It's like the scene in the Shining, where the elevator doors open..
Sweet mother of Midol, do I ever have some cranky bitches around my house lately. Bitches, by the way, is meant in the purely animal husbandry sense of the word, in that I’m referring to the fact that every intact girl dog in my house is currently in the beginning, middle or end state of heat. Oh, and in case you were wondering (and come on, admit it, you were) yes indeedy, girl dogs sure do get moody (and no, you can’t slip Midol into their food).
Everyone is fighting with everyone, Elliott (who arrived here from Michigan last week, and likely had something to do with kicking off this festival of progesterone induced frenzy) is losing his mind, and my floor looks like the operating room in a M.A.S.H. unit.
To quote the immortal South Park commercial parody, “It’s like that scene from the Shining, where the elevator doors open..”.
God, I hate having intact bitches. Hate, hate, hate. I have some breeding plans for two of the evil little wenches, but I’m not going to talk about it, for fear the cruel and heartless breeding Gods will read it, laugh, and screw me over once again.
In the meantime, pity me, send swiffer wet jet refills, and watch this Youtube video, unless you’re all uptight and humorless, in which case the first part of this post was probably enough to send you screaming off to send an irate “Dear madam, I find your blog quite appalling” email. It’s ok, it’s been at least a week since I’ve had one of those, so I’m due.
Another view on Blues….
All of the controversy over French Bulldog colors (it’s a Frenchie list thing – if it’s not this, it’s ear size or weight) made me contemplate the need to hear from both sides of the argument, both pro and con.
First up is long time French Bulldog breeder and recent Blue French Bulldog convert Trudy Bettinger. She was kind enough to answer some questions for me, and to share some photographs of her blues.
Tell me a bit about your background in French Bulldogs, pre Blues. How long have you been breeding French Bulldogs, and do you show?
I have owned Frenchies since 1990, and have owner/handled numerous Frenchies to their AKC championships, and have BRED more than 50 French Bulldog champions including group placing and Best In Specialty Winners.
When did you get your first blue, and did you breed him/her?
I bought my first blue Frenchies in 2002 and yes, I bred them sparingly.
What do you like about Blues?
Silly question; they are French Bulldogs. What is not to like? Although some colors in this breed appeal to me more than others, I do not hate any color, and simply love the breed no matter what color or size they come in. But, I have always been a fan of the color blue and have actually bred and/or owned blue shar-pei and blue neapolitan mastiffs, so would have no valid reason to dislike the color in French Bulldogs. I am more concerned about breed type and health issues than what color the Frenchie’s hair happens to be.
Some people seem to be worried that blue is linked to health issues – have you experienced that with your Blues?
Blue French Bulldogs are FRENCH BULLDOGS that happen to have blue hair. They come from the same gene pool as brindle, cream, fawn, etc. and because there are so few BLUES in existence, I would love to meet anyone who can produce factual data linking specific health issues affecting the French Bulldog breed to blue coat color.
As stated, Blue French Bulldogs don’t have their own separate and distinct gene pool, so they can be affected by any health issue that occurs in our breed, but I am very conscientious about all of the Frenchies that are in my breeding program (no matter the color), so routinely screen my dogs for known health issues affecting French Bulldogs.
Do you think “blue” and the color “mouse”, as referred to in the standard, are the same thing?
I think that those people that are against the color BLUE want to claim that BLUE and MOUSE are interchangeable. BUT, I have researched numerous AKC recognized breeds and their standards, and whether it be Australian Shepherd, Australian Cattle Dog, Italian Greyhound, Chow Chow, Chinese Shar-pei, Neapolitan Mastiff, etc. the correct description for said coat color(s)is BLUE……no mention of ‘mouse’.
One of the main complaints I’ve heard about Blues is their ‘light’ eye. Do you think this can be bred away from?
I certainly do think it is possible to breed away from the very pale yellowy eyes. In fact, the eyes in Blue Frenchies, whether they be blue fawn or blue brindle (pieds), range from a light yellow/grey to dark brown. If you look at BLUE IG’s, for example, their eye color is dark, and very light eyes in that breed are to be ‘faulted’ but not Disqualified.
There is NO DISQUALIFICATION in the French Bulldog breed standard for EYE COLOR, so what is the beef?????
Our creams, fawns, brindles, and black mask fawns are already plagued with yellow, orange, pale brown eyes, so to blame BLUES for that issue is absurd, and AGAIN, there is no DQ related to eye color.
Do you want to be able to show your Blues?
I would be ecstatic if I could show my blues in AKC conformation events and would be really thrilled to have the first BLUE AKC CHAMPION!! How cool would that be?
Do you think the FBDCA should address the issue of Blues, and if so, what would you like them to do?
The FBDCA should be addressing our ambiguous breed standard in general, not just this particular color issue. Our standard says ALL BRINDLES are ACCEPTED, but blues and blue pieds are BRINDLE, so that should mean noone has anything to bitch about. Our standard says Nose black. Nose other than black is a disqualifying fault, except in the case of the lighter colored dogs, where a lighter colored nose is acceptable but not desirable. WELL, blues are ‘dilute’ so their noses will not be black, but lighter in color just like their hair. The vast majority of creams don’t have BLACK noses; most of them have brown noses, except for those that get their little noses painted by their handlers before they jet into the show ring. And what exactly is a TRACE OF BRINDLE??? Brindle is a PATTERN. How can 3 little light hairs on a black dog constitute a ‘pattern’???
Why do you think Blues are so controversial?
Hahaha…….I bred one of the very first BLUE SHAR-PEI in the USA many, many moons ago and although the color was not addressed in the standard (meaning no DQ or fault), you would have thought the world was coming to an end. Those that didn’t have them, wanted to buy them and then got irate if they couldn’t get one so they trashed them from here to kingdom come.
In reality, there is no valid reason for anyone to go into such a tirade over something so ridiculous as the coat color of a dog in a breed that comes in a variety of colors and markings. BLUE is a ‘naturally occurring’ color in our breed, and a multitude of other AKC recognized breeds. Furthermore, there is no factual data to support any claim that there are mystery diseases associated with the blue coat color in our breed, and French Bulldogs regardless of their hair color should be adored by all. If you don’t like the color blue, then don’t buy one, don’t own one, and if one pops up in your next litter, just sell the baby to someone who does love the color.
Are you jealous that your dogs aren’t plaid?
You might be kidding, but I don’t do plaid…….hahaha.
You can learn more about Trudy’s Blue dogs on her website – www.blue-frenchbulldogs.com. All photos in this post are courtesy of Trudy Bettinger and BlueFrenchBulldogs.Com – Copyright reserved.
A mixed breed argument, from a purebred owner
This comment was left on one of my Thursday Thirteen entries – the one about the many questions that pop into my head when I read Kijiji ‘pets for sale’ ads:
I’m going to have to disagree with you on the puggle thing. First, purebreds end up at shelters (and in breed rescues!) all the time, it’s not just mixed breeds getting dumped.
Also, I totally agree that people while people shouldn’t be breeding crosses (or anything unless they know exactly what they are doing), BUT it’s been my experience that they tend to be healthier than purebreds. I will only adopt mixed breeds from shelters. Watching my parents as I grew up and now neighbors and friends spend a fortune at the vet with their Boston terriers, yorkies, schnauzers with their inherited diseases. My parents got all their dogs from an AKC breeder/judge and not one lived to see ten. Epilepsy, breathing problems, Cushings, bad knees, pancreatitis…etc. I don’t want to go through that. My large mutt is sleeping underneath me, at age 12, healthy and on no medication. While crosses are no guarantee of good health, there is something to be said for hybrid vigor. My breeder friend seethes at me and says I’m totally wrong about this, but when his champion bitch died of a breed related cancer at a young age I could only think about the litters she passed it on to.
I’d take a puggle any day (at a shelter) over a french bulldog. Sorry!
I think that some people assume that anyone who’s an enthusiast of a purebred dog breed is automatically anti mutt. That’s just not so.
Like a lot of breeders, I’ve owned – and loved – my fair share of mixed breed dogs over the years, all of them rescues. I love almost all dogs, no matter what the breed, or the mixture therein.
That said, there’s also a lot of misconception over mixed breeds, in particular the issue of hybrid vigor. There is no truth in the belief that a dog that’s the result of a breeding between two different breeds will be automatically free of any genetic conditions, due to some kind of magic genetic alchemy. If both of those breeds, for example, are brachycephalics (such as ‘Miniature Bullies’, a cross between Bulldogs and either Frenchies or Pugs), the resulting offspring have just as much chance of being afflicted with brachy syndrome defects (elongated soft palate, stenotic nares, tracheal collapse, etc) as pups resulting from a purebred litter of any the combined breeds.
The minimal benefits of hybrid vigor that do exist are first generational only – this means that a puggle resulting from two puggle parents has absolutely zero residual beneficial vigor.
There is no magic bullet for creating a healthy dog – there is only the tried and tested method of test, eliminate and alter.
First, we test the breeding prospect sire and dam for any testable genetic condition, such as hip dysplasia, eye anomalies, heart conditions and VWD. Then, we eliminate the dogs with obvious problems – dogs with elongated soft palates, or thyroid conditions, or structural defects such as hare feet. Finally, we repeat this in the second generation, and alter affected pups, removing them from the gene pool. All of this should count for just as much a ‘prettiness’ in the dogs we breed from.
Therein lies the rub with ‘designer’ mixed breeds – how many of the people who create them are doing even the most basic of genetic screening? I’m going to assume none.
I’m also going to assume that the dogs being used for these first generation mixes are, in general, not from the best lines in the world, because anyone who’s invested thousands of dollars and untold hours into establishing a line of tested dogs isn’t going to wake up one day and decide to let them be used to create a ‘new’ breed.
There’s truth to the statement that ‘all dog breeds came from someone mixing other breeds together’, but people conveniently forget what things were like back then, when today’s breeds were being established. Culling, for example, was rigorously used in the creation of many breeds, including Frenchies. For those who aren’t familiar with culling, let me give you the definition –
cull (kŭl)
tr.v. culled, cull·ing, culls1. To pick out from others; select.
2. To gather; collect.
3. To remove rejected members or parts from (a herd, for example).n. Something picked out from others, especially something rejected because of inferior quality.
Bluntly put, culling in dogs in the earlier part of the century usually referred to ‘bucketing’ – the habit of drowning ‘inferior’ pups at birth in a bucket of water.
From the 1901 edition of Dogdom Monthly comes this excerpt from an interview with an early breeder of ‘French Bull dogs’ –
When a pup with the wrong ears would come up in the litter we would just cull it out so as to not contaminate the rest. There being no space for the inferior. The same for those with a size obviously not of ‘what’s done’ so to speak. In this way did we set the type that you see today.
I think it’s clear that there is no place in modern breeding for culling, but the simple fact is that we can’t claim that creating mixed breeds today is the same as it was when most current breeds were established.
It’s also true that today’s modern dog owner expects more from their pets than the often referenced ‘good old mutt that never went to the vet’ that’s so often mythically referenced by mixed breed proponents. That ‘healthy mutt’ quite possibly was crippled with hip dysplasia and lived out its life in utter agony – agony that went unnoticed because the dog spent most of its life tied to a dog house in the corner of its yard.
We live in much closer proximity to our dogs today – we’ve integrated them, for better or worse, into the fabric of our families, and pay as close attention to their health as we do to our own. We want dogs that don’t limp, don’t scratch, don’t get sick unduly or die too young. We want all of this, plus a dog that ‘looks’ the way we want our breeds to look. I’m going to reiterate, once again, that there’s only one way to get this – test, eliminate and alter. The process is no different for a Puggle than it is for a French Bulldog.
As for the argument that just as many purebreds end up in shelters as mixed breeds, that’s specious logic. Dogs don’t end up in shelters because of their breed – they end up in shelters because of owners who don’t train or who can’t be bothered to care for dogs with medical issues, or because they have no breeders willing to take them back and re home them themselves.
I believe, based on my own experience, that the dogs who end up in shelters, or any breed, are in an overwhelming preponderance dogs who came from impulse purchases. Pet store pups, cheap newspaper buys and give away dogs – dogs that people put little worth on.
Does this mean breeder dogs are immune? Of course not. But a breeder who remains in contact with their owners – who remains available to them, and supportive, is a breeder who makes it clear that they will welcome back any dog who needs to be re homed.
This could be as true of a breeder of designer breeds as it is of someone who breeds purebred Frenchies, but it’s also a simple fact that few back yard breeders or breeders of designer pups are in it for the long haul. They lose interest, or change ‘mixes’, or just disappear. They’re not there for the owners who can’t keep their pups, and they have no contract insisting that pups come back to them for re homing.
I support the right of people to develop ‘new breeds’ – personally, I’d love to see true Toy Bulldogs (an AKC breed until the ’20s) make a come back. I don’t think it’s unreasonable, however, to expect just as much in terms of ethics from a designer breeder as I do from someone breeding Frenchies. Commitment to your breed, or your mixed breed, is always the hallmark of someone who’s in it for all the right reasons, as opposed to all the wrong ones.
Your puggle deserves just as much care and forethought put into his breeding as my Frenchie does – for your sake, and for his.