Archive for the 'French Bulldog Miscellaneous' Category

Dog Food - Choosing the Best for Your French Bulldog

admin April 16th, 2008

Dog Food - Choosing the Best for Your French Bulldog

I am in the process of researching food for a new Frenchie puppy we are working on getting. MY HEAD IS SWIMMING!! The breeder feeds a raw diet to her dogs. I really dont think that is for us. I do however want a premium food with no fillers and no wheat, corn or soy. I know Frenchies as a breed can have some allergies. I have looked up Orijen, Natures Variety (instinct and praire), EVO (our breeder said her dogs seemed to drink why to much on EVO) and The Honest Kitchen. I am really leaning towards the Orijen. Could you please give me you opinion?

Carol writes - 

Yup, dog food can be confusing. Personally, I feed raw, but I don’t think that it is the be all and end all of feeding. I happen to believe there are some really good commercial foods on the market.

The key things I personally look for are –

  • Meat comes first. I do NOT want to see sugar beet pulp, or any kind of grain, coming before the meat protein ingredients. In fact, I ideally want to see no grains (corn, wheat, barley, rice, etc) at all. See below for more details.
  • I want to see meat solids, and not grains or meals or by products. This means chicken should be chicken and not ‘chicken meal’.
  • I want to see a food that’s grain free (grains are cheap filler, and of no particular benefit to the dog. Also, more dogs are allergic to grains than they are to meat proteins.). An acceptable carb source substitute for grain is potato, sweet potato or squash.
  • I also want to see human grade, and preferably organic, ingredients.
  • I want to try to make sure that the meats and other ingredients are sourced domestically, and not from China
  • Finally, I think baking rather than extruding is a better process for the manufacture of kibble. There are numerous reasons why baking is preferable, most importantly the preservation of valuable nutrients. As well, most extruded foods are sprayed with additional fat after extrusion - hence the greasy look inside most bags of dog food, and the slightly rancid smell. This is done to increase ‘palatability’, since extruded food otherwise has the smell and mouth ‘feel’ of small hunks of straw.

Of the foods you mentioned, I personally like Orijen, and Honest Kitchen. Honest Kitchen is a nice ‘raw’ food for people who prefer not to go through the mess and fuss of home prepared raw. I’ve also heard really good things about Nature’s Variety. At this stage, with the research you’ve already done, I think its mostly a case of choosing the food that suits your lifestyle, and your dog’s taste buds, the best.

Good luck,

Carol

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Ask the Web Geek - Protecting my photos?

bullmarketfrogs March 19th, 2008

Protecting my photos?

Hi! I have web site and twice now people have stolen my photographs and put them on to puppy for sale sites. Puppy Find in particular! 

Is there an easy way to make sure this can’t happen? Is there a way to keep people from taking photographs off of my page?  I hate seeing my dogs listed as ‘for sale’, and then having to send all those emails asking sites to take them down!

Carol writes -

It certainly does suck, doesn’t it? I’ve been there, and I know how frustrating it can be to watch as some creep uses your dog’s photos to try to scam people. Feeling powerless is the most frustrating feeling in the world.

There are a few things you can do that will make it more difficult for people to steal your images - one involves the website on which your photos appear, and the other involves your photos themselves.

Web based protection

Inserting a small script called a ‘no right click’ script prevents people from being able to easily right click/save your photos. Dynamic Drive has several of them, which are inserted into the head tags on your web pages. You’ll need to insert them on every page where photos appear.

Link - http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex9/noright3.htm 

Unfortunately, this doesn’t work on most newer browsers - well, it does stop people from right clicking, but there are numerous other ways to steal photos, the most simple of which is a screen capture. Sorry, but there’s really no way around this at all.

That leaves us with image based protection.

Image based protection is also known as ‘watermarking’.  Watermarking is the process by which we add a text overlay to a photograph.

Here’s a sample -

Watermarked Photograph Samples

The image on the left has the watermark across the main content of the photo - not pretty, but usually effective.

The second image  has the watermark at the bottom of the photo, which is less conspicuous, but easily removed by cropping the photo.

The choice will depend on just how much security you require for your photos.

There are numerous pages detailing how to make a watermark, and the details depend on which photo editing software you use. Use this link to find generalized search results on watermarking, or add in the name of the software you use to edit your photographs.

Carol 

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Ask the Web Geek - Kennel Blindness?

bullmarketfrogs March 15th, 2008

Kennel Blindness

Hi I’m curious as to what people mean when they say someone is “Kennel Blinded”. I am buying my first show dog after owning a French Bulldog pet for almost four years. When I started calling breeders about a show dog they would ask me where I got my dog from. Someone said to me that the breeder of my pet Frenchie is “Kennel Blind”, and I was too embarassed to ask what this means. I know it wasn’t a compliment by the way she said it! I got the impression she didn’t want to sell me a show dog just because of who I got my pet from.

Why is that, and is kennel blindness so bad that it will make it impossible for me to get a showdog from anyone?

Carol writes -

No one you contact need be afraid that your pet’s breeder has kennel blindness - after all, it’s not catching, although it is quite common among show dog people.

Kennel blindness is a catch all term used to indicate that a breeder is oblivious to the faults of dogs that they themselves have bred - either willfully ignorant, or through sheer inability to separate emotions (I love Suzy, therefore she’s beautiful) from pragmatism (I love Suzy, but you could iron clothes on her back and she moves like she’s on crutches). Oddly enough, some of the most determinedly kennel blind among us can be ruthless critics of other people’s dogs.

It’s natural for us to favour our own offspring, whether two legged or four, but those who choose to breed dogs need to learn that love doesn’t need to be blind, at least not when it comes to show dogs. It’s a lesson that can take time to learn, and you’ll see that some of the best loved pets on a breeder’s couch are often dogs they’d never dream to take in the ring.

I don’t quite understand why anyone you’ve contacted about a show dog should care that your pet Frenchie’s breeder has kennel blindness. Likely, there’s some sort of simmering and long standing resentment there between the two breeders - a situation you’d do best to stay out of, by the way. Feuds between breeders are rarely pretty, and a novice show person doesn’t need to complicate their life any further.

Move on to another breed less resentful of where you got your pet from, and worry about kennel blindness when - and if - you decide to venture into the wild world of breeding.

Carol

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Ask the Web Lady - Bred Here, or Born Overseas?

bullmarketfrogs March 13th, 2008

Ask the Web Lady - Bred Here, or Born Overseas?

Hi I have a question - how do I know on a website if the person bred the dogs or bought them from someplace over seas (imported)?

Carol writes -

The simple answer would seem to be to simply ask the person selling the dogs, but unfortunately there have been cases where sellers outright lie, claiming to have bred dogs that were actually imported.

There are a few ways to force the sellers to tell you where their French Bulldogs came from.

First, try asking them copies of the AKC* pedigrees of both parents, and a copy of the pedigree of the puppy. Tell them pointedly “I want a copy of the puppy’s pedigree, and I want to see pedigrees on both parents”. Any reputable breeder should be able to supply this for you.

Secondly, ask for a current photo of the puppy with its mother. There’s no reason why a seven or eight week old puppy’s mother shouldn’t still be there with her pups (dads are a different story, as there are some really great reasons for dad not being present, which we can discuss later). If the breeder says “Oh, mom’s not here”, ask them “Why not?”.

Finally, ask the breeder if they have filed an AKC* litter application yet for this puppy’s litter. If they answer with anything other than either “Yes”, ask “why not?”.

You have every single right to expect to get what you are contracting to buy - a puppy bred in the country where you are buying the puppy from. Puppies imported from overseas for sale at seven or eight weeks are risky - they’ve been separated from their mother too soon, have suffered a long and traumatic air flight, are at risk of carrying diseases due to poor veterinary care, and have no caring breeder standing behind them, willing to take the puppy back if anything goes wrong. For more on the risks of imported, brokered puppies, visit the Wrong Puppy website.

Use your head, not just your heart, and if something on a website seems to be too good to be true, it probably is.

*AKC is short for American Kennel Club. If your puppy is in Canada, the registry body should be the CKC, or Canadian Kennel Club. If a puppy is for sale is the USA, and is being sold as “CKC registered”, this likely stands for “Continental Kennel Club”, and it is a scam registry.

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