Thread: Improving the health of the bulldog

Nobody here in this discussion will argue with that. Breeding to a confirmation standard alone is a quick way to ruin, it is well documented in many breeds. Nobody here was discussing that. The original poster asked how the people with great success in breeding performance animals have done it, and who was brave enough to do it down under. Traditionally you find people who breed for what it does, not what they looks like, have a great variation of physical type in their kennels as performance is the priority. My own dogs would get laughed out of the conformation show ring, and long may that last. It is what they do that concerns me, and with out that purpose they would cease to exist.

I have posted more extensive thoughts elsewhere but having now read this new thread I want to add a couple of things. I have never taken any notice of COI's I look at the paper and that tells me commonality and how close it will be and then I have to decide if I am going to go that close. If I am going too close though, the danger in the COI, is that it might reassure me I am not and so I go against my gut and do it. So long as I am prepared to deal with the results. I will continue, however to breed based on what my eye tells me about the dogs I am using and my experience with them. I would never personally select a dog purely on pedigree. As an aside, my last (first) litter was bred back to "Brick" and there was a lot of commonality. The next will be virtually a total out-cross. Why? I want to see the difference for myself and again, I have to be prepared to deal with the results.

But here is why I believe this discussion is going nowhere. Tussock is quite rightly outlining the pitfalls of line breeding purely for aesthetics with no thought to performance. That the Bulldog has become so grotesquely deformed is actually proof that line breeding works. What we have got is what the breeders wanted. The fault is not the method they used to achieve that, but should be viewed as an abuse of a legitimate method for selfish purposes... winning a ribbon and to hell with the dog.

The show people achieved exactly what they wanted... a dog that could win in a show ring, but it can no longer perform. The person using the same techniques but breeding to functionality based on performance will also get a result of exaggerating the performances features, if care is taken. Line breeding works but must be fully understood and the reasons for it must always be to produce a better dog, NOT to produce a deformed specimen to win a ribbon on a lawn somewhere.

Had the focus of the Bulldog breeder been function it is likely we would today have a dog extremely similar to the original with much greater ability to perform and handle. Line breeding, done correctly would have been the best way to achieve that. Line breeding hasn't been the issue... focus and selfishness of breeders has been the issue. The same method could have been the savior of the "original type" as much as it has been the demise... again, it's not the method, but the application.


Pedigree dogs exposed creates a lot of controversy where it is viewed and discussed, and it takes a similar line to what Tussock has. This is flawed and correct at the same time. Line breeding IS NOT THE ISSUE. It is the reasons and goals of those using line breeding that is the issue. When done with no other goal than a better performing dog there should be few issues, but if it's just to try and get a litter of dogs that all have one white left ear and one black right ear then ultimately we can end up with dogs with three of each.

exactly when a heatlhy useful animal is the target and its a success its line breeding when it goes wrong for whatever reason its inbreeding.
somebody should have been prosecuted over the english bulldogs cruel fate.

Here you go, Tussock...

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