions such as cancer. The idea was to look at the health status of some designer crosses and compare it to the health status of their purebred progenitors or founder breeds.

For the purposes of this study, they chose the most popular designer dogs in the United Kingdom, namely the labradoodle, cockapoo, and cavapoo, and their health status was compared directly to their purebred foundation breeds: poodle, Labrador retriever, cocker spaniel, or Cavalier King Charles spaniel. They gathered data for 9,402 dogs.

The results that they obtained supported neither the idea of hybrid vigor for the designer crossbreeds nor the superiority of pedigreed purebred dogs. For 86.6 percent of the health comparisons, there were no significant differences between the designer dogs and the purebred dogs. For the smattering of statistically significant differences in health status, 7.0 percent favored the crossbred dogs and 6.4 percent favored the pedigreed dogs, suggesting that health differences between the two groups were, for the most part, negligible.

All Dogs Are Really Crossbreeds

Retrospectively, these results should probably not have been much of a surprise. Almost all current pure breeds can be considered, historically, to be crosses of other types of dogs prior to their gene pools becoming closed when various canine types became listed in traditional kennel clubs, which recognize breeds, register pedigrees, and define what constitutes a particular "pure breed."

Take for example one of the most popular purebred dogs, the golden retriever. It was created by Sir Dudley Marjoribanks (later to become Baron Tweedmouth) at his Scottish estate in the late 19th century. He cross-bred flat-coated retrievers with Tweed water spaniels, with some further infusions of red setter, Labrador retriever, and bloodhound. Golden retrievers were recognised by the Kennel Club in 1913.

Doberman pinschers were first bred in the 1800s by Karl Friedrich Louis Dobermann. He was a tax collector who also ran a dog pound in central Germany (which gave him access to dogs of many breeds). He was trying to develop the perfect guard dog. We don't know the exact breeds or proportions that went into the Doberman because he kept scanty records. We do know that he started with the Manchester terrier, crossing it with the greyhound, and the resultant dog was further crossed with the rottweiler, Great Dane, Beauceron, and an early version of the German shepherd dog. It was recognized as a breed by the AKC in 1908.

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The histories of most of our current purebred dogs followed a similar course, with an initial set of crossbreedings to create a certain canine type and then some later tweaking through "outbreeding," which is really just a term to indicate later crossbreeding. This is the way that George Washington created the American Foxhound.

Should Designer Dogs Be Recognized as New Breeds?

Given this history, why can't designer dogs just be considered new breeds? This is difficult to achieve, partly because of the controls that the various kennel clubs put on dog breeds that they register. Most require a "stud book," detailing the breeding history for at least seven generations of dogs. There must be a national club that maintains this registry and determines the characteristics expected of a dog of this breed. In any new breed, their unique characteristics must be shown to "breed true," meaning that there is not much variation from generation to generation, and there must be a substantial number of that particular type of dog alive in the country.

Proponents of the various designer breeds are trying to get them formally recognized, and in 2007, they formed the Designer Dogs Kennel Club (DDKC) which is a registry for designer and hybrid dogs. This was done in the hope of ultimately gaining acceptance of many of these crossbreeds into the registry of traditional kennel clubs.

In any event, this history suggests that a comparison between purebred and designer dog breeds is really a comparison of earlier and more controlled crossbreeds compared to later (perhaps more casual) designer crossbreeds rather than between two distinctly different types of dogs. Thus, as the authors suggest, it should not be surprising to find little difference in their overall health status.

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