The original breeder of the labradoodle was an australian man hoping to create a "hypoallergenic" service animal. Since most people with dog allergies are allergic to the DANDER they produce, animals with tight curly coats like poodles or porties tend to be great alternatives. Although they still produce dander, their coats trap it in and don't allow it to be released into the environment as much as the average insanely shedding dog *cough*German SHEDDERS*cough cough*
That being said, he quickly realized his attempts were in vain. Yes, at one point all purebreds were "mutts", but the difference between a purebred and a mutt is the ability to breed true. It takes a fair amount of genetic understanding, or just decades of breeding for the same type, to actually produce what would be considered a true "breed". Max Von Stephanitz had a very vast amount of knowledge on genetics, so he was able to produce a type that bred true fairly fast in purebred standards, our wonderful german shepherd.
The problem with all these doodle-poo-poo mutts, is that none breed true because no one is trying to breed for a set standard. They just throw any two dogs together to created their "designer dogs". Some look just like poodles. Some look just like a lab or a golden with a funky coat. Many are somewhere inbetween. And because none breed true, you may not always, and usually don't always, get that tight coat that doesn't shed. Therefor, useless for their intended person.
Seeing as how standard poodles are INSANELY intelligent, one of the top breeds, I never did understand why he couldn't just train poodles to be service dogs, why he felt the need to mix with labs.
Long story short, an "Australian Labradoodle" would be a dog supposedly stemming more from these original lines, and not the designer dogs bred in america. In reality, just a different name for the same old mutt.
As a worker in the medical field, I can personally say I HATE 90% of labradoodles and goldendoodles. They tend to be some of the stupidest dogs I work with, no offense. And the naughtiest dogs. As in, we joke that if you get a doodle puppy expect to be paying for a foreign body surgery within the first year you have it. They love to just eat EVERYTHING. I can't handle that in a dog, just don't have the patience for it, haha.
EDIT: Ok, now I understand why he didn't use a standard poodle after reading this
"If Wally Conron had known what was going to become of the labradoodle, he wouldn't have bred the dog in the first place. It was 22 years ago and Conron, now 81, was working as the breeding manager for the Royal Guide Dog Association of Australia when his boss set him a tough task. A blind woman from Hawaii had written asking if they could provide a guide dog that would not shed hair, because her husband was allergic to it. ''I said, 'Oh yes, this will be a piece of cake. The standard poodle is a working dog, it doesn't shed hair, it'll be great.' I tried 33 in the course of three years and they all failed. They just didn't make a guide dog.'' Conron decided there was one possibility left: take his best labrador bitch and mate it with a standard poodle. They created three cross-breed puppies that needed to be boarded out to be trained and socialised but nobody would take them; everyone wanted a pure-bred. And that's when Conron came up with the name labradoodle. ''I went to our PR team and said, 'Go to the press and tell them we've invented a new dog, the labradoodle.' It was a gimmick and it went worldwide. No one wanted a cross-breed but the following day we had hundreds of calls from people wanting these master dogs.''
The labradoodle proved to be a brilliant dog for the blind and the woman in Hawaii was happy. So what was the problem?
It's how the dog has been used and abused and sold under false pretences, Conron says. ''When the pups were five months old, we sent clippings and saliva to Hawaii to be tested with this woman's husband. Of the three pups, he was not allergic to one of them. In the next litter I had, there were 10 pups but only three had non-allergenic coats. Now, people are breeding these dogs and selling them as non-allergenic and they're not even testing them."
And at least Wally Conron realizes what this truly is. One of my favorite dog quotes, from him
”I released a Frankenstein. … People say ‘aren’t you proud of yourself?’ and I say, ‘not in the slightest. I’ve done so much harm to pure breeding.”’