Canis lupus hominis

This British Dogue's name was Sans Peur ("Without Fear").

The Dogue de Bordeaux only became somewhat popular in the English speaking world after one starred in the film Turner and Hooch.

The dog above was imported to Britain by H.C. Brooke in the late 1890’s. As you can see, he looks very much like a modern Dogue de Bordeaux, just with cropped ears.

However, if he were to make an appearance today, I’m sure that people would be asking “Is that a rednose pit bull?” And after hearing the answer, they’d tell their friends “I just seen the biggest rednose pit ever!”

W.D. Drury wrote about the Dogue in his British Dogs, Their Points, Selection, And Show Preparation (1903):

Of comparatively recent introduction from abroad, the Dogue de Bordeaux, or Dogue of the South of France, as it is more familiarly called, is one of the few varieties that have not taken a hold in this country. Any popularity that it might have attained was endangered at the outset by the edict that went forth against cropping. Indeed, those who championed its cause here suggest that it was the abolition of cropping that was mainly responsible for its fate here (pg. 401).

When dogs are cropped, breeders do not select for a particular ear carriage. In Europe, dobermanns have nice floppy ears that have a particular set and carriage. In America, where the dogs must be cropped to be shown, the AKC standard does not  even describe what an uncropped ear should look like. Ear-cropping was banned in the UK in the 1890s, and this caused certain amount of trouble for many terrier breeds that were traditionally cropped. Creating a definite ear carriage was very difficult to do, when the dogs always had them cut off. There were no selection pressures for correct or uniform ear type, and this might explain why nonstandard Jack Russells have so many different ear carriages. Nonstandard JRT’s came from ancestors that were cropped, and no one really tried to select for an ear carriage or type after the ban was enacted.

The Dogue is similar to the bullmastiff breed, which may have been one reason why they shunned in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Why go for the French version, when one has a very similar dog  in the home country?

However, in the 1890’s, this breed could have become quite popular in Britain. As soon as cropping was banned, all interest in the Dogue dried up. This fact tells us that the breed was never meant to be a working dog of any sort in the UK. It was meant to be a show dog.

Dogues became modestly popular in the US after Turner and Hooch came out. I remember seeing dozens of ads for them in different dog publications.

However, it wasn’t until 2008 that this breed was recognized by the AKC.

By then, the breed had already developed a uniform ear carriage and type. As cropping loses its importance and legality throughout the world, many breeds are going to have a hard time adjusting.

It is amazing how much cropping prevents people from selecting for a particular ear.  It only becomes evident when those traditionally cropped breeds have their ears left intact.