When I started breeding miniature labradoodles back in 1994 shedding was not an issue I had thought about – I  just wanted to breed a healthy, amiable medium sized dog that would suit most families. As time passed people started to develop Labradoodle as a breed and make claims about allergenicity and increasingly people expected our dogs to be non-shedding. In 1999 I carried out a “snail mail” survey of my owners. I found that people were happy with a lot about my labradoodles (size and personality)– but there was a lot of disappointment about shedding. Even though people were warned that most of them shed,  nearly half of all respondents were disappointed about the degree of shedding. It was around this time that I was asked for a “Café au lait Labradoodle with a fleece coat ” and I realised that I had to come to grips with the shedding problem if I was to continue breeding my crossbred dogs.

This was the outcome of shedding in F1 Miniature Labradoodles

It had become clear that long haired dog crossed with poodles are usually low or non shedding so our findings prompted our move in to long haired Cavoodles and Groodles  and Backcross Labradoodles – still hybrid dogs but less unreliable in shedding.  In 2014 I carried out our first online survey and found that we were doing a lot better in producing non shedding dogs

In our most recent (2025) survey we have looked at the shedding of our O’Connell Retrievers and our Minigroodles:

So now we have a clear and obvious difference – 74% of the Minigroodles don’t shed at all and about 25% shed a bit. Surprisingly, this is better than the Cavoodles or Goodles in the previous survey, but there were 414 dogs in this survey so these results should be pretty reliable . They are low or non shedding dogs and if you have allergies we can choose a definitely non-shedding puppy for you.

As for the O’Connell Retrievers ….. well – their coats are easy care and they don’t need much grooming at all – so that’s a good thing!  The fact that there is variation in the shedding means that one day we may be in a position to select for low shedding O’Connells – but that’s a way off yet.