Breed Standard

An O’Connell Retriever is medium sized retriever, with an affectionate gentle temperament. They are commonly shades of gold but may also be tricoloured,  merle, black and chocolate or particoloured variations of these. Typically weighing between 14 and 22 kg with a flat coat, feathered legs and a feathered tail carried level with their back, they are athletic well proportioned dogs with no extreme characteristics.

Their eyes are rounded but not protruding and they have a defined but not extreme “stop” and a well developed muzzle which approximately equals the length of their brain case.

If you’ve never heard of them before it is because they’re a recent  invention – bred since 2015 and previously called miniretrievers.  We only started calling them O’Connell Retrievers in 2022

So why an O’Connell Retriever?

In About us  I recount my search for the perfect medium sized non shedding family pet dog to replace my otherwise perfect but shedding miniature labradoodles.  I love Groodles which I’ve been breeding since the early 2000s. They rarely shed and we’ve always had them as family dogs – but they are quite large dogs and while pretty healthy they do share a number of health issues seen in larger dogs. Cavoodles are a great little dog but, like all small dogs, they are a bit more hyperactive and anxious than  larger dogs.  It seems that dogs evolved to be dingo sized, as 10-20 kg  dogs are less likely to have health or temperament issues than larger or smaller dogs.

You’ll read there how I decided to develop the O’Connell Retriever by breeding on from our first cross miniretrievers. The difficulty in finding good reliable Golden Retrievers and Cavaliers was part of my motivation but mostly it was the exciting prospect of developing a new type of dog breed, using DNA information and sound genetic principles, entirely for the purpose of being a family pet. It’s a fascinating challenge to be able to select the best puppies for breeding our next generation to develop a new “fixed type” of dog, not a breed in the usual sense as we will always introduce new bloodlines, but a lovely looking, predictable and reliable family pet.

O’Connell Retrievers are mostly half Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and half Golden Retriever but we have a contribution from two lovely “Cavadors” so there is a touch of Labrador in some of them. This has enabled us to introduce chocolate and black genes and we also have the merle gene floating around in there from Ralph our ruby Cavalier (whose great grandfather was a Koolie sheepdog) and Percy, our Blenheim Cavalier, has contributed white patches.

We think they are gorgeous dogs and have been breeding them since 2015 – long enough to find out more about them – you can never be sure of the answers if you don’t ask the questions. So in early 2025 we carried out a questionnaire and received 158 responses from our O’Connell Retriever owners. The following information summarises the results of our questionnaire.

Personality:

We used the Monash Canine Personality Questionnaire to look at their personalities compared with the 2009 research by Jacqui Ley (1) which looked at “the average Australian dog”. This questionnaire looks at 5 categories of personality which they called Amicability, extraversion, neuroticism, Self assuredness/motivation and Training Focus

We found that our O’Connell Retrievers are very much more Amicable (easy going, friendly, relaxed, non aggressive and sociable) than the average dog in the 2009 survey (in fact all the dog we breed scored very highly for amicability) They are significantly more extraverted than the average with similar but slightly higher motivation and slightly lower trainability than average. They were also higher in neuroticism (fearful, nervous, submissive or timid) than average and a little higher than the Minigroodles on that score. So put together they are gentle friendly and extraverted but a bit cautious in their approach to life and perhaps not ideal dogs if you want to compete in obedience trials. (pretty much described our Stanley who is probably the nicest dog I have ever owned, but inclined to lie on his back looking for a tummy rub – hardly dignified behaviour for a four year old entire male. He’s a total wuss)

Health:

We asked whether they had been to the vet and if so what for. Given that the oldest dogs are only 8-9 years old we are unlikely to find any of the chronic health issues of old age but we found that  30% had never been to the vet and there were no issues which occurred at a high frequency. Most importantly our O’Connell Retrievers  had the same or lower  incidence of joint and urinary tract issues as dogs reported in the literature which were desexed at over 6 months of age. In spite of their slightly higher “neuroticism” score only 2% were seen by a vet for behaviour problems.

The only condition we saw that was higher than reported in the literature was ear infections, with 20% of our dogs attending a vet at least once for ear problems. This is less than half the rate of ear infection recorded for our minigroodles but is still alarmingly high.  Ear infections are more common in all lop eared dogs and the O’Connells usually love water so swimming may be contributing to their problems. In future we will provide diet and management advice with all puppies – aimed at minimising the risk of ear infections.

Lifestyle and environment Suitability:

Everyone was satisfied with their choice of an O’Connell for their lifestyle and their personality wasn’t affected by whether they lived in apartments, houses with a garden or farms. However we found  a slight increase in extraversion (active, energetic, excitable, hyperactive, lively , restless) and motivation (assertive, determined, independent, persevering, tenacious) in dogs growing up in families with children

Size:

O’Connell Retrievers at this stage are more variable in size than the minigroodles, which is not surprising as, being a breed in development, some are going to throw more to one parent or the other. Most fall within 10–25 kg (82%) and as we select second and third generation dogs we are finding much less variation than in our F2 crosses between the original F1 dogs

In Summary:

O’Connell Retrievers are healthy, sociable, friendly dogs, equally suited to all suburban lifestyles. They are likely to be submissive and a bit cautious but amiable and outgoing. They shed hair but are easy to maintain and don’t require regular grooming. Their ears need to be watched for infection – especially if they swim a lot.

(1) Jacqui M. Ley *, Pauleen C. Bennett, Grahame J. Coleman A refinement and validation of the Monash Canine Personality Questionnaire (MCPQ) Applied Animal Behaviour Science 116 (2009) 220–227