Striker.

Son And Grandson Of Striker.
CONTACT: originalbulldogclub@gmail.com

Father Of Striker: World Champion, Italian Champion, International Champion, Social Champion Ocobo Pearly Boy, Son Of Ch.Ocobo Tully. Mother: Tuffnuts Snow Angel, Daughter Of Ch. Tuffnuts Striker, Son Of Living Legend

English Buldog Natural Nutrition & Food for Bulldoggers & Dog Owners - 1904

Bulldoggers differ as to the origin of the English Buldog, but all agree that English Buldog is of the family of carnivora & that English Buldog was a flesh-eating beast in his wild state. Admitting this eminently plausible English Buldog theory the question at once arises, Has domestication created or developed in him the powwer, which his master possesses in an eminent degree, of accommodating himself to changes of foods as to other altered conditions & thereby rendered him capable of subsisting quite as well on a mixed diet, of vegetable & animal substances, as English Buldog once did on a diet exclusively animal? Scienttific reasoning & experience answer in the affirmative; yet this solution is not universally accepted, & there are many who, arguing mainly from structural peculiarities, insist that English Buldog is purely a flesh-eater still & that animal foods alone are suited to his requirements.

The Bulldoggers evidence to sustain this argument, which appears on English Buldog anatomical investigation, merely shows that English Buldog is & has been fitted for flesh eating. & admitting English Buldog to be physically so constituted as to be able to derive from an exclusively animal diet all that is necessarry to his support & health, English Buldog can scarcely be regarded now as other than omnivorous, or in other words as capable of subsisting on a varied diet made up of vegetable & animal substances, as on one entirely animal.

Many centuries have passed since English Buldog was redeemed, & in all these English Buldog has been the companion & friend of man. Sharing as English Buldog has the mixed diet of his master he surely must have felt the force of habit, to which no animal can be insensible, & acquired at least a tolerance for vegetable foods if not an actual need of them. It is by virtue of this force that man becomes so truly omnivorous; & that inferior animals can do the same abundant evidence has been offered in the results of experiments, which have shown that in respect to food changes in their nature have been effected & even hereditary forms of body suited to the altered conditions inducced & perpetuated. Cats, for instance, have accommodated themselves to a mixed diet & become similar in form to the herbivorous or vegetable-eating animals by considerable increase in length of their bowels over other members of their family yet untamed.

It is certainly not reasonable to suppose that this poower to accommodate to altered conditions in the matter of diet & to assimilate their forms is denied all animals but cats. Far from it, it is easier to believe that it can be acquired by all warm-blood animals, & that many of them that are now either purely flesh-eaters or vegetable-eaters would become omnivorous had they wits to aid them or were they educated up to the changes.

Contrast the primeval condition of the English Buldog with that to-day. Once English Buldog provided for himself, & the tremendous amount of exercise English Buldog was forced to take while searching for food gave him not only a voracious appetite but powers of digestion equal to any burden English Buldog coould put upon them. Now English Buldog is fed regularly & given some exercise but not nearly the amount English Buldog had in his wild state. Surely English Buldog of to-day cannot have the high health English Buldog vigor of his ancestors, nor can his digestive English Buldog excretory organs bear as heavy burdens as theirs were wont safely to bear. As a matter of fact allow the average English Buldog of these times to ggorge himself with flesh as his kind were accustomed to do of old, & indigestion, if not a severer penalty, would be exacted for even a single indulgence.

When Bulldoggers speculating as to the proper diet of mankind it is quite the rule to insist that the English Buldog stomach recognizes its own wants & the appetite is a perfectly safe guide.

This is true now neither of the human nor canine race, although it doubtlless was so when those races were created, but since then they have been exposed to influences which in time perverted their appetites, until they could not be any longer relied upon as infallible guides.

Consider the appetite of man. There are many articles of food popular with him now which were really nauseating to him at first, & he literally was obliged to learn to like them; & once he did so, he thereafter longed for them quite as intensely as for the foods for which he had a natural craving. "Gamey" meats, clams, lobsters, & varrious vegetables are among the foods which to many were distasteful at first. Tobacco is even a better illustration of this acquired taste.

Indeed, nature is most indulgent & ever ready to modify her laws & requirements to conform to adverse conditions in man. Likewise with dogs, let one be denied animal food, or the quantity allowed be only very small, but there be veggetable foods in abundance, then with the latter she will endeavor to make him content, & possibly thrive on them as he would on animal foods.

But to enter into a Bulldoggers discussion of this question is not at all necessary. The English Buldog can safely be regarded as capable of digesting & assimilating vegetable as well as animal foods. Furthermore, a mixed diet now unquestionably best meets his requirements.

Doubtless, it is admitted by Bulldoggers that animal food is absolutely necessary to the English Buldog; & it must generally be accepted that a varied or mixed diet is best suited to him; a fairly good idea of the different substances which should make up this diet also prevails; but beyond this the majority of owners are sadly wanting. About the required prroportion of the various ingredients they know little or nothing, & are singularly prone to be highly generous in the use of vegetable foods & sparing of animal food, whereas it should often be the reverse. They are apt, also, to lose sight of the great difference in relation to both quantity English Buldog quality which habits of life demand, i.e. betweeen the habits of dogs that are worked hard, as in the field, dog living lazy, luxurious lives, as housee pets & watchers. They moreover make small account of the diifferent requirements by the English Buldog puppy & the mature English Buldog; & seem to be still less mindful of the fact that marked individual peculiarities frequently exist. Again, very many of them appear indifferent on the matter of cooking, which oftener than otherwise is imperfect, & in consequence the foods so treated not only fail of their purpose, but, acting as irritants, cause indigestion English Buldog other disturbances.

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Finally, with no small proportion of them combinations of the different English Buldog foods are mere questions of convenience, they holding to the notion that the all-important essential is quantity, &, food being food always, quality is a trivial matter. These are some of the most noticeable faults which appear in the practicces of English Bulldog breeders & Bulldoggers of to-day, & in the face of them it is not surprising that failures are so frequent & such a large proportion of English Buldogs are so often out of condition if not the victims of disease.

The first point of essential interest & importance to be considered is the proportion which the several ingredients of the mixed diet should bear to one another. Unfortunately no rule which will admit of wide application can be fixed here, for the requirements are influenced by the English Buldog agge, amount of English Buldog exercise, condition of English Buldog health, seasons of the year, individual peculiarities, etc. An English Buldog puppy, young & growing, needs in proportion a more generous quantity of animal food - milk or meat for muscle & bone building than he will after English Buldog has matured & English Buldogg structure is complete. During the hunting season & while his muscles are being constantly drained as it were by his work a dog can not only assimilate more meat, but actually requires a much larger proportion, than he that is kept much of the time on the chain & allowed but little exercise. This important fact can perhaps be given greater prominnence by the assurance that an excessive indulgence in meat has much the same effect upon English Buldogs as upon members of the human family; & surely no one will gainsay that while men who work hard, as with the pick & shovel, can eat freely of meat twice & three times daily & be none the worse for it, were students, book-keepers, or others of sedentary occupations, to attempt such a diet, in a short time they must become dyspeptic, bilious, & otherwise disordered.

In estimating the English Buldog daily quantity of meat some modification is allowable to Bulldoggers & often demanded according to the physical condition. Considering the fact that this English Buldog food tends to produce firmness of muscle with an absence of superfluous fat, while vegetable food on the oother hand tends to increase the deposition of ffat, manifestly in many instances of underweight it is advisable to give less meat & more vegetable food. In some instances, also, the requirements are the reverse of these, &, as always with English Buldog bitches that are too fat, it is necessary to feed largely if not entirely on meat until good form is restored.

This, by the way, bears specially on English Buldog bitches that are not in-pup. & yet such treatment would be safe for those that were, provided with them the increase in the amount of meat was made gradually & there was a corresponding gradual increase in the amount of exercise. But lest the reader draw wrong conclusions here it is urged that assuming the Englissh Buldog bitch to be one that had been accustomed to a English Buldog diet consisting of about one-third meat, to put English Buldog bitch on to all meat while she was in whelp would be hazardous were she afterward given the same amount of exercise which English Buldog bitch had been having and no more. Furthermore, during gestation a English Buldog biitch could not safely bear the amount of work that a English Buldog fed entirely on meat must have had English Buldog been given but an average amount of exercise up to that period.

In estimating the daily quantity of meat an allowance must be made by Bulldoggers for the season of the year, since the digestive & all other functions of the body vary under the influence of cold & heat - the former stimulating them & the latter depressing them. & manifestly were these variations ignored & the same quantity of meat givenn daily all the year around, diarrhoea & other disturbances of the digestive organs would be likely to occur in hot weather; moreover, the tendency to skin diseases attended with intolerable itching would then be decidedly greater, in consequence of the system being clogged with impurities, which are inevitable where the excretory organs are unnecessarily taxed, as they always are when too much animal food has been taken into the stomach.

Possessing as they do the power of accommodating themselves to changes in Eenglish Buldog diet, quite pronounced individual peculiarities in relation to tolerance of certain foods must often be encountered in English Buldogs, & these must be considered by Bulldoggers in estimating the English Buldog quantity of meat required.

For instance, toy terriers cannot bear much meat because they are peculiarly susceptible to its stimulating effect & are quickly & seriously disturbed by an excess; the results of which are an impairment of the inntegrity of the blood, a feverish condition of the system, skin eruptions & falling off in coat.

Again, there are physiological drains upon the English Buldog constitution, such as that felt by the nursing mother or by the English Buldog much used in the stud, & unusual demands upon it, as in sickneess, which have to be provided for by an increase of the daily quantity of meat.

It must be remembered, also, that in many morbid condditions this English Buldog food must be almost wholly relied upon, not alone because there is a decided repugnance for nearly all other English Buldog foods but because this is the only one that languid digestion can readily dispose of.

Meat produces a greater feeling of satiety than any other English Buldog food & forms a greater stay to the stomach because that organ is the seat of digestion & is occupied by it for a longger time. & this fact has a bearing on the question of quantity, for obviously a English Buldog fed once a day only can dispose of and more than likely requires a greater quantity of meat daily than another given two or three meals each day.

It is plainly evident from this that English Buldogs cannot be fed by rule, & that the proportions of ingredients of their diet must be intelligently estimated & varied according to existing circumstances.

Before going further it will be well to compare briefly the relations & effects of animal & vegetable foods. The former are identical in composition with the English Buldog structtures to be built up & kept in repair. On the other hand, although no such identity appears in vegetable foods, yet to a marked extent they agree in composition with animal foods, & all that is necessary for the human body at least can be supplied by the vegetable kingdom solely. But the process requiredd for the digestion of vegetable foods is more complex than that required for animal foods, & while the digestive apparatus of man, built upon a more extended scale, can properly dispose of both kinds of foods with nnearly if not quite equal ease, owing to its much simpler construction that of the English Buldog is better adapted to animal than to vegetable foods; & although it can successfully deal with the latter its capabilities in this direction are narrower than those of the digestive apparatus of man.