Golden Moment

Earlier this month, a position paper from the Golden Retriever Club of America directed at an irate Goldendoodle owner made the rounds on social media, amassing thousands of likes and hundreds of shares from around the world.

Surprisingly, the correspondence is 16 years old, though clearly its resonance has not diminished with time.

Read on for the original “Doodle Statement,” followed by new comments provided to Dog News by the Golden Retriever Club of America. – Denise Flaim

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Response on Goldendoodles from the GRCA Board of Directors, December 2006

I am shocked and insulted by your information on the Golden Retriever Club of America web site concerning Goldendoodles. We breed these dogs with every caution and two years of research and have had wonderful results.

In my opinion your bias and negative comments are uncalled for, perhaps you should purchase one and find out for yourself before you make such bold statements. – Nancy

The Golden Retriever Club of America stands behind the information on our website. We are dedicated to the preservation of the Golden Retriever breed as defined by our standard, which is published on our website.

You state that you have two years of research behind your breeding program. We have over 140 years of experience in our breed and can trace our entire breeding program back to the mating of two dogs in the 1860s with very careful notes and ledgers maintained on every single breeding. The history of the Golden Retriever is carefully preserved and documented.

You do not delineate what you mean by research. What we do in the way of research is fund many bona-fide grants designed to help identify and eliminate canine hereditary disease – diseases that are, by the way, passed on to your Goldendoodles. Are you aware of these diseases? In addition, we request that all our members do the basic genetic testing for hips, eyes, hearts and elbows. We request that additional information be given to those who purchase Golden Retrievers about the overall health and longevity of the breed. We expect every breeder to support genetic research not only in doing the four major clearances but also by contributing to a DNA databank available to researchers. The Golden Retriever Club of America is responsible for collecting DNA on over 1,000 of our current dogs along with a detailed health profile. There is no such pool of available information on crossbred animals.

You mention wonderful results. That is a rather broad statement. Golden Retrievers excel in multiple venues – field, obedience, conformation, agility, companionship, service, detection, comfort, and search and rescue. We have a long history of stable temperaments, trainability and biddability carefully preserved and monitored by conscientious breeders. These breeders have the full resources of our club, our foundation and our membership at their disposal.

The Golden Retriever Club of America also works with the Morris Animal Foundation and The Canine Health Foundation in providing support and samples for vital research in genetics and health. We have never seen a grant application for the health of the Goldendoodle. We have never seen a donation by any Doodle organization to the betterment of canine health, only undocumented claims that their dogs have no health problems. We have never seen anyone breeding Doodles of any kind talk about the basic genetic testing for both the Golden and the Poodle. Instead, we only hear of these dogs showing up in rescue because the promises of lack of shedding and allergies and stable temperament remain unfulfilled.

The Golden Retriever Club of America also has an extensive rescue network and is among the first to arrive on the scene during natural disasters to provide shelter and assistance to the Golden. Where were the Doodle people during Hurricane Katrina?

We do not condone actions such as the deliberate production of litters from two different AKC-recognized breeds of dogs, which does not maintain the separate purpose and integrity of each breed. We speak for the Golden Retriever. We expect our breeders to demonstrate honesty, integrity and fairness in dealing with other owners, breeders, purchasers of puppies and the general public. We feel that the deliberate production of "Goldendoodles" profoundly violates that trust. The Golden Retriever, as a purebred dog, comes from generations and generations of breeding dogs with a common gene pool and a characteristic appearance, temperament and function. "Goldendoodles" are nothing more than mixed-breed dogs.

If you are offended by our website, imagine how we feel about the proliferation of boutique dogs taking advantage of the public and misusing the careful and selectively bred Golden Retriever.

The Board of Directors of the Golden Retriever Club of America

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The Golden Retriever Club of America Board was surprised to see the “Doodle Statement” making the current rounds on social media! The position paper was written in 2006 by the GRCA Board of Directors as a response to the Goldendoodle breeders’ unsupported marketing claims of genetic diversity and hypo-allergenic dogs.

Our position paper was shared by many parent clubs at the time. The current GRCA Board has reviewed the paper and agrees that the statement is still relevant. We have recently been contacted, 16 years later, by many parent clubs seeking permission to share the document.  

Today many of the original issues of the Goldendoodles still remain. Their breeders discuss the differences between the F1 (the first generation), a Golden bred to a Poodle; an F1b, which is a Goldendoodle bred back to a Poodle, and an F2, which is a Doodle bred to a Doodle. Is that the definition of a purebred dog?

By contrast, the Golden Retriever can be traced back to the original breeding of Nous, the only yellow puppy in a litter of black Wavy-Coated retrievers, to Belle, a Tweed Water Spaniel (now extinct) in 1864. The original breedings were meticulously annotated in Lord Tweedmouth’s kennel records, now preserved in the (UK) Kennel Club Library. The GRCA archives contain a copy of that handwritten ledger.

In 2005, Goldendoodles were being marketed as dogs with no genetic issues like epilepsy, hip dysplasia and allergies. And yet the anecdotal evidence at the time was that the F1 cross created a myriad of problems experienced by either the Golden or the Poodle, or in some cases both. They claimed superiority to Goldens because they did not shed. In order to have the Poodle coat type, there has to be an excess of alleles from the Poodle, indicating that an F1 cross was hit or miss on the coat type. In addition, to produce a healthy puppy, testing has to be done on both parents, and even today the Goldendoodle Association only recommends hips and hearts as a basic clearance.

In 2006, there were few scholarly studies on the Goldendoodle. Buyers never questioned the temperaments of the Doodle because the temperament of the Golden Retriever is one of the signatures of the breed. Our standard states "a kindly expression and possessing a personality that is eager, alert and self-confident. Quarrelsomeness or hostility towards other dogs or people in normal situations, or an unwarranted show of timidity or nervousness, is not in keeping with Golden Retriever character. Such actions should be penalized according to their significance.”

Since our letter was written, there is more information on the cross-breeding, and it affirms so many of our original concerns. As an example, a study published in 2019 notes: “The F1 Goldendoodle behaviour varied from one or more pure constituent breeds in dog rivalry, dog-directed aggression, dog-directed fear, and stranger-directed fear.” (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6940824/)

In the end, the main difference is that the focus of the Goldendoodle Association is marketing with health and legitimacy a distant second, while the passion of the GRCA is health and preservation of breed characteristics that were purposefully selected in 1864.