The bulldog really is a wonderful thing

Which is of course why we've all got one (or two or three or .....) but they are mischievous and resourceful little blighters too! I went to shut the chickens in last night and as usual shut the mesh door, slid the door across to the nest box and opened the little peep door to check all were where they should be only to find as I shone the torch in that the chickens had turned into a bulldog!!! Our 10 year old Mabel had some how climbed the ramp, squeezed through the sliding door and had settled down for the night in the next box. We spent the next frantic half hour soaking wet trying to find three very bewildered, sleepy,wet hens who had scattered around the edges of the garden finding the most dense and bramble filled bushes they could find. It's quite funny now but you should have seen my face when I saw a bulldog face looking back at me instead of three chicks perched and settled down for the night! Thankfully they all seem non the worse for wear and Hansel gave me her second egg this morning so hopefully she's not too phased by the experience.
If I hadn't had been so frantic I would have got a photo and she didn't seem to understand why I was so cross with her either. Thankfully it was dark and the hens were all sleepy enough to be handled OK.
The new web site is now totally up and running and all the missing pages are up to date, I'd really like to know what you think of the new lay out? Is it easier to navigate? More complicated? Let me know

Is your head a plastic nodding dog ...

... you'll only get that if you've heard of the band The Prime Movers, but The Royal Veterinary College are conducting a survey on Head Nodding in Bulldogs. Bulldog Rescue are very excited that some real research is finally going to be done on this very misunderstood condition and have offered to help in any way we can. Please help them gather some accurate data by completing the survey at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/headbobbinginbulldog

HEAD NODDING:

Head nodding is not deliberate but the dog is conscious and aware that it is happening, the best way to describe this is just like a nodding dog in car rear window. This is not epilepsy and I cannot stress this enough as too many bulldogs are diagnosed epileptic when it's nothing more than head nodding. No one really knows what causes it and it is very breed specific, but it is pretty widely accepted that it is stress, excitement or pain induced and could be linked to blood sugar levels. My personal theory is that due to the high pain threshold the bulldog has, it's an outward sign that something is not quite right, although it is also very common in dogs that have played hard and then gone to sleep to wake up head nodding. I've also found that once a dog has had a head nodding episode many of them will be prone to them in the future so anything slightly stressful, exciting or painful can trigger one. This crops up a lot in dogs that have recently been rehomed, the combination of new surroundings and the increased level of attention is the most probable cause.

Try to find a link between the nodding and a problem, some of the more common triggers include:

• growing pains / hormonal changes
• aching joints
• general pain
• moving families or moving house
• change in routine
• teething
• overdoing it

It is also common in pregnant bulldogs or in new mums and giving something sweet, ie: dextrose, glucose, icing sugar, honey etc is enough to halt the episode although often distraction will also. It can also occur in young males that are having their testosterone surge at around 9-10 months and may not occur again throughout his lifetime. You will find that most dogs which have episodes of head nodding will be more prone to them as they get older, especially if the dog suffers from arthritis or some other on going problem, for these dogs keep some glucose sweets handy, although we had an old girl who I swear could fake a head nod just for the sweet she got to stop it.

Page 65/66 The Bulldog Bible by Tania Holmes

Puddleducks

I've kept very quiet of late regarding the rantings of Ms Harrison, but she's off again on her recent blog and I think it's about time someone stood up to her total drivel

She starts this particular entry with a photo of a Bulldog along side the photo of what looks like a boxer/stafford cross - For pity's sake - if I wanted a Boxer/Stafford cross I'd buy a blooming Boxer/stafford cross, in reality I want a bulldog and I still find it absolutely amazing that apart from the fact that the photo used is so totally unflattering it could be any bulldog in the world, these people still insist that the bulldog has changed so much that he's now on deaths door.

There's two things I'd like to point out here

Firstly: Take a look at the following two photos

If I told you there was over 100 years between these images would you still think the breed had changed beyond recognition as Ms Harrison would have us believe?

And secondly as the temperature outside today hits over 25 degrees (yes I know it's the 1st October but someone forgot to tell the weather) I have a kennel full of bulldogs who far from being shut away in a darkened air conditions room are all out sunning themselves and making the most of this unprecedented heat wave without a care between them. No they haven't been walked today, but no dog should be walked in this for the same reason you won't find me trecking for miles in extreme temperatures. The dogs we have here right now are at no more risk of overheating than any other dog of any other breed.

However, this whole cross breed malarkey has got to stop, our Face Book page was recently hijacked buy a bunch of cross breeders and apart from the fact that the people are not very nice I'm still very much a firm believer in the fact that the only reason why most of these people cross their bulldogs is simply for money - face it, put a bulldog male to a stafford bitch and you've got something you can sell as "a healthy alternative" to the unsuspecting public who truly believe they're getting a bulldog, with a far less chance of having to spend out on a c-section AND no kennel club rules which will limit how often the bitch can be bred from. Two years down the line we're getting the calls from really upset people who own what they thought was a bulldog that is now trying to bite them at every opportunity it gets. The bulldog was a nasty character and I for one don't really want to be on the receiving end of a so called "Olde Tyme" because some money grabbing thug wanted to make a quick buck and has absolutely no intention of standing by his creations. How many times has a new cross breed popped up? None of which have ever, or will ever go the distance and still be around as a breed in 150 years time!

Bringing in the mad ravings of a certain Ms Milne (who I see has gone all double barrelled on us), I will give give Ms Harrison credit for sticking up for the dog show - take away the only thing between indiscriminate breeding and the breed standard and my job will become a living hell, trying to work out what's a bulldog and what's verging on a Pit Bull. It seems to me that when someone's views are so strong and so misguided that they can't see anyone elses opinion as an option they certainly should not be put in charge of a TV show - maybe you'd like to interview me? Or visit the rescue kennel? I'm not ashamed to say that there is probably no other place in the country that sees such a wide variety of this breed, we probably see every single problem that could possibly be thrown at them and yet almost every single dog here enjoys a long daily walk through the woods and the majority of vet treatment is spent putting right the neglect of the human that owned it before we got it. I'm not denying there's problems, but breed anything to anything and there's going to be a risk of problems - that's the law of genetics. Maybe you should also actually speak to someone on the breed council too - there seems to be a lot of speculation being banded about as to what the breed council are actually doing - but as someone that attends almost every breed council meeting and supplies statistics to their health committee it is very frustrating when the good work is being ignored because it makes more sense to pretend that no one cares.

So lets concluded in the same way as Ms Harrison:

Quote "by suggesting that the answer to the KC bulldog was an outcross to a less conformationally-extreme breed. But of course this has already been done by those ahead of the game, eg: the Leavitt Bulldog (above). So how about the KC de-registering the Bulldog and embracing this healthier phenotype instead?
Yeah, I thought not... " Unquote
a) I don't want a Stafford look-a-like, the UK is over-run with unwanted staffords b) Why not acknowledge the good work being done by the Breed Council and stop quoting outdated propaganda that no longer applies to most bulldogs and c) As the wife of someone in a wheelchair, we got a bulldog to suit our life style oh and d) stop encouraging unscrupulous breeding by people with no care or control over their actions - can you do that? Yeah, I thought not ......