Okay, this is an experiment I'm going to try myself, and I thought I'd make it a challenge so that others could try it too (and in case I lose interest while folks with longer attention spans are still at it). It may be completely stupid and maybe other people have done it before.

Background: In the real world, a Labradoodle is a dog that's a cross between a standard poodle and a Labrador retriever. Its body is heavier than a poodle's but taller and more slender than a Lab's, and it has a curly coat like a poodle. It's not an official 'breed'; it's simply a trendy mix.

The definition of a breed is that you have to be able to breed seven generations of it and have the traits continue to breed true. Pups that are a cross between one breed and another are called F1 hybrids. If you breed an F1 hybrid to an F1 hybrid, you get F2 hybrids, and so on. You can call your hybrids a new breed if you can get to F7 hybrids and still have them all passing on the same breed traits.

The thing with real-world genetics is that Labradoodles don't breed true as far as F7. Once you get to F2 you start getting pups who don't have the same traits as the F1. All the Labradoodles out there are F1 hybrids; there is no such thing as a purebred Labradoodle.

The challenge: can there be such a thing in The Sims? Can you start with poodles and Labs, get Labradoodle puppies from them, breed those puppies and continue to get Labradoodles, for seven generations?

The difficult bit: you have to start with 128 dogs. 64 labs and 64 poodles. You need to start with this many so that you can have enough in the F6 generation to be unrelated to each other and breed the F7 generation without inbreeding.

1. Pair up each poodle with a Lab and breed them for puppies. Theses puppies are the F1 hybrids. If they grow up to look like Labradoodles, go to the next step.

2. Pair up the F1 Labradoodle puppies in unrelated pairs. Yes, you may have to document this stuff on paper. Breed them. If any of the F2 pups are Labradoodles, go to the next step.

3. Continue until you reach F7. Note that not every pup in a generation may have Labradoodle characteristics, but you'll have more pups than you need in early generations. You can pick the ones that look like Labradoodles and breed them, and not breed the others.

Rules:

- You may use a mod to accelerate pregnancy or growth of pups into adults, in order to reduce the amount of time needed to finish the challenge.

- You may choose the sex of a pup before it's born, if you have a mod that can do such a thing. This will help you ensure that you have enough breeding pairs to make the next generation.

- Don't tamper with or direct any other aspect of genetics -- eye colour, coat colour, etc.

- Don't use a mirror to 'change appearance of pet'.

- If you don't want to do Labradoodles, since there's no reason why this hybrid is special in the game, try a different hybrid: puggles (pug/beagle crosses), schnoodles (schnauzer/poodle), or try creating your own mixed breed (dog or cat) with traits you like and see if you can get them to breed true.

Aw this challenge seems like it would be really fun to try! I have a Shih-Poo and I would love to make him to play in the game! That's probably the only way I can ever train him to stop pooping on my floor! Grr. If this works out, I might even make a pet shop for my business Sims!

I wanted to try something like this, but how I am supposed to get 128 dogs? I mean, How am I supposed to set that up?

I've been thinking about that question. That's part of why I posted this, to see if it could be done.

128/32 = 4, so if you can have 32 houses in a neighbourhood you can have 4 dogs in each to start. That would mean two Labs and two poodles. You might have to lay out a special neighbourhood for this. Or you can just give four dogs to some of your existing sims and have them breed dogs.

I was thinking that I would create a neighborhood, and name the houses something like 'F1-1' and 'F1-2' and so on, then have, like you said, two pairs of each breed, and sell them off once the puppies come in to make room. But then I would have to somehow get puppies from different houses to breed with each other. Is inbreeding possible in Sims 2?
If someone attempts this, I would love to see pictures and how they went about it. I'm tempted, but I just don't think I can manage it without going insane and taking a million notes.

I'm not sure if sibling inbreeding works. But all you have to do to transfer pups to different houses is have the humans give/sell pups to each other. I don't think you can have a house with just dogs, you need a human there.

Why didn't I think of that Some serious note taking would be needed to do this challenge properly.

Another thing I wanted to know is,
so okay you start the breeding with 128 dogs, correct?
The F1 generation should have how many then? 64?
and then F2 should have 32?
Am I going in the right direction?

Yup, that's it. Make a family tree and go backwards. F7 is at the bottom and F1 is at the almost-top below the poodles and Labs (call them F0). (I think I'll name the F0 generation starting with the letter A, F1 starting with B, F2 with C, etc.) It'll get easier as you go along because each generation you'll pick the best dogs and work with half the number you had in the last generation.

Remember that your F0 generation may produce more than 64 pups because there can be more than one in a litter. You're going to pick the best one from each litter.

I suppose a losing condition would be that you don't have at least one good pup in each litter for a generation. You need one from each to prevent inbreeding in the next generation. So if there's a litter where no pups grow up looking like Labradoodles, you can't pick from that litter and the challenge is over.

I guess you really won't be able to tell what they look like until they grow up. When they're pups you can't tell if they'll have curly, flat, flowing, or wiry coats.

If you don't have a good looking breeder in a litter, I would just choose the closest, and if none of them fit my liking, I would just have to use one, and hope it wouldn't effect the end result.

We should probably decide what the Labradoodle characteristics are once we see the F1s grow up. Who knows, the way the game combines them might result in hybrids that don't look like real-life Labradoodles.

I love this challenge. I have played a game like this longer than I have with The Sims (I've played since Sims 1, in 2000) - this game is Petz 4 and 5, from Ubisoft. I've played that since 1998. If you are interested in pet genetics, it's the same thing, except you don't have the Sims to play with, which makes the challenge a lot easier For example, I'm currently breeding a Black & White Shorthair cat (cat that comes as one of the original breeds of the game) with a Persian cat, to create a cat that is Persian-body based with Black & White Shorthair appearance (black body, white tipped tail and white tipped feet).

However, I will try the challenge in Sims 2, with Puggles, since the standard of what Puggles look like would be easier to breed for (for example, any dog with a beagle tail is out, curled tailed dogs are in). Should be fun

ETA: Also, this link about hybrid dogs might be helpful to those who want other crosses - http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/america...ehybridclub.htm