We have a cockapoo. I know she’s a trendy breed and I often refer to her as a ‘designer mongrel’.
In finding a breeder, we made sure to get a F1 breed, that is a litter from a poodle and spaniel, rather than a cockapoo and cockapoo/spaniel/poodle. We also made sure that the breeder had health checked the dogs, poodles and spaniels both need health checks (which depends on the breed and variant of that breed) and you need to see the certificates. We also went with a breeder who owned both the mum and dad, so we met both mum and dad on multiple occasions and could see/ask about their temperaments.
The first thing to know is that there is a lot of variation in size, personality, work drive, prey drive, intelligence, eagerness to please... in cockapoos, depending on the spaniel and poodle. Ours, her mum is a working cocker spaniel and her dad is a standard poodle. This makes her larger than some cockapoos, she’s about 15kgs (some cockapoos are only 5kgs). She has traits of both breeds, some good and some bad. She’s very clever but with that comes attitude (which I love) and manipulation when she was a puppy. She’s a dog very interested in sniffing and is very spanielly on a walk, head down, sniffing and kicking her ears as she walks.
She needs a lot of grooming. DH is currently brushing her now. There’s a pile of dirt and fur on the floor that will need hoovering after he’s done. She needs brushing at 1-2 times per week, depending on where she goes walking and how long her coat is. We have a number of grooming products to stop her fur getting matted. She has a box of towels, sprays, conditioners and brushes. You need to start with grooming from a puppy and cover the whole of her - including feet, behind ears and tail (the places they won’t like being brushed).
Ours is very intelligent but as I said, this manifested as manipulation from about 6-18 months. Getting her to do anything that she didn’t want to do was so hard, she quite often would just choose not to do something we said even though she knew how to do it. She’s had a lot of training and we’ve worked really hard at training day to day, not just during training sessions. Some of that is teenage rebellion and some of it is the mix in her personality. We know several other cockapoos and none are as manipulative as she was. It comes down to the individual dog, as with any breed. With any breed, if you put the work in, you will get a fantastic dog. Our dog is so well-behaved now. She’s the best behaved dog I know from our friends and family and she’s one of the best at our training. 99% of the time she is the best behaved dog when we’re out on a walk in the country park. This isn’t just us not seeing the negative in our dog, her good behaviour is remarked on by dog and non-dog owners quite frequently, she’s also been temperament assessed for a volunteering role we do. Our friends with labs and cocker spaniels have a lot more issues with their dogs than we do with our cockapoo. Our family and friends with cockapoos did not have as a hard time training as we did. All dogs are unique and the problems they present are unique.
Yes, there are a lot of poorly trained cockapoos out there. It’s hard to understand if this Purely as a result of the breed, as they vary so much. Or if, because they are trendy dogs people are getting them thinking they are easy and not willing to train their dog to the required level. If the trendy dog of the moment was a toy poodle, we’d still be seeing these issues just with a different breed.
For balance, we got a GR when I was 15. In hindsight, she came from a puppy farm. She had a number of health problems including problems with her hips and legs. She also needed a lot of grooming. The GR would often get lugs in her fur when she’d run through mud and it had matted with the fur. The GR fur is very thick so it takes a while to get through it. There is also a lot of shedding with a GR, there will fur everywhere and you’ll need a decent hoover. One thing to consider with a GR (or any large breed) is that when the dog is older it will likely need helping being lifted into and out of the car, if they are sick they may need carrying from the car to the vets (or worse from half way round your walk to your home) - so in 10-15 years do you expect to be fit enough to lift a 20kg+ dog. Our GR was also hard to train, she was stubborn and had selective deafness. My mum was pulling her hair out trying to train the GR between 6-24 months. Even as an older dog, the GR would have naughty days when she just wouldn’t listen. One example, GR was good at recall, we’d taken her to the beach and were trying to leave to go home. GR had decided she didn’t want to go yet so ran off, ignoring her commands. She went over to a couple sat on the beach and went and sat with them (she’d been swimming in the sea and sat herself on the towel between the couple). When we got to the GR and tried to get her away from the couple and their now dirty towel, she flopped down on the man’s lap and made herself a dead weight. This GR was well trained and she was older so should have been calmer but still had her moments of being an utter dick.
All puppies are going to be dicks at some point. Most puppies will be dicks several times throughout their lives. All puppies, regardless of breed, need to be trained consistently and at least until they are out of their teenage rebellion. Most breeds are subject to health conditions and so regardless of the breed, you should look for breeders with health tests done and you should ask to see those. These health tests are different depending on the breed. So firstly, I’d start with how much time you are willing to walk the dog everyday. Be realistic. You might have grand aspirations of walking the dog for two hours everyday but that isn’t feasible for the vast majority of people. For most dog breeds you can do brain work to help tire them out so you don’t need to be walking them on the same route for 2 hours each day, actually most dogs will get bored of that. So with the brain work (obedience, games, fetch) you don’t need to leave the house but you still need half an hour or so in addition to a walk. So what can you give a dog? Work that out first. Most dogs breeds can be family friendly, depending on the dogs temperament, their training and socialisation. Find a local trainer and talk to them about dog breeds and your family circumstances. Our trainer will go with people to visit breeders to help you work out if they are a puppy farm and if the temperament of the dog matches your lifestyle. However, if you go that route you need to listen to the trainer when they say don’t get that dog otherwise you start your relationship with the trainer on the wrong foot.