I guess the biggest problem that French bulldogs are facing is that they come in too many colors.
They shouldn’t be black and tan, blue dilute, or liver.
I wonder if these colors will “take over the breed” as some anti-brindle saluki cultists believe.
I actually thought one of their worst problems is that their breeders buy into inbreeding pseudoscience, and write unintelligible, poorly thought out screeds in defense of genetic depauperacy. (Good thing the great Christopher Landauer is around to debunk this crap).
The black and tan and dilute blue color very easily can be traced to the creation of the French bulldog in England, when small bulldogs were bred to English toy terriers (“Toy Manchesters”– though they aren’t exactly the same thing). These small prick-eared terriers were often black and tan, but they were also outcrossed to Italian greyhound, which carry the dilute.
Liver’s origin may be a little harder to figure out, but it was often mentioned that small bulldogs were bred to toy spaniels. One strain of small spaniel in England was the toy trawler, which was most often liver in color.
Only blue dilute has any kind of health consequence– color dilution alopecia. For a dog that will live in the house, it’s a pretty trivial issue, and I don’t know if French bulldogs that are blue have any real issues with it. There are significant breed differences. Dobermans have an issue with it, but Italian greyhounds really don’t.
French bulldogs as they exist now do health problems. Like all extreme brachycephalic breeds, they have issues with Brachycephalic Airway Syndrome. That means they can’t breathe or cool themselves properly, and they also may be at risk for certain cancers as the result of their flat faces.
The dogs also have all sorts of spinal and structural problems, including hemivertebrae. It is thought that breeding for a the kinked tail that so many French bulldogs have can occasionally lead to deviated vertebrate that are not part of the tail.
And this is but a mere sample of the problems.
But the big issue is that these dogs come in the “wrong” colors.
This is really quite silly when you think about it.
Once upon a time I might always trust Americans to know what they are talking about on the subject of colour prejudice, but these days they seem so inconsistent on the subject.
If you’re trying to compare racism and fur color domestic animals, I’m sorry, but…I don’t even know where to begin. First comparing hunting wildlife to genocide, now this?
Factory farms are gulags.
I’m wondering why they keep avoiding the subject of farming. Even though it’s still a pretty hideous comparison to make, death camps are much more like battery farms than they are like hunting ranges.
Do they just not want to admit that there are crueler ways to obtain meat than hunting?
They cannot stage a coup, not like brindle, black and modified black, which are dominant colors. But they can stage sneak attacks, being recessive. Sneaky, sneaky recessives, so hard to get rid of.
I don’t see why dog breeders make such a big deal about colors anyway!
maybe all sorts of crueller ways to obtain meat, Miranda, but ‘cruel’ is ‘cruel is ‘cruel’.
I take it you’re a vegan.
I never really understood the issue with what color a dog is….a good dog is never a bad color. Form follows function in my world. Color makes little difference to me. I do understand that many breeds developed certain colors so they could perform their function. White dogs to blend with white sheep in order to protect them….the dogs I have chosen to be my companions need not be any certain color, and I have many with a whole rainbow of colored. All are healthy, a few are ‘purebred’ none care what color their coat is.
Since you’ve used my logo and linked this to my site, I’ll assume this is directed at me, so allow me to clarify.
I think you’ll find that almost all of us who breed French Bulldogs, myself included, are not opposed to ‘fad colors’. I don’t care what color a Frenchie comes in, and I’ve been very vocal about that.
What I actually object to is their marketing as some sort of ‘rare’ commodity that deserves an inflated price tag, and their krazy kolor breeders, who base their entire breeding programs around striving to produce these colors, mainly by use of extensive inbreeding, with no health testing or concern for temperament even being on their list of considerations.
Most of us have lobbied repeatedly that the removal of these colors as a “DQ”, or disqualification, from the breed standard is the best way to reduce their interest to puppy mills in North America and Eastern Europe, and to re introduce them to responsible breeding programs.
Well, if you guys are so great in number why can’t you change it?
And if you can’t change it because of the club structure, why not tell them to go fuck themselves and start your own club?
Why give lip service to the real faddists out there– the dog show cultists? BTW, I’m aware that you hate dog shows. You’ve written this on your own blog. Why listen to what others say? You live in a free society.
They blame every problem on backyard breeders, but any dog breed that has issues with dystocia is going to be difficult to mill. I do know these mills exist for bulldogs, but I seriously doubt they are as much of a problem than it is with easier to breed dogs.
I think the real problem with these bulldogs is that they designed to have have a screwy conformation and this is lauded as “correct” and “beautiful” by people who have no more understanding of anatomy than they do quantum physics.
BTW, your inbreeding article has been totally falsified by actual scientists who study population genetics and engage in conservation breeding.
We can’t change it here in Canada because we aren’t members of the parent club, which is a story in and of itself. Our National breed parent club is busily doing its merry best to ruin lots of other aspects of the French Bulldog, including introducing a new DQ (‘no freckles’, which equals no skin pigmentation) that could cause deafness to skyrocket. I’m sure they’ll think of a way to fuck up colors even further if we give them enough time and enough rope. The last thing any breed needs is more arbitrary gene pool narrowing, let alone ones that have no rational basis for existing, and that includes color DQs.
I don’t know how things work with changing the standard in the USA, where I have been told it’s even more complex than it is here in Canada.
Long story short, most people within the club structure are either happy with the status quo, or simply disinterested in doing anything to change it.
The color pimps, by the way, will be thrilled to see you touting them as champions of genetic diversity. They take all the moral high ground they can get, including claiming that they’re breeding these colors for the good of the breed – in spite of doing no health testing, no temperament testing, taking part in no performance sports and doing repeated inbreedings for the sole purpose of producing more ‘rare’ colored dogs.
Why, they care about health so much that they’ve recently popped up pimping merle Frenchies – because that’s just the giving kind of folks they are. What’s a missing eye (or two), if you can sell the survivors for $10,000 (that’s not an exaggeration – that’s the current going rate for a merle, according to the color folks in Europe).
This is why it’s galling to be included with the ‘OMG those colors are so evvvil and must all die’ club. The colors are fine – it’s the people breeding them who need to be removed from the gene pool.
Over here a newly formed organisation called the Canine Alliance seems to be insisting that uppermost on their agenda is trying to persuade our Kennel Club to join in a fight against backyard breeding/ puppy mills. The thing is that many of us believe this is a smoke screen, that what this organisation really wants above all else is to stop the new vet checks on the exaggerated breeds and to distract attention from trying to get these breeds modified. Most of the public support what the Kennel Club here is doing it seems There are fifteen breeds presently being checked at all major shows and it does nothing for the street cred and ambitions of those who breed the dogs with breathing problems, painful eyes and too much skin etc etc. to have adverse attention focussed upon them as their breed is drummed out of the showring. Basically these breeders are likely to see their breeds diminish in number and popularity. There are early signs of some of their breeders mending their ways encouraged by changes in breed club show standards. Maybe some breeds will never be sufficiently modified and so will be consigned to the dustbin of history. Sadly it was a bad omen that the first statement from the Canine Alliance concentrated on a demand that the Kennel Club stop its vet checks immediately, which the kC refused to do. What do they the Canine Alliance think the public perception is going to be about this negative attitude towards encouraging healthy dog design.