The answer is yes.
After all, most dogs are brachycephalic when compared to the wolf and other wild dogs. Short muzzles are a diagnostic of a domestic dog.
However, when we breed for healthy conformation, brachycephalic dog breeds are going to have to have some muzzle– enough for the all the teeth, tongue, and soft palate. One of the reasons why these dogs have so much trouble breathing and cooling themselves is they don’t have enough room for their tongues and soft-palate. The tissue in the soft palate winds up obscuring the trachea, and that prevents air from flowing. In a dog, that also prevents the animal from effectively cooling itself.
So when we evnetually get around to correcting breed standards, we are still going to have bulldogs, pekes, bostons, and Frenchies. It’s just that they are going to have a bit more muzzle.
And I don’t think that’s too much to ask.
Bulldogs are actually supposed to have greater overall length of skull than the way many have been bred for pet and show. The skull should always be longer than broad, with at least a third if not closer to 1/2 of the total overall length being in front of the eye
It does not actually take much muzzle to relieve crowding of tissue or teeth.
Elongated palates, tight nares and small tracheas are actually somewhat separate issue as bulldogs and crosses that have quite long noses can still be afflicted and so these issues must be screened for at the same time greater skull length is sought out.
Long heads are called “brick heads” as a brick is much longer than wide. Ironically, amongst breeder-judges, brick heads are highly desirable and will be awarded particularly at specialty shows.
Convincing the general public, casual breeders and all-round judges that beach-ball, gianormous, overly wrinkled heads are not a good thing, oh and that a strong, well arched neck is REQUIRED, are important steps to building athletic, functional dogs.
I vote we put JenniferJ in charge of all bulldog and brachycephelic breeding programs.
Can you at least adopt me? VBG
I’m co-chairing our health committee. Not sure how that happened. Again. We have some good stuff in the works and other stuff I feel like I’m pounding sand over.
Change does not come easy for some. But we have some very dedicated people and a lot more honest, open dialog on issues previously considered taboo. Always a good thing.
All I ask is that they make me dictator for 5-10 years, with an open expense account. For some odd reason no one has taken me up on it! XD
Long heads are called “brick heads” as a brick is much longer than wide. Ironically, amongst breeder-judges, brick heads are highly desirable and will be awarded particularly at specialty shows.
I think this is the crux of the issue that is so hard for outsiders like me to understand. There is no disputing the adverse health consequences of “beach-ball, gianormous, overly wrinkled heads”; there is no disputing the fact that the breeds looked very, very different in the past. So why is it, then, so hard to convince breed clubs – whose primary purpose at founding was the preservation of the breed – to hold to a breed standard that is both healthier for the dog, and more closely matches the historical standards they are supposed to be preserving?
Breed clubs can educate etc… work on judges education, new member education, what have you.
But with popular breeds, only a small percentage of the people owning and breeding them are club members. If your not “a student of the breed”, you’ll most likely never read the standard.
Dogs are then bred to fit popular fashion, not a written standard. You do not have to be a club member to breed or enter a dog show. Or start your own registry out of your garage.
While some of the damage comes from fads in the show ring, with popular breeds, much comes from people who breed without ever attending a show, a trial, a test, a health screening, who pick and breed the dogs they think look cool, or just happen to be vaguely a member of the breed in question.
If the bulldog club radically changed their standard tomorrow, 90% of bulldog owners and breeders would neither know nor care. The public thinks it wants big round heads, overdone wrinkly puppies, fat squishy adults. And there are a ton of back yard, web-mill and commercial breeders happy to oblige.
As health testing becomes more prevalent in breeds like bulldogs, chows, frenchies etc.. I expect less exaggerated, slower maturing and more athletic, longer lived dogs, provided we can dodge the “his hips passed so he can’t be crippled” pitfall that has overtaken many GSDs.
Brick heads btw are not boxer or pit bull style heads. They still have a distictly “bulldog” look, but the overall increase in length, both in the foreface and the overall skull itself, provides much greater space for teeth, palate, turbinates etc… Teeth stay in the mouth, not hanging out. The importance of a correct nose, broad, wide open, cannot be emphasized enough. We’re 100 plus degrees here and with a wading pool to go in and out of, I’ve been able to take the bulldogs out to play even during the day. My toy fox, with their low body mass and lack of insulating fur, have been suffering much more in the heat than the bullies.
Except that is for my dark dark brindle girl, she absorbs sun like a solar oven but that’s not a breathing issue. It’s hard to blame her for disliking this time of year when in ten minutes you could fry an egg on her back
Most of my dogs have a longer muzzle than might be considered really ‘fashionable’ for the North American breed ring.
I also have not, and never will, bred from or to a dog which has had palate surgery. It’s a fairly simple issue for me – breeding from dogs with long palates will inevitably create dogs with more long palates.
I’ve managed to do fairly well in the breed ring (including BIS and Westminster BOB winners), in spite of this, and if and when I’ve asked pet owners if they would take more muzzle, but a dog that doesn’t keel over dead from heat stroke, they’ve all unanimously voted “Yes, please!”.
I think we need some sort of juxtaposition between the real world and the show world. Too many breeders who concentrate heavily on showing don’t know and don’t care if their dogs are healthy, just so long as they are WINNING. Blame for this lies squarely on the part of clubs (who won’t change standards to encourage health), breeders (who value looks over health) and judges (who won’t exercise their right to refuse to put up dogs with obviously labored breathing or crippled movement).
Personally, I follow the adage ‘do no harm’. Breeding for crippled dogs who can’t breathe is pretty much the definition of ‘harmful’.