"Fashion" cross breeds - please enlighten me?
Tashanlouie's introduction thread (and my subsequent reply) reminded me of something I had intended to post. I think I may have posted a similar thread before, but I can't remember!
Nothing against the dogs themselves, but I find it odd that people insist on making up names for cross breeds as if they're a fashion lable - what's wrong with just Labrador cross poodle?
Tash (and anyone else who owns one of the "breeds" of dogs I am about to write about), I really, truely and honestly don't mean this as a personal dig - it's more a comment on how people I have met have behaved that I had found strange. If I offend anyone, I am truely very sorry - but I am honestly asking for an end to my
own ignorance. I do not show, and have little experience in the field of dog breeding. I know many "accepted" breeds of dogs came around as a result of cross-breeding in the beginning to produce a particular type of dog to do a particular job.
Whilst looking for a puppy (we looked at rescue websites, newspaper adverts, online adverts) I kept coming across "breeds" of dogs I had never heard of before - "Yorkiepoo", "Dashuahua", "Peekapoo", "Yorktease"..... It was a bit baffling for someone who had been out of the dog world for some six years!
My first real life experience of this "trend" was almost a month ago, sitting in my wheelchair outside a fish and chip shop with Sam. He is very Dalmation looking, and a complete stranger came running across the road exclamining "Is that a Dollie?!"
I completely misunderstood, took her for a mad woman and replied, "No... it's a dog!"
Apparently, for those "not in the know" (as I was) a Dollie (Dolly?) is a Dalmation cross Collie, and as this woman told me "all the rage at the moment" and she is having a very difficult time obtaining one. When I explained that as far as we know, Sam is a Lab x Springer, she said
"Oh,
just a cross breed then" and it seemed she was no longer interested in him (although she did think he was very pretty at first).
There seems to be a little group of people I vaguely know (people I would pass the time of day with, but don't class as "friends") with these sorts of dogs, a few of whom have Labradoodles. I only really know one of them well enough to have a casual chat with, and she was very excited when I said I had a new puppy, and wanted to know what she was. I said she was a GSD cross Staffy, and she gave me a "look" and said that she would have thought I would have wanted a purebred, and she could have told me of a lovely Labradoodle breeder if I had wanted. (We had actually wanted to get a rescue, but found Amber by chance.)
As far as I understand, these dogs are also cross breeds. A Pomerpoo is a pomeranian x poodle, a labradoodle is a labrador x poodle and a Yorktease (despite sounding like a Yorkshire streetwalker
) is apparently a Yorkie x Maltese... they're cross breeds with a shortened name and some kind of "fashion status" attached. I'm certainly not accusing anyone of owning one simply as a fashion accessory (so please don't jump on me!
), but for some people seem to look down their noses at my two beautiful cross-bred dogs, but think that because their dog has a "proper" breed name, it is in a higher "class" of dog
.
I have heard whispers through the few dog people I know that there are plans to standardise some of these "breeds" and actually acknowledge their breed status, but I can't understand why some people can't just think dogs in general are fabulous (like most of us on Dogsey seem to) and that because their cross-bred dog has a fashionable lable attached that my cross-breed isn't as good :smt102
So please, someone, can you elighten me? Are these dogs with daft names (no offense intended, honestly
) now recognised as actual breeds? I still stand firm on my thought that unless you intend to show or breed, ANY dog can make a perfect companion, and I am not swayed in my opinion of a dog because of it's breeding. I just love dogs - big, small, shaggy, short-coated, mucky, immaculate... I think they're fab!
Do you think if I started calling Amber a Staffordshire Shepherd, and Sam a Springador, they will accept me into their elite?
I also found
this list of amusing cross breeds that I thought you all may enjoy.