The above image is of a bulldog in Northeastern Ohio who is suffering from the recent series of heat waves.
It is supposed to be a funny image. It’s cute, isn’t it?
Well, I don’t think it’s so much cute as it is a tragedy.
I live in a state adjacent to Ohio, where it also gets hot and muggy during the summer.
I have always had dogs that didn’t much like the heat at all. The golden retrievers, for example, always suffered a bit whenever the mercury rises above 75 degrees. If they were outside, they always solved this problem by diving in deep mud puddles or ponds.
Even though the golden boxer hated to swim, she would submerge herself in mud puddles to keep cool.
However, I do remember trying to get the dogs to lie down on some ice in the same way as this bulldog.
They refused.
It may have kept them cool, but they weren’t about to sit on ice like some Atlantic salmon at a fish market.
Even in the most extreme heat, I don’t think most normal dogs like the texture of ice cubes, and they would avoid sitting on it at all costs.
This poor bulldog, however, has a very hard time keeping itself cool. Bulldogs– and all brachycephalic breeds– have issues dissipating heat. Dogs pant to cool themselves. Panting passes air over the mucous membranes in the back of the mouth, throat, and trachea, which causes the moisture on those membranes to evaporate. This evaporation cools the animal. Bulldogs and other dogs of this type have a harder time passing air over these membranes when panting. They have a lot of issues with their soft palates, and most bulldogs never have fully open airways at all.
So even though a bulldog is a single-coated dog, it suffers much more in the heat than a double-coated golden retriever, which has a relatively long muzzle and open airways.
That’s why this bulldog has plowed headlong into this pile of ice.
To some it may be cute.
But for those of us who understand dog anatomy a bit, it is something quite sad.
We have bred bulldogs to have such extremely flatten faces that they really can’t function in the heat. Now, it is true that dogs are less tolerant of heat than humans are, and it is silly and quite dangerous to expect even a normal dog to be happy in 95 degree heat. However, through very silly breeding practices, we have further hampered the bulldog’s ability to cool itself.
And I don’t find it all that funny.
It is VERY hot here and as long as the humidity is low the dogs have no problems cooling themselves. Raise the humidity and the tongues get longer and wider and they drink more water. Zora especially has problems with humidity due to her illness and has be sprayed down with cool water. I can’t imagine having a short nosed breed here with no air-conditioning.
I saw this on another blog and worried that most pet people would not correlate a brachycephalic dog with breathing problems under stressed conditions, such as excessive heat. Everyone would see a dog on a mound of ice trying to cool itself off on a hot day. That would be a “neat ” or a “cool’ picture and leave it at that.
I agree. It’s just not funny.
Some carefully bred bulldogs are OK but they never win prizes at shows. This is just sad.
ACTUALLY that dog is not in Ohio it’s in south Texas as I was at the house the day we took the pic and he did it again for the news he lives indoors in a house that would make u all jealous and dosent travel by car but rather by private plane and he does this to be funny so next time u decide to be a dick do ur research
Actually, you are full of shit.
Source (Dogster)
You better not try this trick again.
BTW, everything I wrote about bulldogs in that post is accurate. Breeding bulldogs as they are is institutionalized animal cruelty, and I don’t care if the University of Georgia still celebrates it. Breeding bulldogs in their current form is just as much cruelty as using them for fighting or bullbaiting.
It’s amazing how many airlines will simply refuse to let these dogs fly when they offer that service to most other breeds. This is not an ideology driven decision, they simply looked at how many brachycephalic dogs were dying on their airplanes and saw that it wasn’t worth the hassle. When you can’t get an airline, who we all know are dying to charge you $$ for your business to even consider flying a bulldog like this, you know your breed is in trouble.
We don’t see many of these dogs here in Colorado. I think it’s a matter of impracticability. There’s just too little oxygen in the air for a compromised breed.
“impracticability” … um no. I mean not practical. I’m sure there’s some better word, but it’s most certainly not … that word. LoL