I’m not saying these dogs are not exaggerated, but they are different from the bulldogs you normally see today. These come from a book called Kennel Secrets: How to Breed, Manage, and Exhibit Dogs (1904).
The dogs are wide in the chest. The heads are large, but they appear to be longer in the leg than the modern bulldog.
It is unlikely that a dog with the modern bulldog’s conformation could ever be bred in significant numbers in those days. Anesthetics simply weren’t as good as they are now, and Caesarians were much more risky. Now, the C-section is axiomatic in bulldog breeding, and breeders can now push the limits.
Top quality bulldogs look like this:
In short, breeding bulldogs has resulted in an animal that so horribly distorted that I don’t think a rational person can say they are okay.
Of course, all of this evidence doesn’t stop the flat-earth society from putting up misleading videos:
Now that bulldogs are kept solely as pets, I thought their function was to live to be more than 7 years of age. In this function, they fail miserably. The average lifespan is now only 6.29 years.
But all of this is ignored by the flat-earth society. It is as if all the facts don’t matter all, and they don’t care at all.
Of course, I’d be wrong to paint all bulldog breeders with such a broad brush, and blaming breed standards only goes so far.
But anyone who will tell you with a straight face that the bulldog is doing fine must be on something, deluded, or a liar.
I don’t know which of these possibilities is scarier.
It may be time for the Kennel Clubs to be a bit like dictators. Anyone can see these dogs are a total mess– except for the flat earthers.
Which is why I am glad I’m not into bulldogs.
The bulldog does need to be saved– but not from the “Kennel Club Dictatorship.”
It needs to be saved from the brainwashed tossers who would rather hold onto deformity than actually pay attention to what real functional conformation is.
The pet dog function is flexible enough to have bulldogs that look like those early twentieth century dogs.
But we are not doing anything good for the dogs if we keep holding onto deformity as an improvement.
And that’s the simple reality of the situation.
what’s shocking is how quickly the bulldog changed from a straightlegged, moderate headed working dog with little/no underbite (which you can see in paintings/photos from the late 19th century) into the monstrosity of today. Even by the date of your book, the exaggerated features were being developed. And before, of course, the “modern” kennel clubs we all must hate so much.
In many of the old English Bulldog pictures, you can also see their heads were not as large in proportion to the body as they are now, and they had a longer neck. I noticed that change from early French Bulldogs as well. Some also had more nose. It seemed that a wider range of features were considered ‘correct’ and could win in respectable shows back then, compared to today.
Hi, nice article here is the dog and the people trying to recover this breed in England:
http://coldwetnose.blogspot.com/2009/01/bulldogs-chewing-on-that-wasp.html
That’s really interesting.
I have seen that photo of a long-tailed bulldog before.
It’s remarkable how much they have changed.
Very interesting read, we have been involved with the Victorian Bulldog for ovr 10 years where a man called Ken Mollett took a stance against the KC and in an attempt to recreate the bulldogs of old.We have a registry for the dogs called the VBA which can be viewed at vballiance.co.uk we also have our own website at http://www.regalbulldogs.co.uk and a forum to help educate people on what the bulldog really should be.http://vbf.boardhost.com/index.php…Great topic and fantastic website keep up th good work :)
john