Forums » Smalltalk » LOOK AT THIS ENGLISH BULLDOG

Found at this link right here!

This was the cutest thing I've seen in a while! I might have cried.

THIS IS ADORABLE DAWWWWW.

I'd be more convinced of it being a dog's "best day ever" if it was anything but a bulldog.

Or a pug, or a CKS, or any other brachycephalic breed, eh, Tige?

Shame they forgot the 'could breathe freely and clearly' timestamp.

Haha. Come on, guys; the thing that makes it the best day of his life, is the fact that he's being adopted, and getting out of the cage.
The nasal thing doesn't bother him right now, I wouldn't figure.

Hear hear.

Impressively well-cut video, and very cheerful!

I think I'm missing something. Is the concern here that the breed as a whole has been bred in such a way that they have trouble throughout their lives, or was the "eating, visiting and bathing" activities in the vid in some way inappropriate for this specific breed? I've never owned one of these types of dogs so for me it just looked like normal dog stuff!

The former, Kim, but it kind of ties into the latter. Breeds like bulldogs and pugs - anything with a super-short, 'flat-faced' muzzle - typically have lifelong problems with breathing, and since they can't pant as well as other dogs, they also have a lot of problems with overheating, to the point where breed proponents advise not to take them outside during the summer months for anything longer than they need to do their 'business'. So an excited bulldog, while pretty cute in this video, is kind of courting both oxygen deprivation and hyperthermia.

It's not the poor guy's fault that he was born that way, and I'm glad he's on his way to a home that will hopefully have the resources to take care of him and love him. It's just that videos like these ones, showing how cute the dogs can be, kind of leave out or brush aside all of the unfortunate side effects that their breeding and conformation has given them.

Flat-faced breeds have been getting more and more popular. Bulldogs (English and French) sat at the fifth-most registered breed in the AKC last year; they'd been in 18th place ten years ago. People buy them because they see them everywhere and think they're cute, but often enough without researching how much needs to go into them for health maintenance... and a couple of years and thousands of dollars of vet bills (not even exaggerating) later, more bulldogs end up at animal rescues, like this fella here.

So... for me, it kind of comes down to two reactions to this video: "Aww, cute puppy!" ... and then "Awww, poor puppy. "

Dragonfire put it more eloquently than I ever could!

Bulldogs are, unfortunately, a veritable buffet of health issues. They spend their entire lives struggling for air, and very often have heart and Gastro-Intestinal problems accompanying it. Not to mention skin and joint problems. They are short-lived for their size, with the majority of bulldogs not living to see their tenth birthday.

The breed is bred specifically for brachycephalic dwarfism.
Terrierman, though I don't agree with him on everything he posts, is spot on about the bulldog.
He even supplied a picture of a human with brachycephalic dwarfism to go along with this post

Selecting for Defect

Whenever I see a bulldog, I can't help but cringe. This is a dog that tires out at the smallest exertion, and is perpetually struggling for air, and it's just sad.

This sounds like a really important issue, and I wasn't especially aware of it before. I don't want to minimize it, but I DO want to suggest that it really deserves its own topic. This one was more supposed to be about how great it is when ANY dog gets a new forever home, not a debate of whether certain dogs should exist.