I never thought I would be a "poodle person" but out of the labs, goldens, spanials, collies and muts I have had my favorites have been the Doodle mixes.. I currently have a labradoodle and 2 standard poodles ( all 3 rescues) and the Labradoodle is the best trail dog I have had and all 3 are awesome dogs.. plus no hair in the house is nice.. with my Golden and labs, I could make a coat out of the hair they shed every week..

Laugh as you may but I have yet to see a better trail dog then my Labradoodle.. She is fast enough to do faster DH rides, agile enough for Freeride stuff and has done 20+ mile XC rides with me. Plus she is Hypoallergenic so I dont have dog hair everywhere like I did from my Golden.. Not that the shedding is a big deal when she is always muddy from rides/runs, lastly she keeps my feet damn warm at night.. But I'll throw up a vid for you to see how rad she is. [L=http://www.pinkbike.com/video/179421/]My labradoodle being Kick ass..[/L] Edit: Yeah! I remember my HTML skills and embedded the link correctly..

Dont get me wrong, I loved my DH bike and I would love to have another one.. But for 95% of my riding, I am just as fast or faster on my 7.. I dont race big DH races anymore and any freeride stuff I do is doable on my 7.. plus 70% of my riding falls under the area of xc/all mountain with just a bit of freeride stuff thrown in.. A dh rig would be nice but I wouldnt really do that much more with it then i do with my 7

My Yeti has a 6inch fork and 7 inches in the rear.. it has tons more travel then a DH bike had 10 years ago.. ha

My DH rig got ripped off.. But I ride everything on my AM bike that I do on my DH bike.. there are only a few gnarly race lines that I will hit on my DH bike but not on my AM bike..