Goldendoodle Education

We have found that there is so much bad information floating around the internet about dogs and Goldendoodles in particular.

Generations and filling labels

Most of our litters are multigeneration.  F1 is a first generation cross between a poodle and a retriever.  Next is f1b, which is breeding an f1 to a poodle.  The problem is anything beyond that is unpredictable because you do not know which coat genes the parent inherited unless you coat test.   We only pair dogs for the best outcome of little to no shedding coats and we do coat test all our dogs.  We have found to keep as much retriever in the lines that back crossing to a poodle over and over is not ideal so we select our parents based on coat testing not generation.

Colors

Poodles come in a variety of colors.  The USA only recognizes some of the many colors.  Other European countries recognize many more.  This results in you possibly seeing colors that are not as popular in the USA but have been bred for many years in other countries.  Due to our dogs not being registered in the AKC, we are not limited on the colors we can produce to stay with the breed standard.  We breed solid, parti, and merle.

Diseases

Lots of dogs carry diseases.  The reason who we health test is to pair dogs that will not develop a testable disease.  Some diseases only need one copy to produce a dog affected where other diseases require 2 copies to produce the disease.  Any puppy we sell will come from health tested parents that at the time of breeding is not likely to develop one of these testable disease.  In 2017, a new disease called Intervertebral Disc Disease/Chondrodystrophy (IVVD/CDDY) became testable.  By 2019, it started showing up on regular routine genetic screenings. After much research we have found its in over 70% of the breed.  It's a risk allele, not a causation allele.  This means that even though a dog carriers one or two copies, the likelihood of developing the disease is very low. Research is showing less than 5-15% ever develop this disease.  It's believed because of the structure of doodles, they are just not at an increased risk even though they carry the gene. There just are not many reports of doodles having disc disease even though 70% or more carry the genes for it.  

After much research from GANA and individual breeders as well as discussions with Dr Grahn (UC Davis), Dr Bell (Tufts), and Dr. Casey (Pawprints), the recommended course of action is to breed it out of all doodles but very slowly.  It's not recommended to eliminate all dogs that carry this gene. This will take years to accomplish because anytime you select for one gene you are breeding against another.  So we are taking the position of slowly breeding this gene out.  If removed too quickly, we could damage the gene pool. The advice from UC Davis to keep from developing IVVD is to maintain a healthy weight, keep your dog active, and avoid high impact activities.  You will find some of our breeding dogs do have one copy of CDDY.  None of our dogs have 2 copies and none of our dogs carry the CDPA gene.  We believe we are in better shape than most breeders because of only having one copy of CDDY and no copies of CDPA.  This making our breeding dogs at the least risk possible.