Name change

No change of name from Australian Labradoodle into Australian Cobberdog.

Due to all the negative publicity, Mrs. Rutland Manners and her daughter Angela Cunningham (known as the co-founders of the Australian Labradoodle) came up in 2012 with the idea to alter the breed’s name of the ASD Australian Labradoodle into “Australian Cobberdog”.

The MDBA, which is a new canine organization in Australia, offered Mrs. Rutland Manners the opportunity to recognize the ASD Australian Labradoodle, bred by Mrs. Manners, as “Australian Cobberdog, a breed in development”

At first, ALFA-Europe was very glad about the proposal to change the breed name, because in our opinion the name Australian Labradoodle was used by breeders who pretended to breed Australian Labradoodles but were breeding all kinds of Labradoodle crosses instead (this situation was one of the reasons why in 2009 the foundation ALFA-Europe was founded). So, ALFA-Europe got into contact with Mrs. Rutland Manners and the board of the MDBA. After a whole year of discussions with the different parties involved, ALFA-Europe decided NOT to participate in this process any longer.

Why do we not participate

One of the main reasons not to participate was that, along the way, the MDBA was altering their registration rules for developing breeds in such a way that it would be possible to register almost any “Labradoodle cross” as an “Australian Cobberdog, a breed in development”. This enables eligibility for many questionable dogs of unknown origin.

Another important reason was that from the moment that the MDBA altered the registration criteria, Mrs. Rutland Manners (and the parent club) did not want to implement the strict breeding and registration rules Mrs. Rutland Manners and the Board of ALFA-Europe agreed on earlier. Compulsory DNA profiling and verifying the parentage, not only for breeding stock but also for every single puppy (100% guarantee for each puppy buyer), was one of the rules Mrs. Manners refused to implement.

All this has led to the conclusion that the proposed registration process for the Australian Cobberdog does not cover the goals and objectives that ALFA-Europe considers most important, because it is not in line with the three pillars on which ALFA-Europe is based.

Those three pillars are:

1. Breeding according to strict Rules and Regulations, one of them: is not being allowed to have other breeding programs with look-alikes apart from authentic Australian Labradoodles registered with ALFA-Europe.
2. Compulsory DNA profiling and verifying the parentage, not only for breeding stock but also for every single puppy (100% guarantee for each puppy buyer).
3. Registering the breeding dogs and their offspring together with their litter registration numbers in the database of ALFA-Europe.

Those three pillars enable ALFA-Europe to build a reliable database.

ALFA-Europe refuses to make any concessions to its credibility, transparency as well as strict Breeding Rules and Registration Regulations. The board was unanimous in this decision.