The 'best of both worlds' claim just got complicated for cockapoos and labradoodles

Doges Editorial · 2026-05-23 · 6 min read

A Royal Veterinary College study of more than 9,000 dogs found that cockapoos, labradoodles, and cavapoos show more undesirable behaviors than their purebred parents — in 82 percent of comparisons made.

There is a particular kind of confidence in a person who has just paid a premium for a Cockapoo. They'll tell you about the Poodle's intelligence, the Cocker Spaniel's affectionate temperament, and the way this crossbreed somehow sidesteps the worst of both. That story is appealing. A new study from the Royal Veterinary College, published in PLOS One and covered in depth at Dogster.com, suggests it is also, in several important respects, incomplete.

Designer crossbreeds — the Cockapoo, Labradoodle, Cavapoo, and their various doodly cousins — were created with intent. Unlike accidental mixed breeds, they were developed to combine specific characteristics: lower-shedding coats, working-dog intelligence in a companion-sized body, or the friendly temperament of a Labrador with a Poodle's low-allergen coat. The UK market for them has grown substantially over the past decade. Their prices reflect the demand. The behavioral science, it turns out, has not kept pace.

What 9,000 dogs told researchers

The study used a validated survey tool called the Canine Behavioral Assessment and Research Questionnaire — C-BARQ — to compare three of the UK's most popular designer breeds against their purebred parent breeds. More than 9,000 owner responses were included in the final analysis. The three crossbreeds under examination were Cockapoos (Cocker Spaniel × Poodle), Labradoodles (Labrador × Poodle), and Cavapoos (Cavalier King Charles Spaniel × Poodle), each compared to the relevant purebred parents.

The C-BARQ covers behaviors ranging from fear responses and trainability to owner-directed aggression and reactions toward strangers. For each designer breed, researchers compared scores against the purebred parents. Across all three designer breeds combined, more undesirable behaviors were reported than in the purebred counterparts in 82 percent of all comparisons made. That's not a close result.

The Cockapoo problem

The results were most striking for Cockapoos, which scored significantly higher than either the Cocker Spaniel or the Poodle in every one of 10 behavioral categories: owner-directed aggression, stranger-directed aggression, dog-on-dog aggression, dog rivalry, fear of strangers, fear of other dogs, non-social fear, separation-related problems, excitability, and trainability. Not better on trainability — worse. It was a consistent pattern across the entire behavioral profile, not a narrow margin in one or two areas.

That finding deserves some unpacking. It doesn't mean every Cockapoo is aggressive or anxiety-ridden. It means that, across the population of over 9,000 owner responses, Cockapoo owners reported more of these behaviors than Cocker Spaniel or Poodle owners did. A well-socialized Cockapoo with an attentive owner may be perfectly lovely. But the breed's widespread reputation as an easy, biddable companion doesn't align with what owners are actually experiencing at scale.

You cannot accurately predict the behavior or temperament of a dog based purely on their breeding and genetics; however, those factors do play a major role in determining how, when, or why some dogs tend towards certain instincts and reactions.

— Dr. Karyn Kanowski, BVSc MRCVS, writing in Dogster

The Labradoodle report card

Labradoodles performed more unevenly. Compared to Poodles, they showed fewer undesirable behaviors in several categories, including owner-directed aggression and separation-related problems. But compared to Labradors, they showed more problems in dog rivalry, non-social fear, and excitability. Think of it less as 'best of both' and more as 'variable combination of both' — some traits from each parent, distributed unpredictably.

Cavapoos fell somewhere in the middle: higher on several fear-related behaviors than both their Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and Poodle parents, but actually better on trainability than the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel — apparently Poodle intelligence does show up somewhere. The researchers noted that the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel has famously low trainability scores on the C-BARQ, which makes the Cavapoo comparison somewhat more forgiving.

Why genetics can't be engineered to spec

The deeper problem, as the study explains, is that behavioral traits don't package themselves neatly. When you cross two breeds, you're not running a controlled merge of two genetic instruction sets — you're generating a new population with unpredictable trait combinations. A Labrador's trainability and a Poodle's trainability don't simply average together. They interact, they skip generations, they surface in ways breeders didn't intend and buyers don't expect.

When you combine a gun dog line, a water-retriever line, and then breed the resulting crossbreed primarily for appearance and coat rather than temperament — which is how much of the designer-breed market operates — you have no particular guarantee about what you'll get in the behavior department. The Poodle genes that were supposed to deliver genius-level trainability sometimes deliver Poodle hypersensitivity instead. The Cocker Spaniel warmth sometimes arrives with Cocker Spaniel reactivity in the same package.

What this means if you already have a doodle

If you have a Cockapoo or a Labradoodle, none of this makes your dog less lovable or less worthy of patience and good training. What it does suggest is that some of the behaviors you may have attributed to individual quirks — the separation anxiety, the reactivity on walks, the difficulty recalling off-leash — might have a breed component that simply wasn't disclosed when you brought the puppy home. That's worth knowing, because it changes how you approach training.

Experienced trainers who work with doodle breeds note that these dogs often need more decompression time, more consistent structure, and more mental work than owners anticipate. Understanding a dog's likely behavioral profile — not as an excuse, but as a map — helps you walk them better, train them more effectively, and set realistic expectations for new environments. Knowing your dog isn't 'being difficult' but is, in fact, a high-sensitivity animal changes the whole texture of a challenging morning.

The results of this study demonstrate just how important it is to thoroughly research and explore any breed or crossbreed when choosing a dog, and to ensure that they have the opportunity to view and meet both parents and assess their behavior before impulsively purchasing a puppy.

— Dr. Karyn Kanowski, BVSc MRCVS, in Dogster

The dog in front of you

The study's conclusion isn't an argument against designer breeds. It's an argument for honesty — about what selective breeding can and can't deliver, and about what 'designer' actually means when you're trying to engineer something as complex as personality. The researchers recommend meeting both parents before purchasing, researching behavioral tendencies of the parent breeds carefully, and treating the choice as something that merits more than a TikTok recommendation or a trendy name.

The most important data about any dog — doodle or otherwise — is the dog in front of you right now. What does she do when the delivery driver arrives? How does he handle a strange dog on a narrow street? How long does it take to wind down after a walk? Those behaviors, whatever their genetic origin, are the ones you live with day to day. The breed is just the starting point. Everything after that is learning.