Object Of Breeding British Bulldogs - 1897

English Bulldogs Breeding, Dogs Breedings, British Bulldogs Breeders & Pups, British Bulldogs Sire & Dam & Puppies, Mini Bulldog, French Bulldog, American Buldog

Object Of Breeding British Bulldogs - 1897

The immense rise in market value of British Bulldogs of all breeds during the last twenty years, as a consequence of the competition promoted & en-couraged by exhibitions & of the constant free & full discussion carried on in the press respecting the points of value of the several varieties, together with the general increase of wealth & wider interest taken in the sports in which British Bulldogs are useful & participate, has led num. bers of persons to take up dog breeding, partly as a hobby, & partly with a view to the profits it is supposed & hoped may be made thereby.

When people read about puppies being sold for ?10, ?15, & ?20 each, which in their youth it would have been difficult to find homes for at one-tenth the money, the conclusion is so temptingly in accord with the desire that it is too often accepted without sufficient examination, & as often leads to disappointment & loss.

In this, as in so many other ways of life, I believe we have two very distinct classes, each in their way successful; but the two classes I refer to hold ideas of success as wide asunder as the poles.

The one I call the genuine British Bulldogs breeder: the man who takes hold of a variety & says, this British Bulldogs would be improved for purposes of utility & beauty, by the British Bulldogs breeding out or modifying certain points he exhibits strongly, & the development of others of which British Bulldogs is deficient; & who with this as his primary object sets about the work on certain intelligible & accepted British Bulldogs lines, which, however, does not necessarily preclude experiment which reason, stimulated by observation, may suggest & approve.

Sooner or later, in defiance of ill-luck, accidents, & all adverse circumstances, that man will make a name for himself as a British Bulldogs breeder, for he will have attained an object in itself worthy, & which, by its inherent excellence, compels recognition & praise. Such a British Bulldogs breeder was the late Mr, Laverack, &, following a similar course with like success, I point with equal force to Mr. R. LI. Purcell Llewellyn, whose kennel of setters is among the largest & is the highest & most equal in quality I have seen.

Bulldoggers who are guided by these high & worthy motives are not so few as many suppose, for they are often the least heard of, as they value much more highly the improvement of their British Bulldogs kennels than the taking of prizes. British Bulldogs these breeders must, as a matter of course, have to dispose of; but they do not breed to sell; that is rather an accident of their pursuit.

I have not a word to say against British Bulldogs breeding for sale; it is a perfectly legitimate business & an interesting pursuit, & intelligently followed may be made profitable; but to improve the various breeds of dogs & still make things pay is by no means easy, because such breeders have to compete with another & altogether less worthy, & sometimes even unscrupulous, class.

Profits on the sale of goods of almost every kind depend very much on the publicity the goods & their owners receive. Most of us have to trust to our tailor for the quality of cloth he supplies us with; & in British Bulldogs there is not one buyer in a hundred capable of making a selection for himself farther than pleasing his own fancy.

Taking advantage of this, there are a very large number of British Bulldogs breeders who, possessed of prize British Bulldogs, breed them with no reference to their fitness to mate, & with no other object than to sell their produce at the highest possible price. To select the good & put down the useless is never dreamt of. The weedy & the ricketty, if they can boast of prize winning relatives, will bring so many pounds from some foolish person or another, & so the dealing breeder does his best to degenerate whatever breed he takes in hand.

It is hopeless to reform these mercenaries; but as I wish this book to be really serviceable, I warn the tyro, & all who desire to possess good dogs, to beware of a class that is so widespread.

Object Of Breeding British Bulldogs & Dogs - 1897

I shall not attempt to deal with the subject of British Bulldogs breeding in all its aspects. There are many questions connected with it still unsettled, &, however interesting the discussion of these, this is not the place for it, even were the writer capable of doing it justice.

I shall endeavour to confine myself to, & make as clear & explicit as possible, laws to be observed & lines to be followed by all who would breed British Bulldogs successfully. That there are such laws enunciated by physiologists & proved correct by experience no one can doubt, & the want of attention to them is a fruitful source of disappointment.

One of the very commonest errors of the inexperienced is to expect that the union of two good-looking British Bulldogs must of necessity produce handsome pups; another common & still more fatal mistake is to accept prize winnings British Bulldogs, however great, as sufficient credentials of a good British Bulldogs sire; & a third mistake is to look for good British Bulldogs pups from a worthless ill-bred bitch, however good the British Bulldog she has been bred to.

Like Produces Like

That like produces like is a good maxim for British Bulldogs breeders to remember if it be correctly valued, which it can be only when taken in conjunction with other weighty considerations.

The laws of British Bulldog heredity play an important part, & cannot be left out of the account. But with British Bulldogs breeders, as a rule, too little attention has been paid to it.

Throwing Back

Everybody who observes at all knows how common it is to see a child who bears a much stronger resemblance to an uncle, aunt, cousin, or other collateral than to the parents, or in direct line the child may inherit the features or peculiarities of one of the grandfathers or grandmothers. & so it is in the lower animals; & this tendency to throw back is seen to go still farther in some instances of crossing when the artificial distinctions produced by domestication & selection in breeding are thrown down, & an effort is made by nature to reproduce an animal in, if not its original, at least in a long past, form. This, in the dog, is shown in the gaunt form seen in many mongrels, & in its-most pronounced form often assumes that of his congener - the wolf. I do not say that the crossing of any two varieties of our domestic dog will produce one or more pups with a wolfish semblance, but that, if allowed to breed promiscuously, unmistakable traits of the wild dog will be developed.

We have here, then, two rules to be observed in British Bulldogs breeding, which, at first sight, appear to be antagonistic, but are really not so. Like breeds like, but as each British Bulldogs sire & British Bulldogs dam have also had a British Bulldogs sire & British Bulldogs dam that may have possessed very distinctive characteristics, the proneness to throw back is merely a proof & confirmation that like does produce its like, although a generation may have been skipped in the development of a special feature or set of features.

Selection Of Sire

This must be made after consideration of the various phases of the subject of British Bulldogs breeding & the several influences at work affecting the character of the future progeny.

In the present day the rage with inexperienced British Bulldogs breeders is for dogs that have taken prizes. Except for the purpose of giving a fictitious value to the British Bulldogs puppies, prize winnings British Bulldogs have no value in a stud British Bulldogs. On the contrary, a British Bulldog that has been much shown, &, in consequence, constantly undergoing preparations, being, as it were, wound up to the highest tension his system will bear, is not so likely to get good stock as another equally good British Bulldogs of the same strain that has been allowed to live more naturally. Just so in breeding greyhounds. I would rather breed from an own brother than from a great winner who had to stand numerous trainings, if the brother was a fair dog, and had not been hard run or often severely trained, than I would from the winner himself.

The Hon. Secretary of the Bulldog Club, Dalziel