Maybe you’ve heard of Google Books? Google has been scan­ning rare and out-of-print books for easy online read­ing and research­ing. Many of these books are avail­able for down­load to your e-reader, com­puter, iPhone, or what­ever you’re using to read dig­i­tal books.

Would there, could there be scanned books with a men­tion of French Bull­dogs?! (What a dis­ap­point­ment it would be if there weren’t! :-) )

Combed through Google’s offer­ings and found a few intrigu­ing arti­cles and books for your enjoy­ment and mine. Today am pre­sent­ing a cou­ple of chap­ters from The New Book of the Dog an Eng­lish book pub­lished in 1907. The free down­load ver­sion is avail­able through For­got­ten Books or you can read these chap­ters through the links below.

The New Book of the Dog
Chap­ter IV – The French Bull­dog (Boule­dogue Français)
by Fred­er­ick W. Cousens, M.R.C.V.S, F.Z.S., pages 57–62.

This chap­ter dis­cusses in detail the pos­si­ble ori­gins of the breed, includ­ing the often-disputed addi­tion of the Span­ish Dogue. The author goes on to describe the found­ing of the Eng­lish French Bull­dog club, the breed stan­dard at the time, and how breed­ers of the age could improve on the breed. He tells how to pre­pare for lit­ter arrival by hav­ing a fos­ter mother (any breed) on standby, and declares cats make excel­lent fos­ter moth­ers for lit­ters of one or two. He out­lines how to feed and care for the grow­ing pups, and the shock­ingly young age at which he says to sell pups not being kept from the litter.

The chap­ter also men­tions the Minia­ture Bull­dog breed and how it was involved with the devel­op­ment of the French Bull­dog breed. Luck­ily for us, there is a full chap­ter about this long-lost breed, which had such an impact on the French Bulldog.

The New Book of the Dog
Chap­ter III – The Minia­ture Bull­dog
by the Lady Kath­leen Pilk­ing­ton, pages 52–56.

Other chap­ters con­tain gems of Vic­to­rian advice for the care and man­age­ment of dogs and ken­nels, how to pre­pare for dog show travel, and encour­ages dog own­ers to keep goats on hand to pro­vide a steady source of goat milk for a dog’s nutri­tion. (The orig­i­nal effort to pro­vide a raw diet!) Enjoy your stroll through yes­ter­year as you com­pare how things were done a hun­dred years ago. Many parts seem quaint and some so cur­rent; you quickly real­ize some dog owner issues never change.



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