Designing Dogs for Modern Life: Why Intentional Breeding Is the Future

Only thirty years ago, the dog world had two categories: purebred dogs and accidents. If you wanted a dog, you chose from the established breeds—or you picked up a puppy that had been accidentally bred by a neighbour trying to give them away.

I grew up in Tasmania, Australia, and my family had both. The poodles lived inside. The farm dogs lived outside. They protected our small collection of animals from predators at night, followed us around the property, rounded up sheep, chased the ATV, and met us when we got home from school. They had energy and instincts that were genuinely suited to the lives they lived. The toy poodles were allowed indoors because they didn’t shed like the farm dogs, but they were delicate, sometimes anxiety-prone, and a lot to keep brushed and groomed with their tight, curly coats.

Later, after I had left home, my parents got a spectacular Bernese Mountain Dog—one of the most incredible dogs I had ever seen. She was like a small bear, with big paws and a gentle soul. My daughter was a toddler at the time, and she would sprawl across that dog watching TV without a care in the world.

I had always been fascinated by genetic inheritance, biology, and the development of different species through human selection. So I set about creating a dog that could be adapted to the evolving needs of modern society, as we moved away from big backyards and rural properties and into more compact living. People wanted dogs that could thrive in cities, apartments, and smaller homes—dogs that could serve as emotional support animals, therapy dogs, service dogs, and exceptional family companions. They needed dogs that were calm enough to be left alone, easier to maintain than a typical poodle coat, and friendly to other dogs on the street.

My experience with Bernese Mountain Dogs and Poodles led me to create a hybrid that was intentional and genetically precise—so precise that we could select for the ideal coat traits while bringing back more of the Bernese look and personality. The Ultra Bernedoodle was born, and it has since become the new standard in the Bernedoodle industry. After we pioneered this concept, other doodle breeders began developing “Ultras” within their own hybrid lines, taking more of the non-poodle parent breed back into the mix to create doodles that favour the breed they were developed from, while retaining the low-shedding coat.

The next major development was creating an intentionally smaller version of the Bernedoodle without reintroducing too much miniature poodle. This is where the Munchkin Bernedoodle was born. Small, rounded in feature and structure, easy-going, and still low-to-non-shedding, they are the ideal small-format companion. Happy to hang out at home or go for drives, they represent a well-tempered, compact dog with the best coat genetics and gorgeous, striking colouring.

The answer to what modern families actually need is not the dog most breeders are producing. And the gap between what families need and what the dog world offers is wider than most people realise.

The Dogs We Have Were Built for a Different World

Here’s something that sounds obvious once you hear it but rarely gets said out loud: the vast majority of dog breeds were designed for jobs that no longer exist. Border Collies were built to herd sheep for twelve hours a day. German Shepherds were bred to guard livestock from predators. Beagles were engineered to track rabbits through dense brush. Bernese Mountain Dogs pulled carts through Alpine villages. Dalmatians ran alongside horse-drawn carriages. Rhodesian Ridgebacks tracked lions.

These are incredible dogs with fascinating histories. The precision with which they were bred for specific tasks represents centuries of careful selection and genuine expertise.

But almost none of those jobs exist in the daily life of a modern pet owner. Today’s dogs live in apartments and suburban homes. They go to coffee shops and breweries. They fly in aeroplane cabins. They share couches with toddlers and beds with their owners. They need to tolerate strangers, loud noises, other dogs, car rides, grooming appointments, and the general chaos of family life. They need to be safe around children, manageable for first-time owners, and increasingly compatible with family members who have allergies.

The modern pet dog has one primary job: be a great companion. And most breeds were never selected for that.

The Disconnect Between Breed Standards and Real Life

The purebred world operates on breed standards—detailed descriptions of what the ideal specimen should look like and, to a lesser extent, how it should behave. These standards are maintained by kennel clubs and enforced through conformation shows.

There is nothing inherently wrong with breed standards. They preserve history and provide consistency. But there is a problem when they become the only measure of good breeding, because they were written for dogs that no longer live the lives they were designed for.

Take the Bernese Mountain Dog—a breed I love deeply and one that is central to my programme. The Bernese is gorgeous, sweet-tempered, gentle with children, and deeply loyal. It is also plagued by cancer, with an average lifespan of around seven to eight years. The breed standard says nothing about longevity. It describes coat colour, head shape, gait, and structure. A dog can be a perfect specimen and die of histiocytic sarcoma at five.

This is the tension at the heart of the purebred world. Standards preserve appearance but do not always preserve health. And they almost never ask: is this dog suited for the life it will actually live? A herding breed with intense drive and no sheep becomes a neurotic pet that destroys furniture. A guardian breed suspicious of strangers becomes a liability in a neighbourhood of delivery drivers and playdate visitors. These aren’t bad dogs. They’re good dogs in the wrong context. And that mismatch causes enormous suffering—for the dogs and for the families who love them.

What “Designing Dogs” Actually Means

When I say I design dogs for modern life, I can almost hear the objections. It sounds clinical. It sounds like hubris. So let me be clear.

Designing dogs means making intentional, informed decisions about which dogs to breed together, based on genetics, health data, temperament evaluation, and a clear vision of what the resulting puppies need to be. It means breeding with purpose rather than breeding to a static standard or, worse, breeding for profit with no plan at all.

This is not Frankenstein science. This is what every good breeder throughout history has done. The only difference is that today we have tools—DNA testing, genetic databases, health registries, decades of accumulated data—that make it possible to do it with more precision and more accountability than ever before.

Every single dog breed that exists today was designed by humans. Every one. Someone, at some point, decided to cross specific dogs to get specific traits. The Golden Retriever was created by crossing a Yellow Retriever with a Tweed Water Spaniel and later introducing Irish Setter and Bloodhound lines. The Doberman was built from Rottweilers, German Pinschers, Greyhounds, and Weimaraners. The Australian Shepherd—despite its name—was developed primarily in the American West from various collie and shepherd types.

All of these breeds started as crosses. All of them were designed. The only thing that separates a “purebred” from a “designer dog” is time and a kennel club stamp of approval. What I’m doing is the same work—just with better tools and a different goal. Instead of designing a dog to herd livestock, I’m designing a dog to be an extraordinary family companion in the twenty-first century.

The Four Pillars: Health, Temperament, Coat, and Size

Every breeding decision I make has to serve at least one of four pillars, and ideally all four.

Health: Breeding for Longevity

This is the foundation. Nothing else matters if the dog isn’t healthy. The single greatest tool for improving health in dogs is genetic diversity. Breeding within a closed gene pool inevitably concentrates genetic risks. Recessive diseases that might never surface in a diverse population become ticking time bombs in a bottlenecked one. Crossbreeding, done thoughtfully, is the most effective way to reduce breed-specific disease. Hybrid vigour—heterosis—is well documented across species. This isn’t controversial in genetics. It’s basic science.

Temperament: Breeding for Family Life

Temperament is partially inherited. Training and socialisation matter enormously, but the genetic baseline—a dog’s innate tendencies towards anxiety, reactivity, confidence, and sociability—sets the range within which training can work. I evaluate every puppy and every parent, and I track feedback from families over the lifetime of every dog I produce. I select for confidence without aggression, sociability, adaptability, low anxiety, high trainability, and a calm baseline that can coexist with the unpredictability of life with children.

Coat: Breeding for Indoor Life

A hundred years ago, most dogs lived primarily outdoors. Shedding wasn’t a concern because the dog slept in the barn, not on the bed. That world is gone. Today’s dogs are indoor family members, and for a growing number of households, someone has allergies. Breeding for low-shedding, allergy-friendly coats is one of the most practical things a modern breeder can do. It is also one of the things that draws the most scorn from purebred traditionalists, as if wanting a dog that doesn’t trigger your child’s asthma is somehow shallow.

I use genetic testing to identify coat type at the DNA level, predicting with high accuracy whether a puppy will have a furnished, low-shedding coat before it is born. Families aren’t gambling. They know what they’re getting. For families where allergies are a factor, that predictability isn’t a cosmetic preference—it’s the difference between being able to have a dog at all or not.

Size: Options for Different Lifestyles

A couple in a six-hundred-square-foot apartment has different needs than a family on five acres. A frequent flyer who wants their dog in-cabin has different constraints than someone working from home on a rural property. I offer four size categories: Standard, Medium, Mini, and Munchkin. This isn’t about producing “teacup” novelty dogs. It’s about recognising that size is a practical consideration, and families deserve options. Every size variant is held to the same health, temperament, and coat standards. Size is a variable I adjust to meet different lifestyles. It is never a shortcut or a gimmick.

How I Do It: Data, Testing, and Accountability

I have over ten years of multigenerational breeding data. I don’t just know the parents of my puppies—I know the grandparents, the great-grandparents, and generations beyond. I know which pairings produce the healthiest puppies, the best temperaments, the most consistent coats. That data was accumulated dog by dog, litter by litter, year by year. There are no shortcuts.

Our dogs are DNA-tested through comprehensive genetic panels. This data helps me match individual puppies to individual families. And our breeding dogs live in guardian homes—real family homes where they are beloved pets first and breeding dogs second. They’re socialised in the environments they’re being bred to thrive in. I’m not evaluating temperament in a kennel and hoping it translates. I’m seeing it in real time, in real homes.

The Ultra Bernedoodle: Proof of Concept

A standard Bernedoodle is typically a fifty-fifty Bernese-Poodle cross, or a multigenerational variant that balances the two breeds roughly equally. The Ultra shifts that ratio—a higher percentage of Bernese, more of the traits people fall in love with, while still incorporating enough Poodle genetics for a low-shedding coat.

The Bernese has one of the most beloved temperaments in the dog world: gentle, affectionate, loyal, wonderful with children, and genuinely attuned to their families. But the purebred comes with significant health challenges and heavy shedding. The Ultra Bernedoodle is my answer: more Bernese character in a healthier, lower-shedding package.

Through careful genetic selection, I produce dogs that carry that deep, soulful Bernese loyalty and gentle nature without the health risks and coat challenges that make the purebred difficult for many modern households. It’s not guesswork. It’s the result of years of data, DNA testing, and intentional pairing. The Ultra Bernedoodle didn’t happen by accident. It happened because I asked what families wanted, looked at the genetics, and used every tool available to close the gap between the dog people dream about and the dog that actually works in their life.

Addressing the Critics

I’ve heard every version of the criticism. “Designer dogs are just expensive mutts.” “You’re not a real breeder.” “There’s no consistency in crossbred dogs.”

A mutt is the product of unplanned breeding. An intentionally bred dog is the product of deliberate genetic selection with health testing, temperament evaluation, and a specific vision. These are not the same thing, any more than a random pile of ingredients is the same as a carefully developed recipe.

Consistency comes from data and selection over time. The first generation of any cross is variable—that’s expected. But when you breed multigenerationally, tracking outcomes across many litters and years and selecting the dogs that best represent your goals, you build consistency. That is exactly what happened with every purebred breed in existence. I’m doing the same thing. I’m just earlier in the timeline.

And the money argument: breeding dogs well is extraordinarily expensive. DNA testing, health screening, veterinary care, guardian home programmes, puppy socialisation, lifetime support—none of this is cheap. The breeders who are “in it for the money” are the ones who skip the testing and produce as many litters as possible with as little investment as possible. That is the opposite of what I do.

The labels—designer, doodle, crossbreed, hybrid—don’t matter. What matters is the science. What matters is whether the breeder is testing, tracking, selecting, and accountable. Everything else is tribalism.

Every Purebred Was Once a Mix

There is no dog breed on earth that was not, at some point, a mix of other breeds or landraces. The Labrador, the German Shepherd, the Poodle, the Golden—all were created by crossing distinct populations and selecting for desired traits over generations. The difference between what I do and what the founders of those breeds did is technological, not philosophical.

I have DNA testing that identifies hundreds of genetic disease markers. I have databases tracking health outcomes across thousands of dogs. I have coat genetics that predict shedding before a puppy is born. The breeders who created the Labrador worked on observation and intuition. Many were brilliant. But we should not pretend their methods are superior to modern tools simply because they happened first.

We don’t practise medicine the way we did a hundred years ago. We don’t build houses the same way. Why would we breed dogs the same way?

The Future of Dog Breeding

Here’s what I think dog breeding could look like if the industry decided to embrace science over tradition.

Every breeding dog DNA-tested as a baseline. Health outcomes tracked in open databases that breeders share rather than hide. Breed standards that include longevity targets and health benchmarks alongside descriptions of ideal head shape and gait. Breeders collaborating across breed lines to solve health problems. A world where “Is this dog healthy and well-suited for the life it will live?” matters more than “Does this dog match a written standard from 1903?”

This isn’t utopian fantasy. The tools exist. The science is there. The only thing standing in the way is cultural resistance—the belief that how things have always been done is how they should continue.

I don’t expect to change the entire industry overnight. But I can run my programme according to these principles. I can be transparent about my methods. I can produce dogs that prove the concept. And I can support the families who trust me with the responsibility of bringing a living being into their home.

That’s what designing dogs for modern life means. Not hubris. Not Frankenstein science. Just the simple, radical idea that we should breed dogs for the lives they’ll actually live, using every tool available to do it well.

Thanks for reading. This newsletter is where I share the thinking behind Rocky Road Doodles—the science, the philosophy, and the real-world results of breeding with intention. If this resonated with you, share it with someone who’s thinking about getting a dog. The more families who understand what intentional breeding looks like, the better the outcomes for dogs and people alike.

Next time: We’ll dive into what DNA testing actually reveals—and why I test every single dog in my programme.