askbox: *inundated* WHAT IS WRONG WITH DOODLES?????
Me: Mistakes were made! Mayday, Mayday!
But seriously, there's a lot of factors as to why so many people in vet med have an incredible dislike of doodles. I could probably write a 10 page essay but I'm going to try to keep this short.
1- They are 'trendy', and thus come with all the problems that come along with that. Backyard breeders, unethical breeders, any doodle breeder who calls their doodles either 'purebred', 'akc registered', or uses the phrase "you get the best of both breeds" is a goddamned lying liarface... these dogs are bred purely to make money. There's rarely any health testing, almost never temperament testing. It's 'make a fluffy puppy with a cutesy name' and people are DRAWN to cute. I watched many people adopt *huskies* from the shelter because "They're so cute!" NO. BAD.
2- People are rarely prepared to handle the traits of either/any of the breeds that go into doodles, especially those mixed with working-type dogs. The number of labra- and goldendoodle owners who don't understand why their dog is always eating things is aggravating. It's because they're labs/goldens! They eat shit! It's what those breeds just DO. Most doodle owners do no research into the parent breeds at all. This means they are also unprepared for the health problems that can crop up from the parent breeds.
3- People see breeders calling these "Great family pets" and then ... don't fucking socialize or train them so now, as vet staff, we are faced with sometimes 90+ pound dogs that can't sit on command, are jumping all over us, mouthing us, or pissing themselves in terror and wanting to bite our faces off because they're so afraid of strangers. This is not the dogs' faults but it doesn't make us like them either.
4- This seems to be a bit less of an issue now, or at least less of an issue where I am, but a lot of people don't... groom them? Some breeders even specifically say to not get them seen at the groomer before they're a year old???? And people hear "non-shedding" (potentially A LIE) and then... don't.... brush them? So then they turn into a solid felted mat and they become a groomer's behaviour-nightmare-shear-it-like-a-sheep-"What do you mean you couldn't leave the hair long?!?!?!?"
5- Oh gods, the ENDLESS EAR INFECTIONS AND ALLERGIES AND GI ISSUES
So yeah, that's the quick and dirty on why "ugh, doodles"... at least it's a little shorter than a why "UGH, frenchies" would be
“If a society puts half its children into short skirts and warns them not to move in ways that reveal their panties, while putting the other half into jeans and overalls and encouraging them to climb trees, play ball, and participate in other vigorous outdoor games; if later, during adolescence, the children who have been wearing trousers are urged to “eat like growing boys,” while the children in skirts are warned to watch their weight and not get fat; if the half in jeans runs around in sneakers or boots, while the half in skirts totters about on spike heels, then these two groups of people will be biologically as well as socially different. Their muscles will be different, as will their reflexes, posture, arms, legs and feet, hand-eye coordination, and so on. Similarly, people who spend eight hours a day in an office working at a typewriter or a visual display terminal will be biologically different from those who work on construction jobs. There is no way to sort the biological and social components that produce these differences. We cannot sort nature from nurture when we confront group differences in societies in which people from different races, classes, and sexes do not have equal access to resources and power, and therefore live in different environments. Sex-typed generalizations, such as that men are heavier, taller, or stronger than women, obscure the diversity among women and among men and the extensive overlaps between them… Most women and men fall within the same range of heights, weights, and strengths, three variables that depend a great deal on how we have grown up and live. We all know that first-generation Americans, on average, are taller than their immigrant parents and that men who do physical labor, on average, are stronger than male college professors. But we forget to look for the obvious reasons for differences when confronted with assertions like ‘Men are stronger than women.’ We should be asking: ‘Which men?’ and ‘What do they do?’ There may be biologically based average differences between women and men, but these are interwoven with a host of social differences from which we cannot disentangle them.”
— Ruth Hubbard, “The Political Nature of ‘Human Nature’“
(via gothhabiba)
Let us suppose that the "average" horse would have equal proportions of all these parts. The degree to which each part in this poll deviates from the "average" size (20% of total) will determine how large or small that part of our horse will be (i.e a horse with only 10% in Legs will have legs half the size of the average horse).