Sharing Some Bull with Friends

What a wonderful community of folks Bulldog owners are! I know some people, friends of a friend that have been emailing me with Bulldog tips. They are on Bulldog number three so I consider them experts of sort! I would like to share with you their advice since I have found it most insightful. So here are some excerpts from Don & Melinda out of Texas:

If you are talking about the fold of skin across the top of his nose, that is called his “rope.” Actually, we just learned that when we got our new puppy (Walter). His brother had a very prominent rope and they sometimes need to be removed or trimmed down. As for walks, ours love to go for walks but they have to be very short ones. The biggest fear you have with bullies is that they overheat. They love to lay in the sun but can unknowingly get heat stroke while doing that so don’t let them do anything in the sun for any length of time. Too much cold can mess with them, too. For such big, burly dogs, they can be quite fragile. We have never had a problem with it but most bullies have to have their face crevices and wrinkles cleaned often or they essentially mildew, so that’s another thing to watch out for.

BIG CONCERN: Bulldogs have very high tolerances for pain. When Bullet and Blossom were “fixed” they weren’t even given pain pills because they just don’t do that with bullies. In fact, we had no idea that Bullet was in pain until it was too late. So, keep a close eye on Ozzie and know that he will probably just ignore something that would have another breed whining and crying.

I may have mentioned this but, if not, we just got the AKC papers back on Walter and it turns out that he is the half-nephew of our beloved first Bulldog, Bullet. Bullet’s father was Walter’s grandfather.

I have attached photos of Bullet (75 or so pounds of sweet, loving, slobber-making, solid muscle bulldog), Blossom (64 pounds of high-jumping, lizard and squirrel-chasing, not afraid of anything, non-slobbering little girl), and Walter, a rather stoic but very sweet 4 month old 35 pounder that can’t seem to get the knack of being housebroken, yet. The shot of Walter is from when he was about 8 weeks old.