Taking An Idea WAY Too Far

[ladysprite]

In my job as a veterinarian, I am privileged to come across many wonderful animals, including fascinating different breeds of dogs and cats. And while I'll always be a fan of mutts at heart, I'll admit to having a soft spot for some particular dog breeds. Gordon Setters, for example. And pugs. And, much as I hate to admit it, Boston terriers. And, much as it galls me, I've been doing my best to bite my tongue and not gripe too much about the latest trends in designer mixed-breed dogs.

Golden-doodles. Labradoodles. Puggles. Buggles. Cockapoos, peka-poos, chi-poos, schnoodles, uri-peis, and just about any other genetic mishmosh that the pet stores can hang a cutesy name and a four-figure price tag on. They come marching through my door, usually carried by fresh-faced novice pet owners just shining through with pride of ownership for their designer purebred. And I'm not going to help anything by raining on their parade and explaining that they just spent a small fortune on a glorified mutt. But now it's becoming ridiculous.

A client brought their husky in recently, I can't remember why, and while we were making small talk I mentioned that when I was growing up I had a dog that was half husky, half golden retriever. The client looked at me with sudden awe, and exclaimed that he had seen those dogs on the internet, and weren't they really expensive, and new, and how I must have been on the cutting edge back then!

I had to break it to him gently that, no, Rocky was not a designer dog, but instead the product of a Romeo and Juliet-style star-crossed romance between the show dogs of two neighbors, one who bred Huskies, one who bred Goldens, and who were foolish enough to separate them by only a chain-link fence. Mama dog was sent to the canine equivalent of a convent for two months, the puppies were hushed up and given away through anonymous ads, and neither family ever spoke of that event again.

But then I stopped, and figured that the client had to be teasing me. There's a limit to how far this designer craze will go, right?

Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you the Goberian.

Stop the madness. Adopt a mutt, call it a mutt, love it, and revel in the fact that you can still afford medical care for it instead of spending a thousand dollars on something with a goofy made-up name and a questionable history....

*Edited to add: Of course, no offense intended to anyone who owns a designer mixed-breed, especially purpose-bred ones like my personal favorite patient, Brodie - I will be the first to admit that labradoodles make marvelous service dogs. But as pets-only.... they're awfully pricey status symbols.

Comments

[gyzki.livejournal.com]

My family used to have a beagle-dachshund mutt. I wonder what that would be called these days: a Doggle? a Beagund?

[dreda.livejournal.com]

Das Über-Weiner?

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

My cousins had, I kid you not, a dachshund/doberman cross-breed.

I still shudder to think about the act of miscegenation and the mechanics themselves.

This dog was, well, remember the movie The Mask, in the scene where the dog put the mask on, and was all teeth? It was a dachshund on long legs, and with a doberman's giant bite. A very slight and slender dog, a real weiner dog, but at waist height and with more teeth than a shark.

[gyzki.livejournal.com]

I still shudder to think about the act of miscegenation and the mechanics themselves.

"Red Bull gives you wings."

Or, to quote the "Laugh-In" Joke Wall:
"What do you get when you cross a St. Bernard with a chihuahua?"
[Joanne Worley voice] "A very cross chihuahua." [/Joanne Worley voice]

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

Cue Eric Bogle's "Little Gomez"....

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

I once saw what looked like a yellow lab puppy at the dog park. I asked how old he was. The folks said, "Four." I said, "He looks older than four months!" "No. Four years. He's a lab/chihuahua cross." (They didn't say "chibrador," fortunately.) Apparently it was the same story as the husky/retriever, two breeding dogs -- backyard breeding dogs -- whom the owners had let play together, assuming they were too different in size to breed. When the lab fell asleep, the chihuahua jumped her, and the lab barely even woke up. Fortunately, it wasn't the other way around, I know of one small dog who was impregnated by a rottweiler and didn't survive pregnancy.

[redfishie.livejournal.com]

that's a very disturbing story on several levels.

There was someone near me growing up who was purposely crossbreading Great Danes and Chihuahua through artifical insemination...the resulting puppies sometimes came into the local vet's office and had lots of weird joint problems.