What to do when your English Bulldog thinks he's a people person

Slade noticed this morning that the dog, because he gets upset to be left alone (he has clearly been traumatized by how he was kept in the past), shows that he knows people are leaving him by doing a 'protest whiz.'

The first morning the boys were leaving back to school this year he went on a pile of their books. Yesterday when we were getting ready for church it was in our room. I know his methods of communicating are limited, I just wish he knew we have gotten the message.One thing that is hard is that he has to constantly be underfoot, which sometimes has the advantage that I have to be watching him anyway so he doesn't do any of the above, but it is hard when I am going down the stairs or cooking.

And the most amazing thing of all is how he shows that he knows Slade is the master. I remember Bo did this with my dad. My mom and us kids would fawn all over him all day but my dad would come home and he would plant himself by dad for the rest of the night. His favorite time of the week was jumping up to lick him when he slept in on Saturdays. Good times.And Slade is the brutal disciplinarian with Harry, but he is the owner, so he gets all the Kudos. Slade bought this training collar for walks and doesn't put up with anything (I was going to say he doesn't put up with something particularly crude, and that would be true, also).

But Harry definitely prefers him.Saturday was movie night and we watched (unfortunately) Karate Kid II. Afterward Sadie got up to show she had learned some moves and was doing karate chops on her dad. Harry was visibly upset and got in between Sadie and Slade and paced around. Great, he is protecting Slade from a six year old girl. Slade didn't appreciate when I joked that maybe he looks like he wouldn't win the fight.I am pretty sure it has something to do with the history of the breed. No matter how vicious they were to bulls and bears in the pit they had to also be fiercely loyal to their owners especially because as they were lower class city dwellers (the big bull baiting pits were in London) they probably lived all in close quarters.It is very endearing and why I chose him and wouldn't have a substitute, but I am starting to at least see the advantages some dogs and particularly cats that are willing to have their own lives.

We sure love this dog. Hope there is some improvement with his behavior and health issues so we can keep him. That will to a great extent depend on whether the woman I bought him from decides to compensate me for some of the health and behavioral problems. It was Christmas, so we went fast and didn't think contracts, but morally she told a sick woman she was getting a housetrained healthy, behaved older dog.

And she cared nothing for his future home! Mainly she was maximizing profit on this sale at all ends. The dog has clearly lost already, and we are joining him. Some will some other family if we decide we can't have a dog going to the bathroom everywhere and ruining our house, not to mention the likely constant vet bills. Oh, Harry...

Puddles in Oregon

I don't want to be all my posts complaining about the puppy mill situation that I ended up buying him from, we are actually getting attached to the guy and figuring him out a bit.

Oregon has a bad rap about all the puddles. Well it used to. The rain is actually not bad and OR has some of the mildest weather anywhere all things considered. I went out with no coat on today. There were a few raindrops but I didn't have to worry about loosing fingers or toes, slip to my death, or need to scrape anything off my car, or worse. This is coming from someone who would rather be living in Arizona and so nothing about winter will be perfect, I have all the snow I want within an hour's drive and the appropriately maximum twice a year in my yard.

But the puddles I am having a hard time with lately, even in January, are coming from inside my own house. After having spent our last red cent on this dog and purposefully bypassing the adorable puppy stage so he wouldn't ruin our house, we may have to end up buying all new carpets anyway. And it isn't that he doesn't prefer to go outside. He loves the weather, now that we got his foot condition fixed after vet visits and many medications.

He just likes to go inside, too.Apparently that is one of the disadvantages of getting a nearly adult male dog. They don't like to move into a house that they don't feel is fully their territory. My luck.Right now he and I are having to be very lonely for each other because he is being punished in the downstairs bathroom, as usual. He developed the absolute necessity to keep a bag of new curtains peed on. Other than this, he is a delight. Seriously, the amount of love and adorableness that he has brought to us and the absolute giddy happiness of our kids has been hard to overstate.

Seeing Drake take absolute responsibility that has come with being one of the main people to take care of him has been precious. So if the puddles were really so bad that if I would have known I wouldn't have gotten him, I probably wouldn't have gotten myself any kids, either. Because they are much messier, much more work, and much more frustrating. So I guess we will survive.

The English Bulldog: Perfect for any President's day

Except today. We are really struggling. I am beginning to think that the operation we bought him from was some kind of puppy mill--the kind they always warn you about. I think I just wrote a huge check to finance one.

The thing is, if she had just been honest with me, and said look, we have kept this dog kennel style until he is a giant neglected puppy that will be a disaster for any future owner, I might have actually bought into it, or someone would have, for some price.

But she made me specifically think that this was a family dog that slept in her boyfriend's bed! This dog has not seen anything besides a kennel and a yard, and he is obviously traumatized. Anyone who buys a bulldog needs to think twice before they buy from this operation, that I have named previously, in older posts when I wasn't as decidedly concerned. I don't want it to sound like a negative commercial here, I just want it to be a warning for anyone interested in this breed for themselves: you are in for a handful.

And coming from me, who has touted only this breed for thirty years now, that is saying a lot. You will be buying more than another child if that is what you decide to get. And NEVER make the mistake I did by bypassing the puppy stage to save your carpets. What you will get is a problem dog, and that is what you should ask to pay for.

The saddest thing is that now my children are so attached to him that we will be devastated if ultimately I decide I can't handle it. I can't wind up in the hospital just because we have fallen in love with a dog. My children will probably never get over it, and the dog DEFINITELY never will.

Who will want an ageing problem bulldog? And we won't have the nerve to lie to disguize his past, we would know that we would just be devastating another family for a few hundred dollars. We will have to take a total loss just to make sure he goes to a good home.

A new year and new concerns for a bulldog owner

1/5/07 We have been having a good time with our new English Bulldog, Harry. The housebreaking really hasn't improved much, and I am kind of concerned that the people I bought him from, Luv-A-Bulldog, aren't answering my emails about his housebreaking.

I am not exactly pointing fingers at them or anything, I just would like some information about how they dealt with what is obviously a problem.

Unfortunately, I am getting the picture that he may have been somewhat neglected and perhaps he lived outside. This is absolutely a tragedy for a bulldog. They mentioned they have acerage and that is great for a dog to have access to a yard, but bulldogs are people dogs. If they aren't absolutely under your feet, they will not thrive.

And it ocurrs to me thinking back on what he was like when we got him that he was a bit well 'wilted.' I wondered if he had been debarked because he absolutely never made a sound. I was thrilled, because my nerves can't exactly handle dogs barking much, but it actually seems like he might have been a bit DEPRESSED. He would never play, he slept pretty much round the clock, and we even had a hard time getting him to eat.

In the past few days he has picked up his spirits a bit and gotten very friendly with us. But one of the strange things was that he didn't like going on walks. We almost couldn't drag him out of the house. Again I emailed Luv-A-Bulldog and she said that she had NEVER TAKEN HIM ON A WALK, that she just let him run around on their property.

And the very sad thing is that maybe his whole life was just spent out in the yard. No wonder he didn't want to go outside, he probably thought he was back at his other owners.

And one of the things that we noticed lately was that he was constantly licking a few of his feet. Dogs do that stuff sometimes and we didn't notice at first that they also looked very sore. And he was even favoring those paws when he walked. It looked like this 11 month old dog was actually in pain.

That was the last straw. The dandruff was one thing, but I couldn't handle the poor gentle soul being uncomfortable so I took him to the vet. The owner discouraged this, saying 'oh don't spend money on a vet' but I am sorry he was sick.

The vet confirmed my worst fears, that he had probably just been kept out in a kennel his whole life on wet concrete. He had multiple bacterial and fungal infections all over his body, in his fur, in his skin wrinkles, on his neck (probably with some sort of really cruel collar because the fur was actually wearing away) and especially between his toes. He hadn't let us look before, but when the vet opened up his toes there were VERY angry sores between them.

We spent about 200 dollars on all of the lab work, shampoos and treatments, and medications, and he will probably need another round of treatments soon.

Did they LUV-A-Bulldog? Not this one. It is SO sad.

Link to article on the history of English Bulldogs

I am obviously an avid fan of the breed. Here is an article I wrote on the history of how the breed resulted in some of its quirky features:

http://www.helium.com/tm/792501/boxers-boxerbulldog-mixes-better

Luv-A-Bulldog? You kind of have to

January 1, 2007

We have been having quite a challenge with our new dog. I was told he was housebroken, but he pretty much just goes freely anywhere he happens to be.

We love him to death and he has the run of the house (sleeping with the boys, etc.) but I got an older dog, missing out on the puppy experience that I really wanted to have, because I wasn't sure I could handle the thought of dog accidents.

The people we got him from, Luv-A-Bulldog, said that he was housebroken but they were a bit vague about it, only saying 'he has the idea.'

I am beginning to be a bit concerned that this is why they got rid of him. We aren't regretting our decision yet, just perhaps who we got him from.

Christmas day, 2007

Our adventure in dog ownership has begun! We have found a new member of the our clan this year for a very special Christmas present to the kids, An English Bulldog Harry. The kids adore him even more than the parents. I have a serious neurological illness that has made travelling difficult, and so we stayed home for a quiet holiday this year.

We got them from what appears to be some kind of a small breeder, they claim to do both English and French Bulldogs. That always seems like a bad sign to me, these dogs are very dependent on their owners and I am never sure how people deal with multiple specimens let alone multiple breeds. And they say it is another breeder that produced him. Kind of makes me worried that they got him for their breeding program but that he didn't work out. A bit confusing of a situation, there, but it was Christmas and we had been promising a dog, so we delivered.

The name of the whatever it is is called Luv-A-Bulldog. Obviously they don't know how to name English Bulldogs, his sire being called 'Red Hot Rocket' or something, but he seems to be a hansome dog. We were a bit disappointed in how he appears to be kept. They said they would give him a bath, and obviously they put it off till the last second because he was soking wet when we got him, and now our car smells like wet dog. And he had a serious case of dandruff, but maybe we can do something about it since the bath was obviously not that complete.

I have been hesitant to get a dog at all because of worry about what any stress would do to my health. So one of the things we decided was to get a dog that was older so we wouldn't have to deal with house training. There is nothing in this world I want more than a bulldog puppy, but housebreaking doesn't seem like something we can do, and we aren't really in a position to replace all our carpets.

But he has at least been super fun. Just being with him is entertainment for all of us. Always thinking larger than life, I had big plans to do all those things I never can do when we are travelling like baking, caroling, family pictures, but getting our dog, which the kids have been begging for a while now was pretty much the extent of it. A good dose of holiday guilt provided sufficient motivation for me to eventually make it happen, and it has been a good thing because he has been special enough to be almost worth the sacrifice of much more festive experiences on the road.

We were planning to go whole route of visiting etc., but we are still reeling from how bad I did healthwise on recent trips, even small ones. We are getting realistic about how seriously travel disrupts my sleeping. It isn't ever the same either, so it is hard to even predict it--sometimes I can't sleep at all on the road and sometimes I sleep twice as much, but the common fact is that I can't seem to just be close at all to normal away from home. Now all those people who have to me seemed obsessed with regularity must have been onto something that I just didn't get. And any step forward we get from months and months of steady progress can be easily followed by four steps backward if we are not extremely careful to rely on routine. It requires the kind of dedication to schedule most people (besides us) have with their new babies!

It is very sad, with how much I used to love to go places, but we at least don't have the hesitancy to have pets that would tie us to the homestead, and now we have one, and his name is Harry. Most people assume that his name is some sort of unkind pun on his heavily furred self but that is just an accident. I have a tremendous amount of respect for his breed, and can't abide giving a gorgeous specimen like this one of those typical dog-type names.

His original owners named him 'Nitro' (shudder). English Bulls need classic English names, preferably Royal. Most early ones were named Harry, Will, Bess, etc. It was probably a joke to do this because of how far down the social ladder their owners were from these names, but such was the tradition. And no dog, mutt or otherwise, should be called Nitro or anything that seems like it was thought up by a ten-year-old boy. Boys grow up soon enough to see the folly of the names they like, it seems, so I didn't feel too bad rejecting their choices immediately. His name is Henry but most Henry's go by Harry for short. And if for whatever reason it also gets a laugh, that is fine.The great thing is how predictable the dog experience has been for us by what we knew about the breed, so there have been few surprises.

He is very compatible with our lifestyle and mostly ends up being our floor buddy. He doesn't bother to try to get us to go run around or throw him balls. Bulldogs show their intelligence by refusing to do such silly things. That ends up knocking them in various dog-to-dog rankings, but that is because DOG-Q is measured partly by how well breeds fetch and do all the stuff that other dogs like, an arbitrary measurement not at all related to any real intelligence, obviously. When you ask a Bulldog to fetch, they look at you like, 'Why would I do that?' Which is how most smart humans would also respond.

And I am willing to deal with downsides of the breed, because right now I am less able to handle dogs that are in any way irritating behaviorally. I figure that I can't have a perfectly clean house right now anyway, so it doesn't matter WHAT ruins it. And luckily Harry is typical of EBD's in that he is VERY mellow and doesn't jump around or bark. Like bark EVER (Seriously we fist thought of sneaking him home on Christmas eve but scrubbed that because we thought he would wake the kids up by barking. Turns out nope, we would have been totally safe). And that is perfect for me because I can't even stand dogs barking in the neighborhood. And Archer and Slade have been tough nuts to crack about dogs in theory, traumatized as they have been in the past by experiences with dogs real and imagined.

But Harry's gentle nature is making steady progress against their intolerance. Slade is VERY amused by his interesting and a-typical (of dogs) personality. Some dogs don't interact much directly with the people in their environment they are so busy running and jumping, and cats are even more indifferent, I can't imagine a cat actually responding to anything spoken to them since they are always like 'be quiet I am looking at that string on your shirt' or whatever. Of course cats have their advantages. There are cat people then there are cat people and never the twain shall meet.But Harry (when he's not audibly snoozing at our feet) is usually following the conversation and other human action in the room back and forth like he's at a tennis match, a total people dog. The breed got that way because unlike dogs bred with acreage, English Bulldogs were the pets of lower classes that lived with them in close proximity. As fierce as they needed to be for sport they needed to be sweet to their owners to survive.

This is the only animal large or small I would trust unsupervised with young children. And Harry is sweet enough even for Slade, who had to admit it fairly early on. I think the main thing that Slade has found--of course which I told him all along--is how entertaining he is even when he doesn't really do anything. He is so magnificent looking that we all are pretty much happy just sitting around looking at him. Of course others would not appreciate this as much in a pet, but it suits us because we are not going to be having him jump hurdles or anything like it. But it is sweet to see Drake blossoming into responsibility in dog ownership, too. I will post better pics of him, he is quite a beauty and needs photographing, certainly, but right now we will have to settle for something Sadie took on her new digi camera.

This is a link to the operation that we purchased him from: http://www.luv-a-bulldog.com/home.html. I couldn't exactly tell what was going on there. And I am always concerned when an operation focuses on more than one breed--a sign that they might be in it for the money in my experience. But they happened to have what we wanted by the deadline, so we went with it.

I was a bit dissapointed because it was Christmas day and none of the petstores were open, and she wouldn't even throw in any extras like a bag of his food, and even made me pay a fee for using paypal, none of these things especially endearing since we paid 1500 (for a one year old dog). But we were desperate and had to go with it.