Don't buy a Pumidoodle! This page is run by a group of people who love Pumik (the plural of Pumi) and love Poodles. We are dog-loving people and we want all dogs to have good, loving, forever homes. We are also experts in the field of dogs, and in particular, these two breeds, and are running this page with no economic gain in mind, only a mission to educate prospective puppy buyers. Recently, a w
oman on Facebook has been advertising her “Pumidoodles” as some sort of new breed, boasting that she is the “originator” of this “hybrid” dog. While the ethics and science behind these new designer breeds has often been debated, and we will post general information on those topics here too, this new mix poses unique concerns. Both Pumik and Poodles are very ancient breeds that existed in Europe for centuries simultaneously. They were bred for very different purposes though and a lot of careful consideration went into their respective developments. The Pumi is a very rare breed in the United States and globally with less than 500 Pumik in the US presently. Pumik are still used today in their native Hungary to herd sheep and other livestock. It is a highly intelligent and also high energy breed that requires plenty of exercise in order to keep its mind busy and itself out of trouble! They are fun loving and energetic dogs but not recommended for most apartment dwellers and for people who work full-time outside of their homes unless they are able and dedicated to keeping their Pumik busy. The biggest warning Pumi owners give to those considering the breed is that Pumik can be “barky”; not just incessant, but also loud. Poodles were water retrievers initially and then became the pets of European aristocracy and most famously, circus dogs. Poodles come in three sizes and a variety of colors. Considered among the most intelligent breeds, they are easy to train and love to work. Poodles are also often sensitive souls who want to do right and be right all the time, and can be high strung as a result. While poodles do make good house dogs and do not have the energy demands of a Pumi, the combination of the Poodle and the Pumi temperament could result in a dog that most new dog owners and non-dog trainers would be ill equipped to manage. Neither Pumik nor Poodles shed (which begs the question, why even bother with this cross?). Although we should qualify that statement by saying all dogs shed to some degree, it’s just a matter of how the hair comes out and the quantity and frequency. However, poodle coats need constant maintenance (at least a weekly brushing and at a bare minimum, every two week clipping and bathing). Pumik coats can go longer between groomings but need to be stripped in order to prevent matting (a process by which the undercoat is plucked out). While the coats look alike, they are very different and the combination of these two coats could lead to costly grooming bills or the need to constantly shave down the dog for its own health and comfort. Whereas Poodles do not have an undercoat, Pumik do. The funny thing is that the care of the Pumi coat is actually the exact opposite in many respects of that of the Poodle coat. Whereas Poodles must be washed and “fluff dried” while being brushed out and should be completely dry before sc******ng, Pumik hair needs to air dry and curl up before being scissored and stripped. How could anyone manage when the coat is some combination of the two? When two different dog breeds are crossed, you don’t know what genes will be exhibited in the offspring. You may get all the Poodle coat and none of the Pumi, all of the Pumi and none of the Poodle, or some degree of one and the other mixed together. It is a groomer’s nightmare that either you will be dealing with directly, or paying for it when you take your dog to be groomed professionally. That brings us to the fallacy of “hybrid vigor.” First let’s begin by saying crossing one breed of dog with another is not, scientifically speaking, creating a “hybrid.” Both dogs are from the same species, Canis familiaris; a “breed” is not a “species.” All that is happening is that you are taking two dogs who are extremely distantly related (as all dogs are genetically speaking “dogs”) and breeding them together. A hybrid is an animal like a mule, which is a cross between two different species, a donkey and a horse. The result of a mix breed mating is simply a dog with a genetic crapshoot for DNA. Yes, there is a chance the dog will be healthier than either of its parents. There’s also a chance that it will be far more sickly than either of its parents, or any combination thereof. The reason being goes back to high school genetics class: Mendel’s Law of Segregation. If you have vague memories of diagrams and peas, you are on the right track. Without even getting into the fact that genes can mutate and cross, at a very basic level, offspring receive two sets of “alleles” for each trait. So let’s say that the allele for long Poodle ears is “P” and the allele for floppy Pumi ears is “p.” The Poodle ear trait is dominant. So when you mate a Pumi to a Poodle you are potentially mating two dogs whose traits look like this: “PP” to “pp.” This means that puppies from this pairing could get both traits from the Poodle and wind up “PP,” with long Poodle ears, “Pp” looking like a Poodle but carrying the recessive Pumi ear trait, or “pp” having only Pumi ears! That’s all fine and cute if you are talking about ears, but what about genetic diseases and disorders? While both breeds are generally healthy and long lived (another reason to ask, “what the heck is the purpose of this mix?”), both do carry certain genetic issues known for their respective breeds. For example, both Pumik and Poodles carry genes for patella luxation (a potentially painful condition where the knee caps slip out). So even though a Pumi doesn’t look like a Poodle, a healthy Poodle can still have a recessive gene for luxating patellas, and a healthy Pumi could also have that same gene: let’s say both the Poodle and the Pumi have a “healthy” knee gene of “K” and a recessive luxating gene of “k”. Neither parent exhibits the slipping knee cap condition and both appear perfectly healthy but both are recessive gene carriers. The result of this mating would be 25% of the litter would be “KK”, 50% would be recessive but still have good knees “Kk”, and 25% would have bad knees, unlike the parents, “kk.”
If you were breeding a Poodle to a Poodle, you would know the family history of the dogs being mated and could screen for certain bad genes. Reputable breeders keep records that go back generations to screen for recessive genetic disorders in their lines. Most “designer dog” breeders are lucky if they can even secure dogs to mate to produce these mixes because reputable breeders wont sell breeding stock to them. Often times, these hybrid breeders will resort to using dogs that were sold to them as “pet” quality, not meant for breeding, and then breed from them anyway. These pet quality dogs are dogs that the reputable breeders felt were in one or several ways not good representatives of their breeds or had some structural, personality, or cosmetic faults the reputable breeders did not want passed on to future generations. So, the breeding stock that is being used, from the get-go, is questionable and the potential that the dogs are carrying recessive deleterious genes, greater. Certainly, vets across America are finding out that these dogs, who were marketed to unsuspecting puppy buyers as “more healthy” than purebreds, are no less likely to be sickly. One study published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association found that out of 90,000 canine medical records and 27,254 dogs, designer “hybrid” dogs were nearly as susceptible as purebred dogs to 13 heritable medical conditions and more susceptible to ruptured cranial cruciate ligaments! https://news.vin.com/vinnews.aspx?articleId=29634&fbclid=IwAR0OBla0_vmtlb2Zm2hUzlgwA_fOkzWrnGzBr_b52fE-qNpYn233soy53CE . The woman marketing “Pumidoodles” seems to unfortunately fit the bill of selling what she purports to be superior breeding stock even though the evidence presented indicates the opposite. She posted images of a Miniature Poodle she had purchased with lack of pigmentation and admitted she purchased the puppy because she liked the spots on its nose. She also made promises of performing PennHip testing on her dogs, without understanding that her new “Pumidoodles” would be such a small genetic pool of dogs, such testing would not be available. https://info.antechimagingservices.com/pennhip . Lastly, but most importantly, there is increasing evidence that “Doodle” mixes are being relinquished in increasing numbers to animal shelters. This fact could mean that breeding without regard to temperament and health is resulting in disappointment by buyers of these mixes. The puppy is not what the buyer expected due to not enough research into the genetics and breed characteristics. It also indicates that those hybrid breeders do not have in their puppy purchase contracts a clause necessitating that the buyer return the puppy to the breeder if the buyer cannot, or will not, be able to continue caring for the puppy. With the issues of temperament and coat outlined herein, it is highly probable that these “Pumidoodle” puppies will need to be rehomed once they reach adulthood. Who will care for these puppies? Will they find their way into kill shelters or will they become the burden of Poodle and Pumi rescue?
