What I am about to suggest is something rather extreme.
I wouldn’t have deliberately plagiarized Lenin in the title if I were to write something somewhat milquetoast and banal.
But right now, there is a major welfare problem in the world of dogs that I don’t think can be solved with gentle suggestions and politically correct language.
One must be blunt and clear about the problems and the solution.
Right now, I would argue the biggest welfare problem facing domestic dogs in the West can be found in a single breed of dog. I choose to take on this breed not because other breeds are without problems. I choose it because there is no breed with as many problems occurring at once, and in the United States, it is sadly becoming even more popular, despite it being well-known that these dogs have very real issues.
And the problem is even further exacerbated when one discovers that well over 90 percent of the breed’s fanciers have their heads shoved squarely up their arses. They live in a fantasy world in which deformities are actually assets, where they live in the delusion that their dog is tougher than all the rest, when it is indeed perhaps the most fragile.
The breed I’m talking about is the bulldog.
The bulldog is the old baiting and butcher’s dog of yore. A creature much ballyhooed for its legendary courage, which eventually made it a symbol of the British Empire. It is the canine John Bull, and one sort of gets the impression that much of the breed’s current phenotype is really nothing more than attempt to turn much more lithe old bulldog into a caricature of that patriotic figure.
This breed has a lot of health problems and not a single one of them is new. This breed was messed up within twenty years of becoming part of the “dog fancy,” and as it became more and more extreme, there was actually a robust debate about bulldog health even back then. Perhaps most famously, there was a bulldog “walking race” in which the very “typy” dog wound up positively knackered within a mile.
These dogs have problems breathing and cooling themselves efficiently– which tells you they couldn’t possibly be used to bring down an animal the size of a bull! They problems with infections resulting from their inverted tails. The dogs are so top-heavy that they cannot mate without people holding them or the use of a breeding rack, and in the US, many are produced through AI. Almost all bulldog puppies are delivered through C-section, and the breed has the highest percentage of dysplastic hips, according to OFA hips.
And those are but a handful of the problems this breed faces.
And they’ve been going on and on for a century without any degree of improvement.
But there is now another problem that is coming to the fore: This breed is now among the AKC’s most popular.
They have been popularized on “reality television,” and every young idiot who watches too much TV wants one. They are so cute!
This is such a difficult dog to breed that the puppy mills have had a field day with them. They can charge much higher prices for these dogs than all the other mass-produced breeds and crosses. They will sometimes add a bit of boxer to their bulldogs to make them easier whelpers and then dock the puppies’ tails to make them look pure.
So we have a breed that is utterly screwed by its own fanciers and then is getting it double from the really ugly underbelly of the pet market.
Both of these systemic problems mean that it is going to be very hard to help this breed.
It is simply madness and stupidity all around.
This is not to say that there aren’t some good bulldog fanciers out there who are trying to moderate the breed, and there are dozens of breeding programs out there that are trying to produce an “old-fashioned” bulldog.
But these people are fighting an uphill battled against an entrenched idiocracy.
With so many things going against this breed, how can it be saved?
The thing is, I don’t think it can be– not unless there is a very strong cultural revolution against the powers that be.
We must stigmatize anyone who buys this breed as a pet. We must not be nice about it. If you buy a bulldog, you are participating in the deformation of a dog. You are encouraging people to breed unhealthy freaks. You are encouraging the misery of living things, and these living thing suffer every breath they take. In this way, the breeders of the extreme bulldog are worse than dog fighters. Dogs that are bred for fighting suffer. It’s certainly true. However, they don’t spend their entire lives struggling to oxygenate themselves or keep themselves cool.
If you are breeding bulldogs as they currently are, you are worse than Michael Vick.
If you measure the amount of suffering each type of cruelty, the bulldog breeder is encouraging far more than the dog fighter.
And what’s more, there is nothing illegal about what the bulldog breeder does. Indeed, what a bulldog breeder does is celebrated!
It is evil that is not seen as evil, and to steal from Hannah Arendt, it is evil that is banal.
People accept the suffering that bulldogs undergo because it is institutionalized and legitimate.
And it is this legitimacy that we must attack at its core.
The dogs deserve so much more.
The radical step is to say that this breed must stop. If it cannot be put on the road to healthier phenotype, then the breed must be stopped.
I would hate to see it go this far, but it may wind up that all bulldogs will be required by law to be spayed or neutered unless put into a breeding program designed to select for a healthier phenotype.
I wouldn’t want to see this happen, but it seems to me that there is very little that be done to stop the madness.
But at some point, this is where this breed is headed.
And in the end, all dog people of conscience have to say stop.
No more.
Pugs are also very inbred and have a host of problems.
Pugs have had their round on here too!
https://retrieverman.net/2013/08/28/the-problems-with-pugs/
I agree with you 100%. Thanks for this hard-line post. I’m tired of the weak, overly soft approaches to the very serious bulldog problem. I cringe every time I see one in public, and as you note, I’m seeing more and more of them. Something drastic must be done.
I agree 100% as well. Breeders try to pretend that everything is okay,as if there is nothing wrong with the dogs,and that everything is fine and dandy,and the dogs are suffering right before their eyes. And what makes it even worse, is that if a dog comes out slightly healthier than the rest of its counterparts,then it is considered sub-par,and is culled.
It will take a lot of work to help these dogs. I hope it can be done.
While we are on the topic of bad Bull dog breeding, I would also like to add Frenchies to the list of dogs who’s breeding needs to be stopped. At my work we have many Bulldogs both English and French come in. They all have problems of some sort, from breathing, and horrible yeast infections to back ends so deformed their poop sometimes catches under there anus when the defecate. The sad thing is most of these dogs is that their owners rely don’t care, or find these issues cute.
Might add “if you buy a bulldog you are just plain stupid”.
Should probably make that a French or English bulldog, as I think there’s still hope for the American bulldog.
It’s sad to see some pit bull lines going for the bulldog look. This will give pups who are twice cursed. eg http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=5B0R1Z5PL70
Hear, hear!
What about pekineses?
Scotties blogged plenty of times about them.
Unfortunately, I have to agree on a cute dog that should be discouraged as a pet and therefore, from breeding.
Easier said than done. It is useless to try to get between a fool and his folly.
Has the AKC shown any sign of wanting to end qualzucht? Have any of the breed clubs changed their standards towards healthier dogs?
There are things which COULD be tried:
1 Changing the standards to reward healthier types.
2 Out-crossing , dogbreedinfo.com has some nice photos of beabulls, which could also be called “Bull Eagles” or “bullgles” which sounds like a musical instrument.
3 Just knowing when to give up. Why make more generations to suffer, while better breeders try to improve the breed, but the show standard remains unchanged?
Many bulldog have health issues but so do other breads. My bulldog is 100% pure English bulldog and has zero health problems. I grew up with dogs and am a dog lover. I have never met a dog that was so happy and such a great family dog. Everyone falls in love with our bulldog. He’s healthy, happy and one of the best looking (cutest) English bulldogs you will ever see. He’s practically famous in our neighborhood. People ask for him more then they ask for us. I grew up with a lab and I’ve taken her to the vet more than I have taken my English bulldog. Lots of English bulldogs are heavy breathers and droolers and look like they are having a hard time but let’s not stereotype. No dog can be left in the heat. My bulldog is energetic and like to run around and is actually fast and is just a fun playful dog. How about pugs?? Should they be exterminated too??? I bet you have a fat family member that might breath a little heavy, maybe you should take him/her out back and just off them how skies that sound? I’m a bulldog lover and always will be. I love all dogs and you should be ashamed of yourself.
I’m not ashamed of myself.
You should be ashamed for participating in encouraging people to breed such defective dogs.
No bulldog exists with 0 health problems. They cannot cool themselves or breathe properly. Compared to a boxer, which is actually decent type of bulldog (whose more immediate ancestors were hunting boar, while the English dogs were staggering around.), I guarantee you that your bulldog will get worn out long before a boxer will. I had a boxer cross that was a real bulldog. She ran hard, killed things, guarded the farm, but even at that, I worried about her getting too hot. The goldens could handle the heat– a golden retriever is actually very tough dog, they can break ice to swim and run though briars that would cut a person to pieces.
See, I have actually seen what real dogs do in the real world. Bulldogs are entirely a fantasy. They can’t do anything that a boxer or an American bulldog can do. Those are REAL bulldogs, not distorted creatures. People create dogs. I blame people, not dogs, for their problems.
I love all dogs, but I can tell you I’m disgusted with what all the morons have done to so many decent dogs.
If you think your dog is the epitome of health, I have some questions for you:
1. How was your dog born? Did its mother free whelp? My guess is no because it wouldn’t be safe to let her do so. That’s actually a major health problem. If something is so deformed that it cannot be born, then that’s a welfare issue.
2. How was your dog conceived? Did the dog get to hump the bitch? My guess is no. He either got propped up with a wrack or it was an AI job. If you can’t be produced through normal humping, then isn’t that nature’s way of saying something’s rather effed up?
BTW, it’s a very sh*tty debate tactic to put words in my mouth.
Where in the post did I say I hated bulldogs?
It’s because I love dogs that I’m outraged at what is happening!
I agree! One time my dog and I met a very friendly English Bulldog on our walk and he took one breath and the sound of it scared my border collie into jumping back behind my legs. She had no clue what that dog meant by that sound, and he was only trying to breathe.
This is one of the breeds I feel sad when I see, knowing they can’t do the things most dogs enjoy, like running, chasing, being active. This is intentionally breeding a disabled animal and it should not happen. They have great personalities too, so I wish people would fix the physical problems.
If a dog breed cannot, on anything approaching a regular basis, produce young without medical intervention major changes in that breed are required. Bulldogs would not exist without medical intervention because the first litter would kill almost every bitch. If that isn’t a good rule of thumb on poor breeding, I don’t know what is?
Criticism is not hate; and criticism is well earned in this case.
I tend to agree with the main consensus, says me, now a shih tzu owner! Anyway, after reading your piece above , retrieverman, I trawled through the dozens of forum comments on one website made immediately after Crufts last March. There wasn’t much consensus but one cannot just call people liars who declare that their own bulldog experience is positive in that their dogs, they insist, are as healthy and fit for purpose as many other breeds.
Even if the bulldog apologists are, arguably, deluded, it must be admitted that bulldogs are not exactly in numerical decline and there is some evidence of improvement at the margins. However, it did seem cynical to me and some people commenting that the vet inspecting bulldogs at Crufts is seriously into pugs – so obviously he was bound to be impartial wasn’t he?
Incidentally, it was commented that bulldog owners do not take part in hip scoring. So I don’t know how the critics were able to announce that the average score is 45. On the pro bulldog of the argument some owners came on to say they had bulldogs living to 13. I was slightly surprised at that. Was it thirteen years of hell for them one wonders.
Seriously? I can’t believe you are singling out ONE breed here. MAN has dabbled in every breed in it’s selfish quest to create the PERFECT dog & guess what? There isn’t one – they ALL have some sort of health issues. You want to SHAME people who breed & own these dogs – really? who died & left you in charge? What of the people who rescue these dogs? should they be shamed too? Or should the dogs be left to die in a shelter some place, forgotten about by man, the very person who created them? I rescued a Pekinese with the same breathing problems you describe here & a ton of other health issues, should I be shamed for rescuing him from the shelter? Should I be shamed for giving him a good life, even though he can’t keep up with the other rescued dogs in my home? Get a clue, there is NO perfect breed, they all have issues some where along the line & YOU are FAR from perfect for writing such a mean article – to say people should be shamed is the same as being a BULLY – hope you get a kick out of being a bully & shaming people, because that’s exactly what you’re doing –
All living things that reproduce sexually have genetic problems. However, you can make them worse if you inbreed like a moron or select for obvious deformity.
The reason why I chose this breed is that it is a compendium for everything that is wrong with dogs today. It’s a breed that was screwed within twenty years of entering the fancy system– and that was over a hundred years– and not a damn thing has been done to improve it. If anything it’s worse than ever was– and what’s even worse is this animal is being mass-produced and sold as the ideal family pet.
The fact these dogs are so hard breed is nature’s way of telling us that they just simply shouldn’t.
I’m not a bully. I’m not a hater.
I wrote these words because I’ve known the love of a good dog of the bulldog type (a cross of boxer and golden retriever). This was a dog that lived a good quality of life, never over-heated and could run around with the pure goldens just as well.
That’s a REAL bulldog, not a monstrosity created by people with romantic delusions about what it cute or what is tough.
I revel in the Bullenbeisser of yore, not the poor, knackered Dockleaf, exhausted after only a mile of brisk walking. The bullenbeiser which hunted the aurochs, the elch (moose), and boar, and i also revel in our true American bulldogs that barked and growled as Sherman’s troops marched through the plantations, the ones that are now used to protect farms from foxes and coyotes and even herd sheep and cattle.
Those are REAL bulldogs, not fantasy creations of Victorian fools and their disciples living in the modern era.
Here’s the story of a real bulldog: https://retrieverman.net/2010/11/04/my-dog-who-wouldnt-be/
As I said in the post, most bulldog people have their heads shoved squarely up their rectums and have no idea what they are doing to their dogs.
It’s a strawman argument to say that I think we should breed perfect dogs.
There is such a thing as eugenics, but what we’ve done to so many breeds, especially the bulldog ought to be called “malgenics.” We’ve done everything possible to breed defective, fragile dogs that almost always have severe health problems and/or die before they are 5 years old.
If John Doe breeds dogs, and out of an average litter of 8 puppies which he sells as pets, 2 puppies have terrible health problems and need expensive surgery, but the other 6 puppies are okay, is John a good breeder if he keeps breeding this way?
If you ask the 25% who bought the puppies who developed health problems, they would tell you of the heart ache and pain which John caused them.
But if you ask the 75% who bought a reasonably healthy puppy, they’ll tell you what a fine breeder John is. What do you think ?
Also remember that some short-nosed dogs are bought with the corrective surgery already done. Or the purchaser has it done but doesn’t mention the veterinarian bills.
Remember also how often people just can not see the problems in their pets. For example, I thought my first dog was a great dog, I thought her breed must be the best. Other breeds just couldn’t compare.
Now I understand that there are better breeds, and that she wasn’t, from an objective view, anything special, but I still FEEL that way, even when I no longer THINK that way.
Even veterinarians have been know to just assume that suffering and poor health is just how some breeds are.
Nowhere have I EVER read where ANYONE said or wrote anything about killing unhealthy dogs. Just that we should stop making them reproduce MORE unhealthy dogs.
When people say to let THE BREED die out, they don’t mean the dogs. The mean the people who breed and sell unhealthy puppies should quit making more unhealthy puppies. That is all it means.
If a person isn’t good at breeding dogs, they should stop.
There is a blogger who criticizes the dog fancy who has written things to that effect, but it’s not me!
I just noticed something on your blog, did you put snowing effects on it?
WP always turns it on around the first of December and leaves it up through New Year. LOL.
Took me a moment, but I stand corrected. Yeah somebody did post that. Kind of hard to forget it, but it did slip my mind.
MOST people who want healthier breeds of dogs, want the judges to give awards to healthier breed stock, or to have people who breed unhealthy dogs to quit breeding. And when MOST people say they want to give up on trying to save a breed, they mean by retiring unhealthy dogs from shows and breeding.
Maybe the comments we refer to were meant differently than we read them? Maybe it assumed a degree of suffering we are not also assuming? I would dislike to give up on an often excellent writer (we even give the devil his due) by his having a few angry illogical days.
My comment was intending to help Sean and Meeyra, who I assume to be new to anti-qualzucht breeding posts, to understand the basic goal. Retrieverman, I wouldn’t be trying to explain this to you, you already understand.
I’m very familiar w/anti-qualzucht breeding posts, normally I ignore them, & I should have ignored yours, but I didn’t. Why? Because I come from a different side of animals, the rescue side, not the purebred, show ring side, or the lets make & race then dump the perfect grey hound side. Do I agree this breed has serious health issues? Yes I do. Will they stop being bred? No, they won’t because people insist on having the perfect dog, insist on having a purebred instead of a “mutt” from the pound or a rescue agency – they aquire these dogs for whatever reason then discover their issues & dump them. All breeds have issues thanks to man interfering instead of just leaving them alone, this applies to cats as well, look at Persians, etc, people want it, will pay for it & when the health issues come to light the animal will be tossed like yesterdays garbage. What really upset me about your post was your use of the word SHAME. EDUCATE would have been a more logical choice, because really, that’s what people need here, is to be educated on what is being done to ALL of these breeds, not shamed.
Hi Meeyra,
You replied to my comment, but I didn’t use the word “shame”. Also I do not breed animals and I don’t show.
Dogs and cats would probably be happier and healthier without being bred for shows.