Cockapoos: Dash and Lilly“*Cockapoo
From Wikipedia; (believe it or not). In my opinion it is fairly accurate and a great starting point for Cockapoo education.
A Cockapoo (also called a Spoodle or Cockerpoo) is a hybrid dog, created by crossing an American Cocker Spaniel and a Poodle (in most cases the Miniature Poodle or Toy Poodle), or by breeding Cockapoo to Cockapoo.
History
The Cockapoo has been popular in the United States since at least the 1960s. It has become so common that many Cockapoos are the result of breeding Cockapoo to Cockapoo rather than of a direct cross between a Cocker Spaniel and a Poodle. Cockapoos have also become very popular in other countries. In Australia and Sweden, they are usually called Spoodles, and can be the result of mating either the American Cocker Spaniel or English Cocker Spaniel with a Poodle, or of breeding successive generations of Spoodles.
Health
Cockapoos tend to have far fewer genetic problems than their parent breeds. This is due to what some call hybrid vigor.
Nevertheless, both Poodles and Cocker Spaniels can suffer from luxating patellas (loose knees) and PRA (Progressive
retinal atrophy, an eye disorder), so it's essential to ensure that the parent dogs are tested for these problems.It 's also important that a Cockapoo's ears be kept clean and dry, as like Cocker Spaniels and other long-eared dogs, they can be prone to ear infections.Characteristics
Breeders usually try to retain the small build of the American Cocker Spaniel, while retaining the wavy quality of the Poodle's coat. Strictly speaking, the Cockapoo cannot be described as a purebred because it does not 'breed true'. In breeders' terms, 'breeding true' means that the pups of two mated specimens will have more consistently predictable characteristics, and will resemble their parents, rather than exhibiting random characteristics of the dog breeds in their ancestries. There are currently three Cockapoo clubs in America that are working towards developing the Cockapoo by breeding successive generations, and establishing the Cockapoo as a recognized
breed.”
Dash and Lilly
After Luke, Lucia didn’t want another dog for a while. She said she would get another dog like Luke… (She liked the temperament of a *Cockapoo and the fact that they didn’t shed), but this time she wanted a female. About seven months went by and she started investigating. She found a breeder in Sonoma who was about to have a litter. When the pups were born, they called her to announce that they had a white female. We arranged to visit when they were six or seven weeks old. An interesting thing to know is that the breeders were moving from Sonoma to Jackson and while en route during this move the pups were born in their van.
When we visited the pups we immediately fell in love. She was so white with a black spot, the size of a quarter on her back with a bit of black on her ears. I think there were four of them. Two were brown and there was another white one, a boy, with a bit of brown on his ears. I decided since Lucy was starting to get old and senile that maybe this would be an opportune time for me to get a dog also. So after talking to Lucia about it, we got the boy as well. We took them home in eight weeks. These were Dash and Lilly. Lucia named them after long time companions, Dashiel Hammett and Lillian Hellman, the famous novelists.
We read that having siblings wouldn’t be a good idea because the dogs will not bond with you, but that was absolute hogwash (in Dash and Lilly’s case anyway). These dogs were totally bonded to us. In fact Lilly would be next to your body 24/7 if she had a choice. Dash was more independent.
It was amusing to watch Dash and Lilly when they went for walks because they walked in unison. Their tails were feathered, springy and erect. They looked like the feathers on the hats typically worn by marching bands. When they got tired their tails dropped. We took them to the park and to the beach a lot. They loved to run and chase each other and roll around.
We had a pop up tent trailer and they came camping with us everywhere. They would sometimes bark when they heard noises from the other campers and we would reprimand them to keep quiet, so they learned to bark quietly. We called it their camping bark. They were trying so hard to be obedient but their instinct drove them, so they barked restrainedly.
They went everywhere with us. They were so small, Lilly was only 10 lbs. and Dash was 11 lbs. They were like live stuffed animals. I have salt and pepper hair so Lilly looked like me and gravitated towards me and Dash was mostly white but had traces of reddish brown hair on his ears and when he was newly groomed, he had red spots on his skin that you could see through. He looked like Lucia and her red hair, he gravitated more towards her.
They were always together and you really couldn’t think of them without each other. Our friend Barbara called them DashLilly as if they were one entity.
Lilly has an under bite and licorice lips. Dash had beautifully shaped bright brown eyes; they looked as if we had enhanced it with an eyeliner pencil.
We called them “the celebrities” because we would always get compliments about how cute and adorable they were. People would stop us, asked us what kind of dogs they were and could they pet them. One time when Lucia was stopped by a fellow walker, she was asked what their names were and Lucia started by saying…”Dash and…”, before she could finish, the woman said….”Dot.” I guess we could have called her that for the black spot on her back. Lucia would often times add…”her name is Lilly, see the lily pad in her back?”
Gopher Hunting in El Solyo, BL
When we moved to Ben Lomond in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the new surroundings, and the squirrels gave Lilly good reason to bark. Our neighbor directly adjacent to us often times would leave notes…”Please keep your dogs in the house, they barked for hours and they kept me awake”. We tried our best, usually bringing them in at 9:00 pm and keeping the doggie door closed. There were times, however, that we unexpectedly stayed away later and this would happen. So one night we came home and we got another frustrated note from Joan next door. I was so embarrassed and felt bad about keeping my neighbors up and I wanted to make amends. The next day, I created a card with pictures of Dash and Lilly. See note below:
Once they read the note, Joan and Gary came over to express how much they appreciated the gesture. This changed everything. Never again did she complain and somehow we got the barking under control. A little humor goes a long way!
As I said earlier, Dash was more independent. At around 9:00 pm, he would disappear. You would find him comfortably nested in our bed, asleep. Once he had staked his place, he would protect it like it was his fortress. We called him a troll because sometimes he wouldn’t let Lilly come up. Imagine this little 12 pound creature trolling the perimeter of a king-sized bed. It was histerical!
I loved to dress them up! Call me sick, but I just got a kick out of it. Below is a Holloween card I did several years ago:
In April of 2006 Lucia and I parted ways. She moved back to Oakland. We weren’t sure how to handle the dogs. We definitely didn’t want to separate them. So we shared them for a while. They would be in Ben Lomond for several weeks then in Oakland for several weeks.
Then Lucia suggested that perhaps I should get a new dog because it was too hard on Dash and Lilly and she wanted them full time. I didn’t really like the idea; I loved Dash and Lilly just as much and couldn’t think of parting with them. Lucia and I remained the best and closest of friends so I saw Dash and Lilly almost every weekend. In February this year Dash and Lilly turned seven.
In April of 2007, Dash met his untimely death. While Lucia was working on her garden, she accidentally left the back gate open and Dash snuck out and crossed the street and was struck by a speeding car. In a split second, he was gone from our lives! I got the call from Lucia and I never expected how badly I would react to it. I wasn’t any consolation to her at all because I got the worse feeling in my gut, I could not continue working. I left work and cried; I couldn’t stop crying.
There is nothing you can do and there is no one to blame. At least he died instantly and in one piece. He is buried in San Sebastian and memorialized in the Berkeley Marina Dog Park. He is in doggy heaven, our angel boy, bless his big soul!
Angus and Abbe
Sir Angus, Lord of Ben Lomond and Lady Aberdeen of Ben Lomond.
From the top: Angus and Abbe at seven weeks, before I picked them up.
Although Cockapoos are not purebred, as mentioned above, there are three clubs that are seeking to turn them into a breed over time by keeping track of their lineage. I got my two new dogs from a breeder in Brentwood. She is a registered breeder for The North American Cockapoo Registry. Therefore my pups have certificates and I decided to give them formal names as you would if they were registered under the American Kennel Club (AKC). I call them Angus and Abbe for short.
The whole “Designer Dog” idea is somewhat ludicrous. While “mutts” used to be accidents, now they are actually creating hybrids. As noted in the Wikipedia Cockapoos tend to have far fewer genetic problems than their parent breeds. This is due to what some call hybrid vigor, as opposed to inbreeding depression, which is usually defined as the lowered fitness or vigor of inbred individuals compared with their non-inbred counterparts. I tried to use the Encyclopedia Britannica instead for research on hybrid vigor and here is what I got: the increase in such characteristics as size, growth rate, fertility, and yield of a hybrid organism over those of its parents. Plant and animal breeders exploit heterosis by mating two different pure-bred lines that have certain desirable traits. By the way, to get the whole article from the Encyclopedia Britannica you need to sign up for a free trial and give your credit card number. Forget that!
This is all too scientific anyway. Basically there are a group of people who think that breeding two different breeds make them better dogs. In the Cockapoo’s case, they get the curls of a poodle, which are usually hypoallergenic while retaining the small size and good nature of the Cocker Spaniel.
Someone brought the New York Times Magazine to work last February and it had a great article about “Designer Dogs”, I found it on the web if you’re interested: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/04/magazine/04dogs.t.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5070&en=b4017575eb4dcfc3&ex=1188964800
Back to my two adorable Cockapoos, Angus and Abbe:
I bought them in mid August. I wanted to get litter mates like Dash and Lilly. I had already decided I wanted two dogs because of the great experience I had with Dash and Lilly. I wanted my dogs to be able to keep each other company while I was away working.
I couldn’t find litter mates but I found two from one breeder who were from separate litters but only 3 days apart. I wanted what they called “Party Colors”, which usually meant they had two or more colors, and mostly spotted. It’s my guess that this trait must have originally come from an English Cocker Spaniel because an American Cocker Spaniel has no spots. But then again who knows. Lilly, for example has English Cocker Spaniel colors.
Angus is a reddish butterscotch color with white markings on his face and chest while Abbe is all black. When they were eight weeks Angus had such a broad face and his eyes were so far apart that he looked like a cow. That’s how Lucia came up with the name Angus. It was a great name but I thought Angus cows were only Black. I found out later on that there is such a thing as Red Angus cows in Scotland. Then we thought about Abbey because it sounded good with Angus.
The Red Angus breed had its beginning in Europe. In the eighth-century, according to some authorities, hardy Norsemen raiding the coasts of England and Scotland brought with them small, dun-colored hornless cattle which interbred with black native Celtic cattle of inland Scotland, which had upright horns. A naturally polled black breed was produced, which roughly corresponded to the black Aberdeen Angus of today, although it was a considerably smaller-bodied animal. The polled characteristic was very slow to spread inland, and for almost a thousand years was confined principally to the coastal areas of England and Scotland.
English longhorns, predominantly red in color, were brought in and crossed with the black native polled breed. The resultant offspring were all black polled animals, since black is a dominant color, and red a recessive one. However, all carried the red gene. Subsequent interbreeding produced an average of one red calf in four, in accordance with Mendel’s law of heredity.
So that did it and having the Aberdeen Angus sealed the name Abbey, the girl. I dropped the “y” and named her Abbe, short for Aberdeen. Then the whole Scottish connection came about naturally as I live in Ben Lomond, meaning beautiful mountain in Gaelic. I thought maybe that there must've been a Scottish settlement in the area since we have names like Ben Lomond, Loch Lomond, Scotts Valley, The Highlands, Mt. Cross, Felton, Bonny Doon and they hold the Scottish Rites Games in Ben Lomond every year at The Highlands Park. I found an article on the web that explains all that http://www.bonnydoon.got.net/rburns.html
No comments:
Post a Comment