Slink aside, labradoodle.
The puggle – a pug-beagle mix – has vaulted to the top of the designer-doggy A-list.
“I’d never heard of people mixing pugs with things, and suddenly they’re here,” says Dana Hood, owner of For the Love of Dog day care and spa in Glendale. “They’re the new hip dog.”
Chic enough, at least, for “Sopranos” star James Gandolfini and actor Jake Gyllenhaal, both of whom recently bought puggles.
Denver lawyer Valeri Pappas, 32, doesn’t have her puggle yet, but in a few months her Denver condominium will contain a pup. She was looking for a dog for a “long time,” she says, but couldn’t decide upon a breed. Then a national TV show ran a spot on puggles, “and my friends started e-mailing me and saying it’s the dog for me.”
Now she’s on two waiting lists with puggle breeders in other states.
“It’s a little sketchy that I’m going to have it flown in from some breeder,” she says. “I feel bad about not picking up a dog from the Humane Society. But I fell in love.”
She wants a male, and likes the name Oscar.
There’s another name for designer dogs like these – mutts. The world of pet hounds long has been divided between fussy and expensive purebreds, and earthy, cheap mutts.
Labradoodles – labrador retriever and poodle mixes – breached that divide a few years ago, followed quickly by goldendoodles (golden retriever and poodle creations). To date, 37 labradoodle breeders have registered with the American Canine Hybrid Club, based in Arkansas. Those breeders have pumped out about 8,500 puppies, says Garry Garner, president of the club. The club now has 50 registered puggle breeders, which have produced about 7,500 puppies.
The club registers only hybrids with purebred parents, and Garner acknowledges more breeders produce hybrid litters that don’t belong to the club.
Ifs, ands or mutts
The designer dogs aren’t quite as popular as purebreds. Last year, 146,692 Labrador retrievers were registered with the American Kennel Club, making the dog the most popular purebred. Golden retrievers followed, with 52,550 registered dogs, and German shepherds came in third, with 46,046.
And while hybrids don’t have American Kennel Club “papers” tracking genetic lineage like so many tail-wagging Daughters of the American Revolution, it doesn’t mean they’re cheap. Designer dogs sell for $600-$1,500 says Garner, which puts them in a league, financially, with purebreds.
At their peak, labradoodles sold for between $1,500 and $2,500, Garner says. Purebred Labrador and golden retrievers, meanwhile, sell for $300-$2,000.
The rise of the expensive mutt doesn’t draw playful yelps from the purebred crowd.
“What is the temperament of a puggle?” asks Lisa Peterson, a spokeswoman for the American Kennel Club. “There is no consistency there, no standard to breed toward. There is no betterment of the breed, because it’s not a breed, it’s a mutt. It’s a crapshoot. You could end up with the worst of both breeds.”
She added: “Dogs are being treated more like accessories, like a handbag. Celebrities have them, your teenage daughter wants one, but you are dealing with a living, breathing being, not a bracelet you can toss in the drawer next week.”
Kathy Madison, president of the Rocky Mountain Pug Dog Club, says her take on puggles is “they are being bred specifically to bring in money, and to me that’s exploitation of a purebred dog.”
The most you’ll spend at the Dumb Friends League in Denver for a mutt is $95, says spokeswoman Kristina Vourax.
“We would certainly rather see people come down to a shelter and adopt a dog in need of a home,” she says. “We are full of mixed-breed dogs in need of families.”
But the pound has no pugs. So Rachel Kelly, 34, went elsewhere for Oliver, who was introduced to her Park Hill home in August. She loves pugs, but they “have a lot of health and breathing issues. I thought a mixed-breed would be healthier.”
Good genes or bad?
Take a pug’s warm personality and mix it with a beagle’s superior snout. The result, in theory: a dog with big eyes, floppy ears, a lovely personality and none of the breathing problems that plague pugs.
Of course beagles are known for incessant baying. So another puggle possibility could be a dog that barks constantly and has terrible sinuses.
Still, Kelly’s embrace of mixed breeds for health reasons makes sense, says Kevin Fitzgerald, a Denver veterinarian.
“There is something called hybrid vigor, where animals of mixed parentage don’t suffer the same gene-related maladies that purebreds do,” he says. But that doesn’t mean picking up a designer dog for a pet is less risky than adopting a purebred.
“We don’t have a long enough history to see what the health problems are in these guys,” he says. And if breeders begin mating puggles with puggles, for example, there’s always the danger that bad genes become locked into the blossoming “breed,” Fitzgerald says.
Dog breeds, he says, are “a product of man” – not God or evolution. Many breeds, like greyhounds, are ancient; others, Doberman pinschers and Jack Russell terriers, only have been around since the 19th century.
One danger with newfangled designer dogs is breeders don’t have the same pressures upon them as breeders of purebreds. Most buyers don’t clamor for detailed information about parents, nor do they demand proof of the breeder’s triumphs.
Fitzgerald says easy money can lure unscrupulous breeders, who don’t dedicate themselves to the health and improvement of the breed.
Matt McKoane, 34, bought Marley for $600 from a mall pet store two years ago for his wife, Marci. Both had been ogling the puggle for weeks. Marley is wrinkly, bug-eyed and fat, and lives in the McKoane’s Hilltop cottage with the couple and weeks-old son Jack.
Recently, Marley spent an hour cocking his head and pouring his soulful brown eyes into his owners’ hearts: “Maybe one more biscuit?”
And whenever Jack’s voice crackled from the depths of the bassinet, Marley’s eyes pivoted toward the child and briefly squeezed into something more slitlike, a look touched with the sinister.
“He’s a little depressed” about Jack’s birth, explained Marci.
Staff writer Douglas Brown can be reached at 303-820-1395, or djbrown@denverpost.com.
