French bulldog breathing problems

[BrokenWing]

The thread subject likely to be, for many MN regular Doghouse posters, click bait for the same reasons I want you here! Especially any helpful vets!

ds(15)'s class has been told they are doing a persuasive essay for his NAT5 English writing portfolio. We are in Scotland and this essay, along with another creative essay will count towards 30% of his overall mark.

Aged 9, ds was desperate for a cute pug, but was easily discouraged when he learned about their health issues and we chose a labrador instead. He has loosely chosen the subject area of brachycephalic breeds such as Frenchie's and Pugs for his persuasive essay. He's not entirely sure yet what the essay will be trying to persuade - banning, change in breed standards, mandatory education etc so needs to do a bit more research to get that clear in his head and also for information to use in his essay.

Research to date is mostly been media and journalism and he has a reasonable grasp of the topic, but could do with more recent evidence of sound research from professional, expert based sources which he can quote in his essay.

We have found the BVA policy statement from January 2018 and the BMJ Brachycephalic tipping point: time to push the button? comment on use of these dogs in advertising.

Both of these seems like good articles to take quotes from and acknowledge as resources. There appears to be more BMJ articles but these are only available if registered/paid for.

Do any vets, or anyone passionate about the topic have any recent articles from expert resources they are allowed to share links/email me that he can also look at/use?

[threemilesupthreemilesdown]

Try joining the group 'CRUFFA' on Facebook - if you can wade through the photos and some of the more reactionary stuff, there's a lot of solid research linked and discussed there.

[SutterCane]

If you're on FB then the groups CRUFFA and Brachycephalic Breathing Awareness are absolutely packed with all kinds of resources that might be useful.

The University of Cambridge BOAS research group have lots of information on their site. The sections for the relevant breeds on the UFAW site are also worth a look.

[DogInATent]

Not all journals are pay-to-read. I've found these two articles with a search for "brachycephalic obstructive airway syndrome article"

Conformational risk factors of brachycephalic obstructive airway syndrome (BOAS) in pugs, French bulldogs, and bulldogs (2017)
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5538678/

Impact of Facial Conformation on Canine Health: Brachycephalic Obstructive Airway Syndrome (2015)
journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0137496

Follow up the citations and references to find more.

[SutterCane]

This website is well worth a look as well. There are lots of links to various studies and other resources on the individual pages under the 'Strategies for the breeding of healthy pugs' section.

[Lonecatwithkitten]

Vet times is a weekly free newspaper to veterinary professional who do not keep their articles behind a paywall. If you google vet times and brachycephalic you will get hundreds of hits. This is just one.
If he is interested in the ethics of breeding from what effectively genetic mutants he may find the ISFM and BVA joint campaign relating to Scottish fold cats and other similar breeds [[https://icatcare.org/advice/scottish-fold/ this] is their joint statement.

[fivedogstofeed]

Dd recently did a speech for GCSE English brachycephalic dogs. Most of her inspiration came from Cruffa - if you go into their files section there are some useful documents.

[GrumpyMiddleAgedWoman]

It might also be worth your DC phoning a local vet to ask for a quote...

I came onto this thread to recommend CRUFFA.

(And yeah, your clock-baiting worked 100%!)

[GrumpyMiddleAgedWoman]

*click.
FFS.

[BrokenWing]

Perfect thanks all! . I'll pass them all onto ds. Lots of reading to be done!

[nearlyfinished1moreyear]

Also the persuasive part could be that the kennel club needs to change its "standards" for these breeds. As in making flatter faces less desirable. You only have to google how pugs looked years ago to what the kennel club perceives to be now the perfect looking pug.

[Xiaoxiong]

Apropos of nothing, I was looking at these links and realised that my brother has a dog he adopted in China through a local rescue and she looks exactly like the pictures of pugs 100 years ago before all the brachycephalic breeding problems. And coincidentally I have a rescue from Romania who looks like the pictures of GSDs 100 years ago. We've always assumed both dogs are mongrels of some kind but now I wonder if they have just somehow kept the original genes before all the official purebred breeding to particular standards got underway.

Are there any breeders trying to go back to the original pug lines? Like the pictures from 100 years ago?

[nearlyfinished1moreyear]

My mum has a "jug" he resembles but a pug "used to look like"

[nearlyfinished1moreyear]

Sorry for got pic

[Xiaoxiong]

Nearlyfinished I assume a jug is a JRTx? Gorgeous little thing. I disagree with the whole "designer dog" thing as so often they are backyard breeders but I wonder if that's something the breed arbiters will have to accept for the health of the breed.

[Booboostwo]

Just something to consider (I am a philosopher).

The essay needs to develop an argument, something like this:

Premise 1: breeding brachycephalic dogs negatively affects their health. This is where he needs the evidence to back this claim up, but I should think that would be easy to find and he mainly needs to provide a short summary with references.

Premise 2: we have a duty not to breed dogs with health problems. This should be the main part of his argument, and while it seems obvious, it's actually a point that has to be argued for. Imagine someone who believes that animals were put on this earth for our purposes. This person would not be bothered by dogs with health problems as long as a human found them cute and enjoyable - the pain of the dogs doesn't matter. This is the kind of view he needs to argue against. He should try reading Peter Singer Practical Ethics chs2 and 3 for inspiration.

Conclusion: we should not breed brachycepalic breeds.

Practical recommendation: given the popularity of these breeds and the lack of knowledge about the health problems, a practical recommendation towards the ending of these breeding practices would be...(e.g. change in KC breeding standard, education campaign, etc.)

[nearlyfinished1moreyear]

@Xiaoxiong yeah he's crossed with a jack russel, he defo has more pug traits tho. He is a hoover! Will eat anything in plain sight, very lazy, I often take him and my mums lurcher for walks and coming home he's trailing behind.

[Lisbon67]

Try the FBCE website the kc website cruffa is more a hate group you want solid information .i bred french bulldogs and have stopped due to their breathing problems bad skin allergies bad breeding and a lot of these standard ones passing gold health test when clearly they should not pass i have a pup from crufts qualified girl and the dog had surgery for boas soft palate stomach problems i have other i would not breed with bad skin on apoquel everyday so i could no longer breed as they are suffering go and see pheonix rescue the amount of frenchie abandoned or handed in with health issues it is the worse breed them and pugs for problem breeding these dogs need to be banned and no showing untill all dogs are completely healthy as the health tests are a joke

[whyamidoingthis]

Do a search on google scholar scholar.google.com

Some of the articles are in pay journals but many are available free via a html link or pdf

Here's a few interesting ones cgejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40575-015-0023-8

owner perception

cgejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40575-016-0035-z

journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0137496