Pugs and bulldogs can’t have sex? Cite? It doesn’t even make sense. I could see their pelvises being too small and their heads being too large for giving birth but how would that affect copulation?
http://w ww.youtube.com/watch?v=16OMfipCs04 (not work safe) This pug seems to manage it fine–he’s only humping so far but if the other pug weren’t walking away, I’m sure he could do it.
Why do you assume that exaggerated traits led to dead bitches and no puppies 100% of the time?
I don’t think this is the case at all. Some bitches had problems giving birth due to bone structure - this led to an *increased incidence *of puppies being born dead (it’s not impossible to assist in the delivery of a stuck puppy, it’s just that the one that gets stuck usually dies quickly) and an *increased risk *of death or injury for the bitch.
Because the exaggerated trait in question, the one we’re discussing here, is “skull so far out of proportion with pelvic size that it leads to an inability to deliver naturally”. If the skull was small enough to fit through the pelvis and bitch and pups survive… then… they aren’t exhibiting this trait. It’s like asking “why do you assume taking a fatal dose of poison results in death 100% of the time?” Because if you take a dose and survive, it’s not a fatal dose. Back then, “skull that doesn’t fit through mama’s pelvis” or “pelvis too small for normal parturition” was a fatal trait. Now, in the age of 100% elective c-section, it’s not.
Okay, so, what makes you think the increased count of surviving bitches and offspring of those bitches (the ones that likely would have gotten stuck and likely died as a result) which all carry and exhibit the trait of “disproportionate skull” are not affecting the gene pool today?
I did some research and you might be interested to know that French bulldogs difficulty in labor/birth is due to poor tone in the uterus (inefficient contractions) as well as their conformation.
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It seems to me that you are saying that affordable canine c-section somehow coincided exactly with a conspiracy on the part of breeders to vastly increase the head size of all their Frenchies just because they could.
There’s no question that some puppies that would have died during a natural birth living and going on to reproduce now is ‘affecting’ the gene pool today. Of course there is no ACTUAL affect because of all the elective sections. But if the elective section option was taken away totally, than yeah, more puppies might be dying now than in the days before elective section was the norm.
The French bulldog standard hasn’t changed. There is no reason for breeders to be encouraging wider heads and narrower hips, and no evidence that they are.
This is how I see the last century of French Bulldogs. From 1909 til c-section became widely available (last 2-3 decades) there was a certain incidence of puppies not progressing, perhaps dying themselves, possibly leading to the exhaustion or injury of the mother when trying to extract the stuck puppy, to the deaths of puppies who should have delivered after it, or rarely to the death of the mother herself.
The majority of pups and bitches lived and thrived, but when breeding expensive purebred show dogs you want all your pups born live.
With the advent of affordable technology, Frenchie breeders were able to circumvent this risk and get more live puppies. End of story. There was no huge increase in head size across the breed in 1985 (to pick a random year) that caused so many puppies to be born dead that they had to start doing sections.
No, that’s not actually what I’m saying at all. What I’m saying is this: that for the breeders for whom “extreme typiness” is paramount, balanced, physically capable conformation is no longer a prerequisite. The nearly 100% c-section rate allows the bad breeders to get away with breeding for extreme type in a way that wasn’t really possible before. In general, the trend may be to be less concerned about breeding totally balanced dogs because it’s no longer a life-threatening issue.
Clearly birthing issues are wide-spread enough that a nearly 100% c-section rate is preferable to whatever percentage of risk existed before. The elective human c-section rate is horrifically high, but it’s not that high. The fact that risks are high enough with this breed to prompt a nearly 100% section rate tells me that there’s something grossly abnormal about their parturition risks, because very few other breeds operate the same way.
I, personally, would not choose to replicate dogs that couldn’t physically function in a normally-capable way. If my dogs were such poor reproducers that they couldn’t breed or birth naturally, I would be looking into solving those significant health problems with each subsequent generation. That does not appear to be the goal of the French Bulldog breeding community as a whole. As a whole, the solution appears to be “choose elective surgery 100% of the time and then you don’t have to worry about it”.
I realize the standard as written is still the same. If you know anything about the dog show world (and it appears you do) you’ll know that in most breeds there is room within a standard for a significant range of variation while still being technically “correct”. That’s why you have trends in breeds over time. The best type of breeders will always breed “correct” dogs, but some will follow trends for whatever is fashionable at the moment… like long, sloping, roachy backs on GSDs, for example (those are all Seiger winning dogs, the best-of-the-best). Or Persian cat breeders producing “ultra face” Persians with nose leather placed above the lower limits of the eyeballs.
I still think you’re lumping me in with the whole “Pedigree Dogs Exposed” propaganda crowd. I’m not arguing that all purebred dogs are inbred and mutated, or that dog breeding as a whole is going down the toilet. I’m only saying that a) to some extent that big round head and narrow rear contributes to the breed’s difficulties with natural birth, and b) to what extent it’s necessary to surgically intervene to ensure the breed’s continued propagation, French Bulldog breeders have turned to routine surgical intervention to ensure the breed’s continued propagation. Also that some breeders (in nearly *all *breeds) will breed for extreme type, regardless of whether this is the healthiest or most physically robust choice. For French Bulldog breeders for whom extreme typiness is a priority, the lethality of birthing pups with the giant-noggin look is no longer an issue. Yes, I understand that a balanced Frenchie does not look like that, any more than a top winning Silverwood bull terrier will exhibit extreme downface. However, even the balanced Frenchies’ skulls are disproportionately large. In some breeds, the solution to these problems would be to produce even more balanced dogs which didn’t have the same birthing difficulties. In Frenchies and other similarly-built bulldogs, the solution is, apparently, routine elective C-sections.
If you don’t get how a bunch of dogs who previously wouldn’t have survived birth, surviving and going on to pass those genes along affects the gene pool then I think we’re at a standstill here.
