Wherever there are dogs who have not been spayed or neutered, there will be mixed breeds born at least occasionally. Dogs will do the unexpected to get together when a female dog is in heat, and even top breeders sometimes have one slip past them.

Dogs from such accidents may turn out quite well, depending on their parents. The first-generation cross of two purebred dogs of different breeds is a hybrid, and may possess superior traits in terms of health and intelligence. The “hybrid vigor” as this is called applies only to the first cross of two purebreds, though. Crossing those hybrid dogs produces unpredictability in the health and temperaments of their pups.

Breeding a hybrid or mixed breed dog is not a good idea. The ideal is to spay/neuter and enjoy life with that dog without breeding. Even if the hybrid is a great dog, the hybrid’s genetic traits are not reliably reproducible. Chances are the puppies of a hybrid or a mix will inherit weaknesses from their earlier ancestors. If you want a dog as a companion or working dog, the hybrid can be a great choice. It is the one kind of mixed breed dog you may do fine adopting as a puppy. But if you want a dog to breed on, the hybrid is not a good choice, nor is any other mixed breed.

What Breeds?

It might seem there is no breed research to do before adopting a mixed breed. The truth is it requires more research to make an informed and responsible choice of a mixed breed to adopt than to choose a purebred dog. That’s because you have two or more breeds to research, not just one.

Puppies look very much alike, so guessing the breeds in a pup of unknown parentage is often impossible. Guesses can be more educated when the dog is grown. This is an important reason to avoid adopting puppies of unknown parentage. You can’t even know what responsibilities you are taking on. What size will the dog be, what grooming will be needed, how strong, how active, how inclined to bark, how aggressive in guarding territory? A puppy of unknown genetics may grow into a dog you cannot handle.

Ask yourself whether you really want a dog or just a puppy. When you adopt a mixed breed puppy and get rid of it once it’s no longer cute, you have taken from that puppy the best chance of a permanent home. One estimate is that 50% of the puppies born in the U.S. are dead by the age of two years, and casual puppy adoption is a major reason.

Those who want puppies but aren’t sure about the long-term commitment of a dog can satisfy this interest by raising a pup to become a working dog. You just need to find a good program to work with. At around a year of age, the pup will no longer be your responsibility.

If you really do want a dog and a mix is your choice, get an adult. These dogs need homes desperately, and you can tell much more about what you are taking on. Responsible shelters don’t adopt out aggressive dogs, so if there are behavior problems, they’re likely to be problems typical of untrained dogs that age.

If you need a dog with more predictable behavior or if you want to adopt your dog as a puppy, you need to deal with a responsible breeder rather than a shelter. The most likely scenario of getting an aggressive mixed breed dog from a shelter happens when you adopt that dog as a puppy. The temperament and breeds involved in a puppy are not apparent. It is guesswork when you don’t know both parents.

For those who want to raise a mixed breed from puppyhood, the people to talk to are breeders with purebred dogs. These days, puppies can be DNA checked for paternity. Either accidentally or by plan, a dog can have a litter of puppies with more than one father. DNA testing can tell which pups are which! Cool, huh?

So, if you want a mixed pup to raise, do your breed homework! Locate breeders of breeds that interest you, and let them know of your interest. Then when an accident happens with one of their dogs or, more likely, a dog belonging to someone else they know with their breed, you can be contacted. Since the breeding won’t be planned, you’ll need to research lots of breeds, to decide what will and will not fit your situation.

Crosses of breeds are sometimes predictable as to what you might expect from the offspring. Labrador retriever and German Shepherd Dog, for example, is a common cross that tends to produce large, black dogs with short hair. The ear set can do anything—and one may do one thing while the other does something else. The dogs will likely be strong, high in energy, natural retrievers, protective of property, eager to learn, and not the right match for an owner who doesn’t want to get seriously involved in dog training!

Dogs with a terrier parent are likely to fight with other dogs of the same sex. Dogs with a parent of one of the giant breeds are likely to be large. A dog with a Chihuahua parent will probably be small. If both parents of a dog have long or short coats, the dog is likely to inherit the coat length of the parents. But when one parent has a long coat and the other a short one, the coat the pup will have is unpredictable.

Some surly-tempered dogs don’t have much energy, so their “leave me alone” attitudes are manageable. When you mix that breed with an energetic breed, the outcome can be a dog who very energetically expresses aggression. This is not good!

One mistake people make in considering temperament of a mix to adopt is expecting the dog to inherit “the best” of both breeds. More often, a mix inherits the most extreme traits of both breeds. Extreme traits are there in the first place because breeders worked long and hard over many generations to set those traits into the genetics of the breed. The traits needed for many of the jobs that humans have bred dogs to do may not be at all when you need. If you don’t do your homework, you won’t know what you’re getting into with a mix.

Another mistake is to expect that if you raise a dog with love, the dog will turn out as you desire. A dog is the victim of instinct, with less higher brain function than a human. As a result, there is a great deal about a dog that you simply cannot overcome with rearing or training because the dog’s higher brain function simply is not powerful enough to overcome the impulses. Bad handling can make a temperament much worse than it would otherwise have been, but even the best handling cannot rise above the limitations of the dog’s genetics. Do that homework!

Questions to Ask

Before meeting a dog you might adopt, consider exactly what you need in a dog, what you are able to handle in a dog, and what you want in a dog. For example, if you have children, you must have a dog who will be safe around your children and other children who visit your home. Think these things through before you let yourself be swayed by the presence of an appealing dog.

Also try to find out in advance as much about the dog as you can. If the dog doesn’t meet some of your important criteria, it’s best not to go see the dog. Leave the people seeking to place that dog for free to look for a closer match, and leave yourself free to find the right dog for you. Consider these factors:

1. Size. We’re not talking about looks here. One of the worst criteria you could use to choose a dog is what the dog looks like! Once you get to know and love the dog, never fear, you’ll find that dog very attractive.

A dog’s strength compared to that of a human man is about triple, thus a 50-pound dog is about as strong as a 150-pound man. What size dog fits your situation? Certain jobs require a large dog. Tiny dogs can go more places with you and are easier for someone else to take care of when you can’t.  They also do less damage if they bite.

2. Guarding Instinct. A dog who bites first and asks questions later is not only “not for everybody,” it’s for hardly anybody. Most of us need zero to moderate guarding instinct. Only a minority of people can responsibly handle a dog with strong guarding instinct.

3. Trainability. Most people need dogs we can train to eliminate in appropriate places, to behave safely on leash, and not to hurt people. What else does your dog need to learn to do? Some of the most trainable dogs MUST be trained. Some dogs who aren’t the brightest bulbs on the string of Christmas lights make charming, easy dogs to grace our homes. Do you need the genius dog who will have you seeking out experts to help you solve training problems, or the snuggle bug who will spend hours as an easy-going buddy?

4. Housetraining Ease. Dog experts can tell you about quite a few breeds with a, well, dirty secret. They just don’t get it easily at all when it comes to housetraining. Hint: they are most often small and male. For icing on the cake, fail to neuter them. Male or female, some breeds may never achieve reliability for the entire run of the house. If this is important to you (as it is to most people), investigate this trait!

5. Destructive Chewing. Quite a few breeds vie for records of most unbelievable destructive chewing. It’s only funny when it’s someone else’s dog and house—not yours! Knowledgeable dog handlers are able to safely manage and train a dog through this difficult and dangerous phase of life. Novice dog owners tend to be taken totally by surprise, and the poor dog winds up homeless. That can result in the death of the unwanted dog. Death comes even more directly when the dog chews or swallows something fatal.

6. Health Issues. Hip dysplasia is high on the list of health problems in a mix because large breeds so commonly have it that your dog can inherit it from both sides. Other breeds have their problems, too. You would be wise to have the dog medically screened. If this seems like a big expense, check out the cost of treating that problem if you were to adopt the dog and then it surfaced.

7. Coat. When it comes to skin and fur, dogs vary in odor, whether or not clipping is needed, and whether the coat is prone to tangling. Oil in a dog’s skin protects it from the weather and from water but becomes rancid and smells bad when not kept groomed. Clipping requires equipment and skills that people usually find they need to hire—it’s harder than it looks. And coats that can tangle will mat if not kept combed out. Then the skin under the mat gets pulled tight, creating sores. If the dog requires grooming, neglecting it can lead to health and temperament problems.

8. Activity Level. Some dogs keep busy around the house following you and playing with toys, a lifestyle that works well if you’re home a lot and enjoy the active company. It’s even better when the dog is agile and good at getting out of your way. Some people find “busy” dogs irritating, though, so think carefully about your personality and what you really want.

Big, clumsy dogs who like to play hard inside the house may crash into things. Other dogs may lie around indoors, not particularly interested in following you. They will need you to get them out for some regular exercise in a setting they find stimulating.

The Greyhound is called a 40-mile-an-hour couch potato due to this tendency. Some giant breeds are like this, too. Many dogs are wild in the house when young and then settle with age. That could be anytime between age two years to several years later, when advanced osteoarthritis sets in.

9. Barking and Howling. Dogs are not created equal when it comes to the ease of teaching them not to bark in a nuisance manner. Your living situation may be highly unsuited to a noisy dog, if the noise would disturb neighbors. People often find themselves facing the choice of either giving up the dog or moving. Every measure used to try to get a dog to stay quiet when left alone has drawbacks.

The best housing situation with a noisy breed is to live in a house that shares no walls with other dwellings, and then keep the dog indoors. You can usually train a dog to be quiet when you are THERE. But when you are not there, noise becomes a major problem in the average apartment, condominium, or home where a dog is housed outdoors in earshot of neighbors.

When evaluating a shelter dog, keep in mind that the dog is likely to be stressed and tired. The true temperament will show a little better after a couple of weeks or so, but it is often several months before you get a good reading on it. Knowing the propensities of the breeds involved in the mix at least gets you started on what traits to examine most closely.

Motives

Think about your reasons for getting a dog, your reasons for getting a mix, and your reasons for getting this particular mix. Because it’s easy to find and adopt a mixed breed, people sometimes get one without much thought. They are often surprised at just how difficult things get, and then give up the dog. What happens to the dog?

If you go to a responsible rescue that fosters dogs or to a breeder who takes her dogs back if they ever lose their homes, there is a home waiting to take care of that dog if you’ve made a mistake. These sources will also give you more help in making the choice in the first place. And they will give you more help with any issues that arise. You are better off, and so is the dog.

There are fewer questions you have to answer when you adopt from a shelter, and the initial money you hand over may be less. It can be so easy to adopt from a shelter that people do it without nearly enough thought. The dog’s care will cost as much or more, though: a lot more if the dog is highly stressed. Stressed-out dogs get sick.

If you decide you have made a mistake in choosing the dog from a shelter, the dog will go through extreme stress at being brought back to the shelter. And the dog’s chances of being adopted out again will be reduced. The stakes are higher all the way around, and you have less help to make the decision.

If you want to go to a shelter and adopt a dog, it is wise to get expert help in making that choice. It’s well worth paying for this help, but chances are the price will be quite reasonable, if you are making a responsible adoption. This is one of the most pleasant jobs experts get to do.

If you are looking for a dog you can enter in dog competitions, check the registration requirements before you get a dog. Many such events are not open to dogs of unknown parentage. It really is best to get the dog that fits your criteria in every possible way.

Perhaps your search for the right dog will bring you into contact with a great dog who isn’t the right choice for you. Often the best thing you can do is get on the phone and find the right person to adopt him or help him find his perfect home. There are groups who train shelter dogs to place as companions for older folks, groups who train dogs to assist people with disabilities, companies that train drug dogs to search schools and businesses, government agencies that train dogs for several different jobs, and rescue groups on the lookout for dogs that will make especially congenial companions.

The various groups that train working dogs often have dogs they have to eliminate from the work, due to traits that would have little or no effect on your life with the dog. Some of these traits might even be good for a companion dog, such as the dog being trained for search work who just doesn’t have the energy to work full time. Few of us have full-time work for our dogs to do, and in fact we would be hard pressed to keep a high-powered working dog that busy. So these are good groups to check with in your search for a dog. Dogs these groups decide need a change of career will have been evaluated by experts.

One of a Kind

Mixed breeds are not reproducible. You won’t go to a dog show and see a ring full of dogs who are part of your dog’s family. You might be surprised how much this can mean to you, if at some point you do get a purebred dog. When you have a great mixed breed—and “great” is exactly the right word for many of these dogs—you’re unlikely to ever have another dog who is very much like that one. You may find, though, as many people have, that the mixed breed who shares your life will help you learn more about the kind of dog you want to adopt next.

Most mixed breeds up for adoption are young adults whose puppy owners did not keep faith with them. They are overlooked in shelters because everyone wants the puppies. The most likely behavior problem they will have is separation anxiety—because they so much want to stay with you, and fear that you will not keep them. If your commitment is true and you are the right home for the dog, you will likely be able to help the dog come through this fear with flying colors—that is, provided you do not have to leave the dog alone too much.

Mixed breeds can make wonderful companion dogs, and more. Though they are not allowed to be entered in some competitive events, when they do train and work in jobs commonly done by purebreds, they often excel. Some training programs tend to use more purebreds because they need predictability in their training schedules. But wherever it’s workable to customize the training to the dog, you’re apt to find some mixed breeds doing well.

The American Kennel Club annually recognizes several individual dogs for achievement or distinguished service. These are always purebred dogs, because the American Kennel Club is a registry of purebreds. Mixed breeds are every bit as capable of meritorious actions, though, and many have saved human lives.

Mixed breeds are also popular for television and movie work. Purebred dogs may be chosen when the people in charge want to easily be able to round up a lot of look-alikes for the canine star. But for a dog that appeals to the most viewers, it’s the mixed breed. Working dogs are chosen carefully, and your companion dog has an important job, too. Choose carefully, so your mixed breed will live a long and happy life with you.