With this kind of response, I knew we were on to a winner, and I took the decision to breed more of the labrador-poodle crosses. So I contacted the then Kennel Control Councilof Australia, hoping to find the names of reputable breeders who were breeding standard problem-free poodles.

“If you use any registered dog for your programme, that breeder will be struck off the register and never be allowed to show or register their dogs again,” the council’s spokesperson warned. Nor did he budge when I explained that the dogs were being bred to help vision-impaired people.

The breeders themselves were split: many did subsequentely threaten me or propose litigation if I used their progeny in my breeding programme, while others offered their services free to the guide-dog centre.

While all this was happening, I continued training Sultan, the original non-allergenic pup. He eventually went to Hawaii, amid intense media coverage, where as the world’s first labradoodle he bonded beautifully with his new owner and her allergic husband.

Interest in the labradoodle continued to escalate and inquiries poured in from all over the world from people wishing to either purchase or breed the dogs. But

I quickly realised that I’d opened a Pandora’s box when our next litter of ten labradoodles produced only three allergy-free pups.

I began to worry, too, about backyard breeders producing supposedly “allergy-free” dogs for profit. Already, one man claimed to be the first to breed a poodle- Rottweiler cross!

Nothing, however, could stop the mania that followed. New breeds began to flood the market: groodles, spoodles, caboodles and snoodles. Were breeders bothering to check their sires and bitches for heredity faults, or were they simply caught up in delivering to hungry customers the next status symbol? We’ll never know for sure.

Today I am internationally credited as the first person to breed the labradoodle, but I wonder, in my retirement, whether we bred a designer dog – or a disaster!

Retiree Wally Conron, 78, still keeps two labradors, Rocky and Jazz, but his first love is for horses. He has nine of his own that he breeds and trains when he’s not giving riding lessons to horse-lovers in rural Victoria.