I’ve been breeding crossbred dogs since 1994 when I bred the world’s first deliberately bred Miniature Labradoodles Wally and Polly – from Holly (a black labrador) and Snowy (a white miniature poodle) in Condobolin, a remote town in central NSW where we had a farm, a vet surgery and 4 daughters. It was an experiment to breed a sweet, medium sized, healthy crossbred dog like Lucky, the ‘spaniel cross something” that I grew up with.

I started thinking about this on the long drive home from a behaviour conference in Sydney in 1991 where I learnt some alarming statistics about dog bites (Dog bites caused 10,345 hospitalisations in 2023-4). I heard that then, entire purebred male dogs were the number one culprits. There were comments about breeding for the show ring not being the ideal way to select pets, the restriction of the gene pool leading to inbreeding through common breeding practices and the risk of popular sires with bad temperaments creating problems for whole breeds.  Given that most people want dogs for companionship, rather than work or pageant purposes, it seemed that there wasn’t nearly enough effort being put into breeding healthy, friendly dogs that suited modern Australian families.

Being a farmer as well as a vet I thought about the way sheep are bred. Sheep breeders use crossbreeding to combine complementary characteristics and take advantage of hybrid vigour to maximise meat production while still producing good wool. It struck me that you could breed dogs that way – combining breeds to complement each other for size, shape  and personality.

I also started to consider early age de-sexing, which I explain in more detail in my blog.  Desexing puppies before they are sold – to minimise desexing stress and dominance aggression and ensure that they never contribute to pounds or shelters.

The “labradoodle” was in the news because Wally Conren a Victorian Guide Dogs breeder had bred one for a dog allergic blind person in Hawaii. They seemed too big for the average family but it occurred to me that a small poodle would be very complementary with a labrador producing a medium sized dog, smarter than a labrador, friendlier than a poodle and less likely to have hip dysplasia which seemed to be the main curse of Labs at that time – so Polly and Wally were born. They were the right size, lovely temperaments and pretty cute so we decided to press on.

Since then I have experimented with all sorts of crosses:  Beagaliers – Beagle that come back  (didn’t work – they still didn’t come back) and Schnoodles – non shedding smaller dogs (too much terrier in there).  They were all lovely dogs but I only really loved the miniature First cross labradoodles.

They were the perfect size with great personalities and had wavy, scruffy or shaggy coats – but  sadly more than half of them shed hair and by the early 2000s everyone expected labradoodles to be non shedding.

So, after a lot of trial and error, we settled on breeding occasional first cross labradoodles and mostly  Backcross Miniature Labradoodles (3/4 poodle) which rarely shed. We also started breeding  Groodles (which we first called Goldendoodles like they’re called in the US) and Cavoodles because by then we’d realised that long haired dogs crossed with poodles are mostly non shedding.

I still wasn’t perfectly happy with these dogs (Groodles too big, Cavoodles too small, backcross labradoodles too poodlie)  but they were lovely healthy dogs, popular and made great pets.

It finally occurred to me that a Golden Retriever X Cavalier might be a pretty nice dog and small enough to breed my medium sized crossbred Oodle, so on the 24^th of May 2015 Maggie and Alfie were  born. They were GORGEOUS, just like a miniature golden retriever (we called them miniretrievers). The puppies they bred with our poodles were just like Groodles only smaller – so for want of a better name we’ve called them Minigroodles.

The next and final step was deciding that we should breed on from our miniretrievers. While I have always been a cross breeder, I’m also fascinated by the prospect of creating a new “breed”  of dog, based on health and temperament as well as type, and using modern genetics and DNA technology to minimise inbreeding risks. It is a challenge to be able to select for size, type, health and personality while maintaining genetic diversity, but it’s also very interesting and satisfying.

We’ve called them O’Connell Retrievers to differentiate from the first cross miniretrievers They are almost entirely bred from Golden Retrievers and Cavalier King Charles Spaniels but there’s a chocolate Labrador gene or two in there and the merle gene from a Koolie sheepdog X Cavalier way back, so while mostly gold they also come in a range of solid and parti colours.

Of course they shed but not everyone wants a non shedding Oodle and if you do – then their Minigroodles progeny are lovely.

It’s not possible to develop a new breed entirely in one kennel but we have been fortunate to find responsible fellow breeders to join our program. We will never close off the breed so we can always bring in new genetics. The next step will be an O’Connell Retriever Breeders Association.

After 34 years  I’m finally happy! The Minigroodles are as near to the perfect non shedding, genetically diverse, medium sized dog as I can imagine and the O’Connell Retrievers are wonderful dogs in their own right and likely to get better over time.