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Thursday Thirteen – 13 of my favorite French Bulldog photos

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I just finished scanning and re touching some old print photographs. I had forgotten how hard it can be to get details out of print images, even ones done at decent photo developing places. Working with digital images for so long has made me complacent about being able to turn little images into big ones, without losing details. Not so, with prints.

Uploading all of these old images sent me on one of those memory lane trips that only old photos seem to be able to inspire. It gave me an idea for this edition of Thursday Thirteen – 13 of my favorite old French Bulldog photographs, in no particular order. You can click on them to see them full sized.

Gina Price's victims have their say in court

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I’ve written before about the responsibility puppy buyers have to do their homework before shelling cash for a puppy they’re not even sure exists. In spite of this, it’s impossible not to feel for the people who’ve been victimized by puppy brokers like Gina Price.

Over the last week, some of Price’s victims had a chance to tell the court about their experiences with the puppies they bought from Rebel Ridge.

Jere Judd wanted an American-born English bulldog puppy he could register and one day breed.

He said he got an imported pooch so diseased it had to be euthanized two months later.

Tony Diliberto wanted a “Tennessee born and bred,” healthy bulldog for a pet.

He said he got an ailing import and $800 in veterinarian bills.

Michelle Cates said she wanted a snow-white bulldog that would be a mirror image of the mascot of her favorite college football team, the University of Georgia Bulldogs.

She said she got a spotted import beset with health problems and a slew of excuses for missing paperwork.

In the best tradition of scumbag puppy sellers everywhere, Price had the standard ‘send me the dog, and I’ll kill it and give you your money back’ guarantee. I call that the ‘dead dog clause’. It’s a get out of jail free card for sellers, because what loving owner is going to ship a sick puppy across the country to a certain death?

Diliberto said Price also assured him that his $1,200 payment was buying a purebred sired at her kennel. Within days, he learned the dog was an import with serious medical maladies, he testified. Diliberto said he contacted Price.

“She said, ‘If you want, you can ship me the dead dog, and I’ll send you another one,’ ” Diliberto said. “I said, ‘That’s sick. The dog’s not dead.’ She then said, ‘Send me the live dog, and I’ll put it down (euthanize it) and send you another.’ I realized then I wasn’t dealing with a rational, sane human being.”

Price’s attorney, clearly grasping at straws, presents this ‘guarantee’ as normal and reasonable. The grieving owner not only disagrees, but points out a simple fact – you can’t ship a dog without a health clearance, and you can’t ship a dead dog at all.

..defense attorney Richard Spivey noted that Price listed on her Web site a “health guarantee” that promises a replacement dog if the buyer ships to her the carcass of a bulldog that dies from poor health.

“Did you do that?” Spivey asked.

“Are you kidding?” an angry Diliberto replied. “You can’t ship a dead dog, by the way.”

Read the rest here on KnoxNews.Com

Other puppy buyers complained about odd delivery methods, and Price’s even odder instructions to them.

Norred told jurors Thursday that he grew suspicious of the deal when the dog arrived at the agreed-upon delivery site in the lap of a man, sans a cage or collar or anything else.

“I’m not an idiot, but something wasn’t right,” Norred said. “They handed me the dog like this (turning up the palms of his hands and reaching out his arms).”

When Norred asked how he was supposed to transport the dog, the woman delivering the dog “said use a seat belt.”

“I tried. I did,” Norred said as jurors and courtroom spectators began laughing. “The dog was looking at me like, ‘OK, you are an idiot.’ I drove home, holding the dog, praying.”

What wasn’t quite as funny was the scene that greeted Norred after his pup ate its first meal.

As soon as he arrived home, he dished out food for the scrawny pooch and left it to dine alone. When he returned, he found an empty food bowl and a dangerously bloated canine.

“I’ve had the dog an hour and I’ve killed him,” Norred recalled of his reaction.

Other victims tell even more heart breaking stories.

“How did it come to you?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nancy Harr asked.

“Smelly,” Snyder replied. “It wasn’t the dog on the (Web site).”

“How was it different?” Harr asked.

“It was a different color,” Snyder answered. “This dog had one eye. The puppy we ordered had two eyes.”

The dog died from medical maladies months later.

You can read the rest here.

The trial is ongoing.

More news on Gina Price and Rebel Ridge

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Some good on going news coverage of the Gina Price (Rebel Ridge Bulldogs and French Bulldogs) trial.

This story is from back in early June – it’s good to see that the judge is treating this case seriously. We’ve all gotten used to the courts treating anything to do with animals as a sort of ‘waste of court time’. Looks like U.S. District Magistrate Judge Dennis Inman doesn’t share that attitude.

From KnoxNews.Com –

An accused peddler of diseased pooches got a warning from a federal magistrate judge Tuesday: Stop yanking his chain.

“You’re jerking me around, Ms. Price,” U.S. District Magistrate Judge Dennis Inman told Gina De’Lynn Price.

Price is under federal indictment on charges she bought diseased dogs from Russia and the Baltic states and passed them off as purebred bulldogs sired at her Rebel Ridge Kennels facility in Sullivan County, selling the dogs to unsuspecting customers throughout the United States and Canada.

Court records allege that many of the dogs, which sold for as much as $3,000 each, died from those undisclosed maladies.

Read the rest here.

Looks like Gina Price’s now ex husband got fed up with both Gina, and the dogs. He gives some background on how Gina went from selling home bred Bulldogs and French Bulldogs, to brokering cheap, sickly imports.

From KnoxNews.Com –

Adam Price was summoned to the witness stand by Assistant U.S. Attorney Nancy Harr in Harr’s bid to prove allegations that Gina Price went from selling purebred bulldogs sired at her Rebel Ridge Kennels to peddling diseased pooches imported from Russia and the Baltic states.

Harr contends Price gave into greed, realizing she could buy imported canines for a few hundred bucks and then resell them via the Internet to unsuspecting customers nationwide and in Canada for thousands of dollars.

Adam Price even alludes to being distressed at the condition the puppies were in when they arrived at the airport –

“He started out trying to help his wife in the puppy-selling business but grew tired of it rather quickly, he said.

I refused to do a Web site because all my time would be spent updating it,” he said.

He picked up imported puppies from an Atlanta airport but quit after a few runs.

“Most of the time they were pretty messy,” he said of the puppies.

Read the rest here.

A testament to the seriousness with which this trial is being handled comes in the form of the pages of FBI testimony. Gina Price’s emails and other correspondence were monitored for months, leaving a paper trail of sick puppies and fraudulent transactions.

From KnoxNews.Com –

Gina De’Lynn Price sold English and French bulldog puppies over the Internet to at least 234 people, according to an FBI agent who testified Monday afternoon on the opening day of her trial.

Price is accused of importing sick bulldog puppies from Eastern Europe and selling them as healthy ones that she raised through her Blountville-based business, Rebel Ridge Kennels, and its Web site, http://www.rebelridgekennels.com.

Special Agent David Campbell’s testimony outlined how Gina Price was well aware that many of the Bulldog and French Bulldog puppies she was importing for re sale were unhealthy, and many were arriving sick with Parvo.

He said Price routinely purchased her animals from three suppliers and complained to the sellers that many of the dogs suffered from parvo – an incurable and often fatal disease that attacks a dog’s intestinal lining – when they arrived in the U.S.

Campbell said Price paid about $500 for each dog, which according to her indictment she then sold for between $1,200 and $2,800. The indictment also claims the dogs suffered from other serious conditions like hip dysplasia and heart murmurs.

Price was also clearly and intentionally leading buyers to believe that they were buying ‘home bred’ Bulldog and French Bulldogs, bred by her at Rebel Ridge, rather than cheaply imported pups. She was also aware that many of the pups weren’t even purebred.

Price is standing trial this week on charges she tricked hundreds of people into believing they were buying purebred English and French bulldog puppies sired at her Rebel Ridge Kennels facility in Sullivan County when instead she was buying diseased dogs imported from puppy mills in Russia and the Baltic states.

…

…a slew of e-mail authored by Price that suggested she was well aware the puppies she was buying from overseas at a discount were diseased and, sometimes, not even purebred.

“Do you think I cannot tell they’re not full-blooded?” Price complained in one e-mail to a Russian puppy mill operator.

Read the rest here.

In the final story I have to recount, Gina Price adds the ultimate insult to the injury she has done to both the puppies, and the people who purchased them from her, when she compares herself to a humanitarian for ‘rescuing’ the pups from Eastern Europe.

Again, from KnoxNews.Com –

The way this upper East Tennessee woman saw it, she wasn’t profiteering from the diseased pooches imported from Russia and the Baltic states.

She was giving the canines a shot at a better life, Gina De’Lynn Price wrote in an e-mail introduced as evidence against her in U.S. District Court on Monday.

“We take these puppies for the almighty dollar, knowing very well ahead of time that they will more than likely come in with some kind of problem that will need medical attention,” Price wrote. “Look at how many illegal (immigrants) come here half dead.”

Really, Gina? Did you bother mentioning that fact – the fact that you ‘knew ahead of time that they would need medical attention’ to your puppy buyers? And did you really just compare the puppies that you traumatized with illegal immigrants who come here seeking a better life?

The last time I checked, Eastern European puppies weren’t willingly tearing themselves away from their mothers at six weeks, and then cramming themselves six deep into crates for 30 hour transatlantic flights.

You can read the mind boggling rest of the story here.

I’ll be doing my best to keep on top of the trial coverage as it comes in, and would welcome hearing from anyone victimized by Gina Price and Rebel Ridge.

Ellie on the Water

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Ellie sits on the bookshelf in my living room, or part of her does, at least. She sits on the shelf where I keep some of my favorite dog books. “Animal Happiness” by Vicki Hearne, “Old Yeller” (a second edition, no less), “Nops Trials”, “Dogs in Poetry”. She is in good company there, and I can see her when I sit and read. I like being able to look up and know she’s there, unobtrusive as always and just occasionally asking you to spare her a bit of time. Ever content with what little bits of time you can spare her, that was my Ellie.

We did indeed spread her ashes at Cherry Beach, setting her free on the waves, licking around the feet of silly wet puppies, brushing against the coats of diligent Goldens, barely disturbing the concentration of a frisbee mad standard Poodle. She is, perhaps, a part of them all now, part of the Lake and the sand and the plants she ran through. Part of her favorite place.

I didn’t write about it before, couldn’t write about it until now. I couldn’t put down in writing “And then we spread her ashes on the water”, because as anyone knows, when it’s written it becomes true. And I wasn’t ready for it to be true yet.

At the last minute, as Sean was spreading her, I told him to stop. I told him I wanted to keep part of her. He was puzzled, because I had been so adamant about letting her go free. I told him I needed part of her, that I couldn’t let all of her go. So we saved part of her, even though I know the best of her has long since floated off – across the lake, or wherever benevolent spirits like hers finally go.

Part of her though, is still here at home with me, along with her memory, which I keep close at hand always.

All of My Beautiful Dogs Are Dying
– Vicki Hearne

. . . Without the beautiful dogs
No one dares to attend to desire;

The sky retreats, will intend nothing,
It is a ceiling to rebuke the gaze,
Mock the poetry of knowledge.

My death is my last acquiescence;
Theirs is the sky’s renunciation,
Proof that the world is a scattered shame

Littering the heavens. The new dogs
Start to arise, but the sky must go
Deeply dark before the stars appear.

Evolution of the French Bulldog Breed Standard – Part 2

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Today, two versions of the AKC French Bulldog standard are available – the standard written version, which is reproduced below, or the ‘illustrated’ version distributed by the French Bull Dog Club of America. You can download a copy of the illustrated standard here.

The French Bulldog Breed standard, 2005

Classification: Non Sporting Group – Group Six

General Appearance
The French Bulldog has the appearance of an active, intelligent, muscular dog of heavy bone, smooth coat, compactly built, and of medium or small structure. Expression alert, curious, and interested. Any alteration other than removal of dewclaws is considered mutilation and is a disqualification.

Proportion and Symmetry–All points are well distributed and bear good relation one to the other; no feature being in such prominence from either excess or lack of quality that the animal appears poorly proportioned.

Influence of Sex–In comparing specimens of different sex, due allowance is to be made in favor of bitches, which do not bear the characteristics of the breed to the same marked degree as do the dogs.

Size, Proportion, Substance
Weight not to exceed 28 pounds; over 28 pounds is a disqualification. Proportion–Distance from withers to ground in good relation to distance from withers to onset of tail, so that animal appears compact, well balanced and in good proportion. Substance–Muscular, heavy bone.

Head
Head large and square. Eyes dark in color, wide apart, set low down in the skull, as far from the ears as possible, round in form, of moderate size, neither sunken nor bulging. In lighter colored dogs, lighter colored eyes are acceptable. No haw and no white of the eye showing when looking forward. Ears Known as the bat ear, broad at the base, elongated, with round top, set high on the head but not too close together, and carried erect with the orifice to the front. The leather of the ear fine and soft. Other than bat ears is a disqualification.

The top of the skull flat between the ears; the forehead is not flat but slightly rounded. The muzzle broad, deep and well laid back; the muscles of the cheeks well developed. The stop well defined, causing a hollow groove between the eyes with heavy wrinkles forming a soft roll over the extremely short nose; nostrils broad with a well defined line between them. Nose black. Nose other than black is a disqualification, except in the case of the lighter colored dogs, where a lighter colored nose is acceptable but not desirable. Flews black, thick and broad, hanging over the lower jaw at the sides, meeting the underlip in front and covering the teeth, which are not seen when the mouth is closed. The underjaw is deep, square, broad, undershot and well turned up.

Neck, Topline, Body
The neck is thick and well arched with loose skin at the throat. The back is a roach back with a slight fall close behind the shoulders; strong and short, broad at the shoulders and narrowing at the loins. The body is short and well rounded. The chest is broad, deep, and full; well ribbed with the belly tucked up. The tail is either straight or screwed (but not curly), short, hung low, thick root and fine tip; carried low in repose.

Forequarters
Forelegs are short, stout, straight, muscular and set wide apart. Dewclaws may be removed. Feet are moderate in size, compact and firmly set. Toes compact, well split up, with high knuckles and short stubby nails.

Hindquarters
Hind legs are strong and muscular, longer than the forelegs, so as to elevate the loins above the shoulders. Hocks well let down. Feet are moderate in size, compact and firmly set. Toes compact, well split up, with high knuckles and short stubby nails; hind feet slightly longer than forefeet.

Coat
Coat is moderately fine, brilliant, short and smooth. Skin is soft and loose, especially at the head and shoulders, forming wrinkles.

Color
Acceptable colors – All brindle, fawn, white, brindle and white, and any color except those which constitute disqualification. All colors are acceptable with the exception of solid black, mouse, liver, black and tan, black and white, and white with black, which are disqualifications. Black means black without a trace of brindle.

Gait
Correct gait is double tracking with reach and drive; the action is unrestrained, free and vigorous.

Temperament
Well behaved, adaptable, and comfortable companions with an affectionate nature and even disposition; generally active, alert, and playful, but not unduly boisterous.

Disqualifications
Any alteration other than removal of dewclaws.
Over 28 pounds in weight.
Other than bat ears.
Nose other than black, except in the case of lighter colored dogs, where a lighter colored nose is acceptable.
Solid black, mouse, liver, black and tan, black and white, and white with black. Black means black without a trace of brindle.