What do the atomic bomb, AK-47, Flappy Bird, and Labradoodle have in common?
Inventor regret.
Albert Einstein, Mikhail Kalashnikov, Dong Nguyen, and Wally Conron would take it all back if they could.
In a recent interview on Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) podcast Sum Of All Parts, the creator of the first-ever Labrador-Poodle crossover calls the breed his “life’s regret.”
A former breeder for Guide Dogs Victoria, Conron invented the Labradoodle for a blind woman in Hawaii whose husband was allergic to the long hair of traditional Labrador guide dogs.
“I’m hoping it’ll be the start of a new breed: A dog that has the working ability of the Labrador and the coat of the Poodle,” he said in the late 1980s.
Three decades later, his attitude has changed.
“I opened a Pandora’s box and released a Frankenstein monster,” Conron told ABC.
After trying and failing (33 times) to breed a standard Poodle—”a good working dog [with] a non-shedding coat”—Conron came up with an alternative: breed an entirely new variety of pooch.
One fateful afternoon in 1989, he set his boss’s Standard Poodle Harley loose on Labrador Brandy, and nine weeks later, the bitch birthed a small litter of pups.
Too small for Conron’s comfort.
“We got three pups. Only three,” he lamented. “By this time, I was getting so frustrated; I was just about out of my brain.”
The process had begun a long three-and-a-half years earlier.
“I was getting nowhere,” he said. “And then I get only three pups.”
The world’s first three Labradoodles, to be fair.
After shipping one off to Hawaii, the breeder was left with two perfectly capable guide dogs—that no one wanted. At first.
A media campaign launched the Labradoodle to stardom, quickly establishing it as more than a helpful pet for the vision-impaired.
“I realized what I’d done within a matter of days,” Conron admitted.
Now he can’t help but nitpick every Labradoodle he sees.
“I go over them in my mind. I look at it thinking it’s got hip dysplasia, it’s got elbow problems,” he said. “I find that the biggest majority are either crazy or have a hereditary problem.
“But I do see some damn nice Labradoodles that are steady, just like I bred,” Conron added. “But they are few and far between.”
During his years at Guide Dogs Victoria, Conron bred 31 Labradoodles—a majority of which went on to become successful guide dogs (and provide Wally with a silver lining).
More on Geek.com:
- Boston Dynamics’ Robot Dog Spot Now on Sale
- Scamp the Tramp Wins ‘World’s Ugliest Dog’ Contest
- Move Over, Pavlov: Dogs Can Understand (Some) Human Words
from Geek.com https://ift.tt/2nNvAXq
via IFTTT
0 comments:
Post a Comment