Health
As a result of the compacted airway of the French bulldog, they may develop an inability to effectively regulate temperature. While a regular canine may suffer to some degree from the heat, to a Frenchie it may be lethal. It is imperative that they be protected from temperature extremes at all times, and that they always have access to fresh water and shade. As they are a brachycephalic breed, French Bulldogs are banned by several commercial airlines due to the numbers that have died whilst in the air. This is because dogs with snub noses find it difficult to breathe when they are hot and stressed out; with the cargo space in an aircraft rising to as high as 30C when waiting on the runway.
French bulldogs can also suffer from an assortment of back and spinal diseases, most of which are probably related to the fact that they were selectively chosen from the dwarf examples of the bulldog breed. This condition is also referred to as chondrodysplasia. Some breeders feel that only dogs that have been x-rayed and checked for spinal anomalies should be bred.
Patellar luxation is the dislocation (slipping) of the patella (kneecap). In dogs, the patella is a small bone that shields the front of the stifle joint. This bone is held in place by ligaments. As the knee joint is moved, the patella slides in a grove in the femur. The kneecap may dislocate toward the inside (medial) or outside (lateral) of the leg. This condition may be the result of injury or congenital deformities (present at birth). Patellar luxation can affect either or both legs. Testing is available to predict a the presence of PL in a dog, but cannot predict it.
Read more about this topic: French Bulldog
Famous quotes containing the word health:
“The sick man is taken away by the institution that takes charge not of the individual, but of his illness, an isolated object transformed or eliminated by technicians devoted to the defense of health the way others are attached to the defense of law and order or tidiness.”
—Michel de Certeau (1925–1986)
“The same soil is good for men and for trees. A man’s health requires as many acres of meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of muck.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In the continual enterprise of trying to guide appropriately, renegotiate with, listen to and just generally coexist with our teenage children, we ourselves are changed. We learn even more clearly what our base-line virtues are. We listen to our teenagers and change our minds about some things, stretching our own limits. We learn our own capacity for flexibility, firmness and endurance.”
—Jean Jacobs Speizer. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Collective, ch. 4 (1978)