I'd like to hear of others experiences with doodles. I show and breed Labradors but train and board lots of other breeds. I feel so sorry for the doodle owners who come to me for training. Most of these mixes have a terrific temperament and train well for the most part. But I keep hearing owners frustrated with two issues - peeing in the house after being housebroken for months with urine tests come back negative so not a UTI. The other is starting attention barking during the night. Always from the doodles only.
I'm going to put an 'about Doodles' on my website just to inform people before they purchase one. The money spent is wasted and would be much better spent on a purebred Golden, Poodle, or Labrador. 4 weeks ago I sent home a show type Golden to one family and a Labradoodle to another family. Both trained the same commands, etc. The Golden family's end product is soooo much more than the doodle family's. The doodle family's dog just starting peeing in the house this past week - it was housebroken even before I trained it and never went in my house - now it's pottying in the house but no UTI, so typical. It also started barking at 3 am, even when sleeping in the owner's room, it doesn't potty when let out, and shouldn't need to go during the night at 6 months old. So typical.
The Golden's family is sending me amazing pictures and updates of sit/stays while they have coffee on the porch. Down/stays at Grandma's, etc. Their pup is so perfect. Both families are great at following through with training, the only difference is the breed, or lack thereof. The doodle's coats all mat much worse than a purebred's also.
So for my website, please share your experiences with doodles so I can inform the public who browse my site. I get lots of 'lookers' at training, and at my information articles.
My only comment will be that I would imagine that the Doodle breed puppies will be from a commercially geared program. Likely dealing with situations where there are more litters available/bred/raised at a time then say a good, grounded purebred litter. Commercially bred puppies could be raised in big pens full of shaving etc with no alternatives to pee/poop area and due to numbers of litters/puppies, aren't given the same environment to start to learn to house break themselves. I had a 4 week old Lab puppy wake me up SCREAMING at 5am as he wanted out of the combination box/expen-ex area to poop outside that enclosure. Nope, didn't want the paper thank you but please take me out of here entirely. Now do you think a commercial program has that sort of set up or cares where the pup goes? Nope, so long as they keep clean. I just imagine early imprinting on housetraining, or rather lack there of, means many Doodles and other for profit raised Poodle X's are a bugger to housetrain.
