Parade of Freaks: Bulldogs

This... is supposed to be a dog, the bulldog, or English bulldog if you're picky. I can think of a myriad of words other than 'dog' that begin with 'D' to describe this 'breed'.

Diseased. Disgrace. Disaster. Destroyed. Dysfunctional. Doomed...

This is world champion (English) bulldog stud 'Cheerio'...



What. The. Fuck. This is what happens when humans think they have to use eugenics to create the most extreme of extremes. It doesn't even look like a dog anymore. It's a fat marshmallow pig with stumpy deformed legs, an insane amount of skin, a misshapen spine with a deformed tail, and a skull so fucked up there aren't words. It looks like his face is going backwards, instead of growing out like a normal dog it's so brachycephalic (smashed in) and covered with wrinkles you can hardly tell it is a dog. Of course he also has breathing issues from having a face so short. Look at the wrinkles around his muzzle (or where is muzzle should be), all of them sitting on top or around his nasal cavity make it hard for him to draw breath through his nose. As well, having such a short brachycephalic 'push' face, as they are called by breeders, means that his upper jaw is so short that the muscle and tissue in his throat has nowhere to grow normally. That is why bulldogs, like other push-faced breeds constantly gurgle, hack, cough, gasp, and snore, especially when lying down or sleeping.

This is what has become of the bulldog, it's a freak by all accounts in the dog world. I'm going to break it down so you can see how truly messed up this breed has become.

These are full-body conformation shots (most of them) from different angles of show bulldogs, many of them champions. They are severely downhill with front legs vastly shorter than their back ones. Their front shoulders sit far below their croup (top of hips) putting their spine in an unnatural arc. They have much too big and barrel-like chests with very little neck covered in excess skin that has nowhere to go due to the neck shortness and downhill build. The spine, aside from being curved unnaturally with the downhill build has to support a skull much too big, thus the reasoning for such a short neck, and ends in a deformity with the completely unnatural kinked 'corkscrew' tail. The legs are thick and buck-kneed with short very pasterns in the front and long hocks in the back. The toes turn out in the front much of the time as the upper leg bones grow awkwardly to support the bulkiness. The skull is round, almost ball-shaped with shallow eye-sockets (creating bulging eyes) that hide bulging eyes with massive wrinkles. The maxilla (upper jaw) is almost nonexistent being so brachycephalic ('push'-faced) that it's barely there. The mandible (lower jaw) is three times longer than the upper jaw, making it jut out under the over wrinkled/'meaty' lips. Overall they are flat, low-slung, and wide... like coffee-tables with the most screwed up head/skull in the canine world. They are so messed up they can not breed on their own, or give birth, and they are so heavy/cobby they cannot swim. There is no way a bulldog today could cut, grab, and hold a steer, or pig for castrating or slaughter. No way in hell. The dog would pass out before it made it from one side of the pen to the other.

This is a description from a breeder:

"The large, square, heavy head has the face deeply wrinkled, the lower jaw three sizes too long for its mate, the nose thumbed back into the face, the eyes very wide-set and low on the face and the ear wrinkled back to form a "rose." A ruler laid along the top of the head should touch forehead, eyebrow, nose and lower jaw; the neck is thick and short, the shoulders very wide and low, the front pasterns short with toes that slightly turn out, the back curving up to the hips, which are a higher than the shoulders. Hind legs strong, arched, with the stifle and toes turned out a little and the hock correspondingly turned in."

These are frontal views of dogs that are described by their breeders as having 'near-perfect conformation'.

The breed standard calls for being able to see both of the hind legs when at chest level and looking between the front legs. This means very narrow pelvises. Look at how wide these dogs are from the front. Ignore their fucked up heads. I'm getting to that. But look at the shoulders and chests. They have no necks, or very little to speak of, and the further you look down the more messed up they are. Each is a bit wider in the shoulders than the other, especially that last one. His shoulders basically jut out from his body. Moving down you can see how over at the knee they are, with short pasterns, and how the front feet turn outward.

And the rear view...



You can see how narrow in the hips/pelvis they are with hocks turned in (cowhocked) and twice as long as their pasterns and the deformed 'corkscrew' tails.

And the top view... The breed standard says from the top the dog should be 'pear shaped'... They succeeded.

This is the reason that almost all pups are born by C-section. Huge heads/shoulders and teeny little pelvises.

The head... Oh my the fucked up bulldog head:

I don't even know where to begin. The fact that the dog's upper jaw is pretty much nonexistent while, depending on breeder, the lower jaw which is three times too long juts out, sometimes covered by huge meaty lips, or makes the dog reminiscent of Jay Leno. The shallow eye sockets with bulging eyes hidden by too much skin, and the saggy lower eyelids showing the pink 'haw' or inner eyelid. The teeth don't line up in any sense of normality and eating/chewing can be very difficult. The jaws are so fucked up the dog can not pick up a frisbee. It's snout so short and covered in wrinkles it cannot breathe right.

When it comes to breeding this is how they must be bred...

Bulldogs absolutely can not breed on their own without assistance due to how structurally fucked up they are. Look at how exhausted these dogs are? Their tongues are purple from not being able to breathe properly and exertion. Some breeders use the 'over the leg' method to hold the female and another person assists the male. Others strap the female into a 'rape rack' affectionately called the 'breeder cradle' by its users. The female cannot fight or get out of it. She is stuck there, almost held off the ground with her paws barely touching, and made to endure. She can't escape the male or get away. Other breeders use artificial insemination to avoid all this hassle. Furthermore, almost all female bulldogs undergo labor by Cesarian section in which the puppies are cut out of her stomach because her pelvis/hips are too narrow to naturally give birth to puppies with such exaggeratedly wide heads/shoulders. Can you imagine being forced into stocks to be bred without consent and cut open twice a year just to reproduce!?

This is a dog, if you can call it that, that cannot do anything. It has absolutely no function anymore.

But it wasn't always so. 120 years ago the bulldog looked nothing like this. It was a fit, trim, leggier, muscular dog with a much longer muzzle. Over time, with the idiocy of breeding and the craze of dog showing and the addition of the show ring 'breed standard' the bulldog was changed from a well-known working dog by Pug crossbreeding and inbreeding into a disease ridden mess that is completely useless, all in the endless quest for show ribbons.

This is how the bulldog's skull changed from 1900 to 1935 to 1995.

How this was transformed into this...
 

... is absurd. All function of the bulldog has been taken away in favor of desired show-ring extremes.

This is what the bulldog used to look like, back in the 1800's to early 1900's.

...and then it happened. Someone decided to breed in the Pug to get a more compact dog with a shorter face. All during the newly created dog show craze and in the quest for ribbons. This is where it all went wrong. The dog went from a long-lived functional agile working farm/butcher's dog capable of catching/holding anything from pigs to steers all day long to a short-lived obese fucked up couch puff that is so riddled with diseases/deformities that it can barely make it across the driveway before it nearly passes out from exhaustion/overexertion. A dog incapable of reproducing on its own without human intervention. All of this for the extremes desired for the show ring.

Bulldogs are plagued with a ton of different health problems: Brachycephalic Upper-Airway Syndrome, Acne, Folliculitis, Dermatitis, Pyoderma, Cateracts, Entropion, Ectropion, Cherry Eye, Cleft Lip, Cleft Palate, Elongated Soft Palate, Trachea Hypoplasia, Mitral Valve Defect, Ateriovenous Fistula, Pulmonic Stenosis, von Vollibrande's Disease, Dystocia (Birthing Difficulties), Reproductive Hyperplasia, Hydrocephalus, Oligodendroglioma, Perianal Tumors, Hypothyroidism, Pyloric Stenosis, Distichiasis, Conjunctivitis, Corneal Ulceration, Allergies, Hot Spots, Chronic Watering Eyes/Tear Staining, Enlarged Heart, Murmurs, Hip Displasia, Luxating Patellas, Hemivertibrae, Elbow Displasia, Arthritis, Inverted/Tight Tail, Prolapsed Urethra, Pyometra, Stenotic Nares, Cancer, Gastric Diliation/Volvulous (Bloat), Heat Stroke, Demodectic Mange, Aspiration Pneumonia, etc. The list goes on and on...

With all of the health problems you would think that somewhere it would click in the human mind that the dogs being bred like this are unhealthy, and that by a structural standpoint they are good for nothing, except racking up vet bills and causing heartache by dying so young. Apparently it never has. The reason people will not take a stand and try to breed a healthier, longer lived bulldog is because not only will it "no longer look like a bulldog" (which is a crock of bullshit because bulldogs never used to look like this) but that it won't have the extremes that win in the show ring and make to produce the money-making puppies. Half as many puppies would be sold if they didn't have those huge round ball-heads, wide low-slung fat bodies, flat faces, and a shit-ton of wrinkles. Humans are attracted to those looks. Which are disgusting. Huge bulgy eyes, flat faces, excessive wrinkles, compact fat bodies. Not just on dogs either. Persian cats, and other breeds have the same issues.

A few people took the original bulldog, which looked much more like today's American Bulldog (commonly mistaken for a pit bull), and kept breeding. They got things like the American Pit Bull Terrier, the American Staffordshire Terrier, the Staffordshire Bull Terrier, and a few more modern English bulldog-looking type breeds such as the Olde English Bulldogge, the Alapaha Blue-Blood Bulldog, Antebellum Bulldog, Campeiro Buldogue, Dorset Old Tyme Bulldog, and Ca de Bou. Many people, bulldog afficianados, insist these are not true bulldogs. This is entirely untrue. The original bulldog looked and was more genetically like to the American Bulldog than any other breed we have today. It was the crossing of that original bulldog to the Pug and vast amounts of inbreeding that created the English bulldog abomination we have today.

This guy is a gorgeous example of old-style bulldog, keeping the original type, size, and head shape. He is an Alapaha Blue-Blood Bulldog, and he is spectacular. Perfect head, muzzle, chest, legs. This dog looks like he could go all day long and not tire. He doesn't have the nasty runny eyes and overly wrinkled face yet his face still shouts 'Bulldog!'. What a stunning boy.

Bulldogs really are the most extreme freaks of the dog world. Even as puppies I cannot agree with the "all puppies are cute!" mantra. All I see in a bulldog puppy is a lifetime of health problems, vet visits, and a life of living in a permanent state of an asthma attack. There is nothing cute or adorable about that. Unfortunately it's unlikely to change until the show ring standards change. Which is very sad. There is nothing cute about disease, deformity, and early death. No animal deserves to suffer their whole lives like bulldogs do, from birth until death. The breeders need to wake the fuck up and realize that they literally are breeding this breed to death. Without humans the bulldog would be gone, extinct within a decade. That's got to say something. Money and ribbons talk. To the breeders of these abominations, that is all that matters, not the life, or health, or structural integrity of these dogs. Breeders that continue to breed these dogs, being as fucked up as they are, should be shot. The bulldog breed standard and breeding needs to be changed, or within a short time it will be so disease ridden, so inbred, so conformationally ruined, and so fucked up (as if it already isn't!?) there will be no way to save it. Continuing like this, the bulldog truly is a doomed breed.