Attack of the Maltipoo

Now I'm not one to speak ill of the dog. The dog is a fine figure of a mammal. It's true, I prefer a dog with a bit of a woof and a tendency to roll in cow manure to a dog who looks like Dame Barbara Cartland's left slipper, but I'm really not fussed. Dogs are grouse (so grouse, in fact, that I wonder why we say "grouse" [as in "Lamingtons are grouse"] and not "dog" [ as in "Lamingtons are dog; I think I'll eat a dozen"]).

Dogs, I like 'em. Nevertheless, it is no service to my good opinion of the dog to find that amongst the dogly multitude exists a canine subculture of maltipoos. If someone had come up to me yesterday on the street and offered me a maltipoo, I would have handed her a plastic bag, gone home, and washed my hands in lemon juice. Today I learn that the maltipoo, somewhat like the labradoodle, is the offspring of a poodle and his less woolly paramour.

Let me not to the marriage of true hounds admit impediments. If a poodle and a Maltese terrier like the look of each other, then more power to them, I say. It's the eugenicist perversions of dog breeders that trouble me (here I must, reluctantly, include the breeders of beagules), and the strangely infantilising names they bestow on pups who want nothing more than to gallop valiantly across the tundra and bring down whole herds of wildebeests with a single paw.