by Timmy Duncan

Created on: November 30, 2010

People often wonder what the difference is between a hybrid dog like a Goldendoodle or a Labradoodle and a mixed breed or “mutt” that you might see at your local animal shelter. The short answer – there is absolutely no difference whatsoever.  The only significant difference between the two is that with a hybrid dog, two different breeds are intentionally bred together to produce a certain desired result. With a hybrid, you know exactly what your dog is mixed with. With a mixed breed or a mutt, the dog’s origin is little more than an educated guess.

The world of hybrid dogs is an interesting one. While many of these “breeders” would have you think that they know exactly what each litter is going to produce, at this point in the game it is little more than an experiment. Many people believe that breeding a poodle with its hypoallergenic “hair” coat with the lovable Golden Retriever will produce a dog with the personality of a Golden and the coat of a poodle. But you might just as easily get the personality of the poodle with the long fur coat of the Golden Retriever. There has not been nearly enough research on the process of breeding to know what these litters will produce. Most of the purebred dogs took generations upon generations to develop into what they are today. Years and years of breeding for specific traits and weeding out others finally developed into the dogs we know and recognize.

The only difference between the hybrid dog and the mixed breed mutt is knowledge of which breeds the dog is mixed with. That, and the mixed breed mutt might be the product of two mixed breed mutts which would dilute their gene pool even further. But the good news is that most experts feel that this is a good thing in terms of the health and well being of your dog. The pure bred dogs of the world have some inherited health issues that come from mixing the same bloodlines over and over again. Mixed breeds have much more variety in their genetic make up and therefore do not always have the same types of health problems that pure bred dogs have.

Hybrid dogs may be the next big thing, but make no mistake. There has not been enough research done nor enough breeding cycles to know for certain what you are getting with most of these designer dogs. A lot of these breeders are taking advantage of people who don’t know better and charging an arm and a leg for a dog that you could get just as easily at your local animal shelter for next to nothing.

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