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One of the biggest mistakes made is to assume that all herding breeds retained their herding instinct. Herding ability is a fragile characteristic, easily lost if not intentionally bred for and fostered carefully from generation to generation.  That chasing of children and cars isn't herding instinct, it's prey drive, a much deeper seated and necessary survival instinct that isn't as easily lost and is found in almost all canines. Poodles were originally bred as hunting retrievers, but very few actually retain that ability today.

It can't, as someone posted earlier, be trained back into a dog. Instinct, once lost, can't be replaced in that individual through training. I have dogs who work, really work, and I can assure you I see the results of loss of instinct in trial arenas all the time. A trained dog with no instinct relies entirely on it's owner to think for it. Well, when you have cattle in a 50 acre pasture that you need gathered, you can't be right on top of the dog telling it go bye, lie down, way to me....you have to be able to send that dog out to do it's job and know that it will gather those cow/calf pairs or steers and bring them in and do it right, without getting hurt and without hurting the stock.

The problem with crossbreeding is that there is a mixing of genes, health problems from each breed and usually no attention paid to the quality of the animals being crossed nor the issues that may reside behind them genetically. This doesn't make for a better dog, it makes for a crap shoot. You may or may not come up with the dog who has the desired and preferred characteristics of both breeds and only if both parents carried those characteristics to begin with.

Golden Retrievers and Australian Shepherds carry a long, double coat. Poodles carry a hard to maintain hair coat and between the two, the result is one that can easily mat. You won't necessarily get the low-shedding characteristics of a Poodle nor the herding instinct of an Aussie. You may get the Progressive Retinal Atrophy gene of the Poodle and the Epilepsy found in both, though!

Seriously, anyone who advocates that the intentional crossbreeding of dogs produces a better result needs to do a little more research. There are certainly plenty of wonderful, even great mixes in the world, but they are great through a happy accident and could not produce those same characteristics again in another generation reliably. That is the difference in purebred dog programs (operated by knowledgable breeders) and those byb and designer dog breeders trying to rip the public off.

 

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I'll see your, Beagle and the five North American Shepherds for five REAL Australian Shepherds





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Do they bark with an accent?