I was going to ask if anyone knew of this crossbreed in the UK Buuttt from searching through this site i now understand why i can't find any in the UK.
I never realised that crossbreeding was so bad and i will be looking to a rescue centre or a Pedigree Maltese Breeder.
If this question is asked again maybe if a polite answer was given people will go away with the attitude of.... I didn't realise it was such a bad thing i shall search for a pedigree or go to a rescue centre AND NOT stuff you I'll look elsewhere (Which looks to be the case).
Good manners go along way and i dont think by looking through this friendly website, it was set up as a deterrent to prospective doggy owners.
Think! Shouldn't you be educating people and not scaring them off?

It must work - you've been educated, anyway! ;)
:)

Hi not necessary because some people dont care if there educated or not, isn't it obvious if your looking for a puppy and you've done your research that this isn't a breed and god help anyone who would wont to by a crossbred dog with all the health defects of a cross, owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww nasty.

Susan

If it wasn't for the fact I was looking for a maltipoo I would never have found this board. I received some extremely harsh replies to my first post as a guest which werent necessary as I honestly did not know that there was anything wrong with having this type of dog or any other crossbreed. I also didn't know the importance of things like health testing and kc registration - I thought that was just something you needed if you wanted to show your dog.
I also had my eyes opened to the puppy farming industry and the fact that they are the sorts of ppl that deliberately breed this type of dog and other crosses and the conditions that they are bred in.
Believe it or not I really was that nieve (sp?) about all this stuff and i'm sure that I am not the only person out there who doesn't know and needs pointing in the right direction.
I consider myself to have been quite well educated since joining CD and now know that some of you only get so mad because you care so much and that your not really bad ppl :P
But susan, a few of your recent posts have been very harsh and imo really uncalled for and unhelpful to the op and its posts like that which are letting this forum down and giving it a bad name :(

This is a very strange and not very helpful post :( There is nothing wrong in people wanting a crossbreed - I have one and he is perfectly healthy and we love him to bits. We wanted a crossbreed when we got him as we wanted a rescue dog that needed a good home. What people are trying to prevent is the DELIBERATE crossing of dogs, particularly for profit. If someone wants a crossbreed they should be referred to a rescue centre and have explained to them, politely, what are the problems with 'fashion' crosses. Crossbreeds do not necessarily have health defects - they are certainly no more likely to have them than badly bred pedigree dogs.

Daisy

Daisy I dont know if your are replying to my post, I should of made it clearer. I didn't mean ALL crossbreeds I actually meant the deliberate crosses and designer crosses. Didn't mean to offend :)

No, I was referring to Susan's :)

Daisy

It's a bad thing when the crossbreeds (Designer Mongrels) are deliberately being produced, given stupid names like maltipoo and passed off to gullible people for more than the price of a well bred pedigree example of either parent. The chances are the poor puppies are being produced in puppy farm conditions from substandard parents with no healthchecks.

There's no polite, tactful way of saying that, is there.

Me and my friend were joking about putting my Tibetan Mastiff with her GSD and ask £1500 a pup, but we couldn't come up with a sensible name...
Tibetan Shepherd Dog - nah, not exotic enough
German Mastiff - been done as it's another name for a Great Dane
Gerbetan Mashperd - soulds like a latin name for a flower
Tiberman Sheptiff - see what I mean... stupid name!

And anyway, my TM's dad was BOB at Crufts and her GSD has an excellent German pedigree and a very low hip score, so we decided against it. ;)

That would of been a polite and tactful reply though and if I had just been told that I would of been very grateful but some of the replies were down right insulting!!

Anyway, it doesn't really matter now, it's all in the past and i'm not one to bear grudges :) I just wanted to put my point across that not everyone who initially is looking for a designer cross is a thick ignorant bad person, they just haven't got the knowledge that the ppl on here have and if they are lucky enough to find this board, replies like the one you have just given would be suffice and i'm sure much more easily taken on board than personal attacks :)

Hi Voors i'll think you'll find that one of my replies has been off, relating to a young dog being pregnant, when it comes up constantly it does annoy me and i really dont wont to help someone who has a dog and they dont know when it's season is because in my opinion you should know alot more about dogs if you have one.  Daisy there's lots of crossbreeds with things wrong with them and in my opinion it should be reinforced that all dogs have health tests before being bred.  Plus the poster weren't asking for a crossbred to be referred to a rescue, they were finding out about a dog they thought was a pedigree.

Susan

But there are nice, informative ways to reply to posts and there are others ............ If these questions annoy you, why don't you ignore them and let someone else be helpful. Each quest that posts on here is probably making their first post and may be ignorant of issues purely because they are just starting out in the doggy world. No question is stupid if you don't know the answer :D

Daisy

Hi Daisy i understand what your saying but ignorants isn't bliss, and sometimes the urge to reply does take over, i've been posting on here for a while now and it doesn't happen often that i have an off day regarding replies i can think of two occassions since Janruary.

Susan

Just my opinion...

I agree that the prices of many "designer" crossbreeds are ridiculous, and a proportion of these dogs inherit faults from both parents.  I have a pedigree dog myself (and I chose the breed partly because they are not predisposed to particular problems) so I'm not against pedigrees in any way.

However I feel that I should put in a good word for some mongrels.  I've been nursing for five years now and although I can't provide any concrete statistics, I believe that the majority of 16 year old, reasonably fit, hardy dogs I have come across have been crossbreeds.  Please understand that I don't mean Labradoodles or Maltipoos or any of these ridiculous designer breeds.  I'm thinking of your standard, Heinz 57, Battersea mutt (or Little Brown Dog, if we're getting technical ;-) ).  I would stake money on my belief that the majority of these mixtures exceed the average canine lifespan considerably, and require fewer vet visits. 

Of course this is a generalisation.  Some mongrels are unthrifty from the word go and conversely many pedigrees only come in for their boosters, but I'm sure if I were to keep track we would see a definite improvement in health when looking at mongrels.  I shall pay more attention over the next few months and share my observations.

Interestingly, when it comes to cats, there is a very marked difference between pedigrees and moggies.  I would consider a Siamese very old at 13, whereas we frequently see mogs at 17 or 18 who are more or less in good health (if a bit grumpy).  An exception to this rule appears to concern Burmese, who frequently soldier on quite happily to 18+.  To put these figures into some kind of perspective, excluding fatalities caused by road accidents, the mean feline lifespan is 12 years and so many months (ok, I can't remember how many months, so shoot me!)  As pedigree cats become more popular, I wonder if we will see more congenital/hereditary defects?

In conclusion, I'm on the fence when it comes to the mongrel/pedigree debate, but one can't ignore the fact that if you get a Yorkie, or a Dachshund, or a Border Terrier pup, chances are that it will outlive a Bulldog, Great Dane or Mastiff.

Anyway, I'd be interested to hear what other posters think.  And bear in mind that I do realise there are exceptions to every rule.  A colleague of mine had two Danes, both of whom made it to 12!  I hope I have my whippet at least as long.

M-C

How about the thousands of hardy 16 year old pedigree dogs that you won't know about because they are that fit they don't need to go to vets all the time!

My parents have Pomeranian's.  90% of them live to around the age of 15.  For most of them we can count on one hand when they've needed to go to the vets in their 15 years.  My SWD's are also very similar.  Hardy, medium sized dogs that hopefully it will continue hardly ever need to go to the vets.

Not putting down the owners of crossbreeds etc, but I would think that the majority (I accept that I may be wrong) are owned by people who have low income or are not working, thus maybe not able to go to a vets as often as they would like, especially for the more minor problems that their dog may come across, thus the numbers of crossbreeds having veterinary help is lessened.

All breeds/crossbreeds have similar ailments that can hit them at any one time and I just can't believe that one can be less likely to have the ailment than another similarly bred pedigree type.

Hi Mary-Caroline.  You only see sick dogs, (as when I was a Veterinary Nurse many years ago, and I'd never seen a natural whelping!) but when I go to dog shows at the weekend, I see thousands of pedigree dogs, many of whom have never been to the Vet in their lives!
I also wouldn't like to include pet bred, not health tested dogs, in the pedigree bracket, together with the pedigree dogs bred by knowledgable and experienced dog breeders.  Badly bred 'pedigree' dogs that I saw in the grooming parlour costs their owners a fortune at the Vets but well bred dogs generally only went for their boosters.
I think that it's a difficult thing to quantify........

>As pedigree cats become more popular, I wonder if we will see more congenital/hereditary defects?

Well as a vet nurse surely you're already aware of PKD, HCM, HD, PRA, spasticity etc, there's already plenty to go on with sadly, it's just that so many people stick their head in the sand and pretend there is no need to test for this and that.

if you'd asked me though, I would have said the cat with the longest life span next to a moggy is a Siamese!

Dont forget many x-breed dogs come from rescue centres so their true age is rarely known.

My Bichon lived until the ripe old age of 17 :)

Before we bought our dog my husband was adamant that we get a rescue dog.  I thought that would be fine and had nothing against crossbreeds or Heinz 57 varieties at all.  What did become obvious though was that those dogs advertised at rescues often if not usually required experienced owners which we are not.  So I started researching breeds and found that some breeds can be more prone to disorders than others i.e. Boxers and heart problems, Labradors and HD (please don't jump on me for picking on those thats just where I started).  It quickly became apparent to me that if you get a poorly bred cross Boxer/Lab you are increasing the liklihood of the dog having both the problems instead of one of them, not only because of the breed itself but because you don't know if the pedigree originals were well-bred to screen out high risk dogs.  I based these ideas on human diseases and geneology, half the genes come from mum and half from dad and no one can predict if it will be the 'bad' genes passed on or the disease free genes.  With dogs you can reduce the risks by not breeding the high risk dogs but it is unknown if these are the ones that are discarded into rescue IMO.

In the end we chose a breed and went through KC for breeders.  We chose a breeder that had champions in the line not because we are snobs (lol @ the thought) but because this suggests that the breeder and the owners of the Studs choose to breed carefully and their reputations as breeders lie with the results of their breeding programmes.  The breeder of our dog kept one from the same litter herself and to me that spoke volumes.

So this is the opinion of an owner and not a breeder.  To me Heinz 57 is not just a mix of breeds but a mix of prospective health problems that may be inherited by each of the breeds.

I hope I don't offend anyone, this is my own logic at work so I will duck for cover now.

Control of Genetic Canine Diseases by George A Padgett DVM:  "The largest number of dogs in the US consists of those of mixed breeding (mutts, curs, crossbreeds and so on), and as would be expected, since they contain mixtures of most, if not all, breeds, they have far and away the most diseases. These dogs are reported to have 220 diseases. In a way, it surprised me that they had so few disorders, because-since they are a mixture of all breeds-one might expect them to have all diseases of all breeds. It may be that they do have many more disorders since they are often left out when we report diseases by specific breed."

My last 4 dogs have all lived to 16. Not only were they all pedigree but line bred and even in-bred (one the result of a mother/son mating). Obviously, longevity is hereditary - at least in my breed!

Also i had a Dobermann growing up and he lived to the grand old age of fourteen which is a good age for a Dobermann.  He was never in the vets either.

susan

its how you look after the dogs,
that matters right feeding,exercise,
training, etc. etc. Thier health and
longevity depends on thier lifestyle,
that must play a big part surely? If you own
a dog you take the responability of the dog.
deliberatly crossing breeds to make  a designer
dog, IS wrong. but Hienz 57's are around,
whether they are pedigree or crossbreds
i've loved and looked after both types,and with
the right care and training they have all been
a pleasure
warm regards
Donna

I'm sure you're right Donna - plenty of exercise & not much food is my recipe!

not much food why?

Because overweight dogs die young! Just one of my pet hates is seeing fat dogs - they are more prone to all the diseases we are when they are overweight. (when I say not much food, obviously they have enough to eat!!!) :D.

Both genetics and lifestyle play a part in longevity. You can do the best possible in nurturing your dog, but if the parents succumed to hereditary diseases at a young age  there's a good chance that the offspring will too and no amount of good care will prevent it. However, you can totally knacker up and shorten the lifespan of a good dog with bad husbandry.

That's very true too, Phoebe. OMG, I'm in such a good mood tonight, I'm agreeing with everyone - time I went to bed. :D