Designer Dog's In The News Again!

The expensive designer dog news stories are coming thick & fast at the moment - just shows that the popularity ratings of designer dogs like the puggle are still climbing.

This story also contains a short section on brilliant pet photographer Chelle Calbert and her lovely puggles Indie & Scarlett....

Pricey designer dogs are popular and controversial

BY ERIN ANDERSEN / Lincoln Journal Star

.... They’re called “designer dogs” — breeds mixed deliberately with the hopes of taking the best traits of each purebred breed and putting them into one dog.They come with cute names like puggle (pug and beagle), labradoodle (labrador retriever and poodle) and bullmatian (bull dog and dalmatian). They come with a hefty price tag — often more than you would pay for a pedigreed purebred. And breeders can’t produce them fast enough to meet the growing demand — thanks in part to highly publicized designer dog ownership by celebrities such as Sylvester Stallone, Julianne Moore, Soprano James Gandolfini and “Brokeback Mountain” star Jake Gyllenhaal....

....“The problem in this country is that people tend to look at animals and pets as status symbols,” said Julia Szabo, author of several pet books and a nationally syndicated pet column.

“Designer dogs fall somewhere between the shelter dog and breeder — they glom off the glamour of purebreds and the glamour of the Great American mutt,” she said in a phone interview from her New York City home.

Chelle Calbert, a photographer in Petaluma, Calif., has two puggles, plus a purebred Boston Terrier. She couldn't care less if puggles Indie and Scarlett are considered “designer dogs” or “mutts.”

She just loves them. Loves their cute little faces. The way they snuggle. Their playfulness. Their personalities.

“I want another puggle,” Calbert said. But her husband says three dogs is enough. So each week they bring in a litter of puggles from Wisconsin breeder Wallace Havens to sell on the West Coast. The pups, usually litters of eight, arrive on a Wednesday and all are purchased before the week’s end, Calbert said. And she gets her extra puggle fix in the few days the pups live with them. The $750 price tag includes a portrait package and screensaver photo.... More Here

JournalStar.com