French Bulldog Puppies

From the Nottingham lace benches to Normandy

The French Bulldog begins in England, which surprises most people. Nottingham was a lace town, and the lace workers there kept small bulldogs — the toy end of a breed that had already been bred down from the heavy old bulldog into something a person could keep in a terraced house. The little dogs sat under the workbenches and rode in the carts.

When lace-making mechanized in the middle of the nineteenth century, a good many of those workers took their trade across the Channel to Normandy, where hand lace still paid. The dogs went with them. Somewhere between the Normandy workshops and Paris, over a couple of decades of local breeding, the toy bulldog turned into something else: shorter in the face, lighter in the body, straighter in the leg, and unmistakably its own thing.

Paris took to it. The bouledogue français belonged first to the market porters at Les Halles and to the shopkeepers and rag-pickers of the working districts, then, as usually happens, to everybody else — café society, the artists’ quarter, the fashionable end of town. Toulouse-Lautrec and Degas both put one in a picture. By the 1880s the breed had a name, a following and a settled shape, and Americans visiting Paris began bringing them home.

The bat ear, and the fanciers who insisted on it

Two ear types existed side by side in the early breed. Some dogs carried the rose ear, folded back the way an English Bulldog wears it. Others carried the bat ear: broad at the base, rounded at the tip, standing straight up off a flat skull. In France opinion was divided and both were shown.

American fanciers had no such doubts. They had bought bat-eared dogs, they liked the bat-eared look, and when a Westminster show in 1898 was judged by someone who favoured the rose ear, they walked out and staged their own specialty show in the ballroom of the Waldorf hotel instead. The French Bull Dog Club of America had been founded the year before — the first club for the breed anywhere in the world — and the standard it wrote made the bat ear the only correct ear. That standard stuck, in France as well as here, and it is the reason every French Bulldog you meet today looks up at you over two upright ears.

It is a good thing to know while a puppy is climbing onto your shoe: those ears are the one part of the dog that was settled by argument rather than by work.

Small, square and heavier than it looks

Pick a Frenchie up and the first thing you notice is the weight. An adult stands about eleven to thirteen inches at the shoulder and comes in under twenty-eight pounds, and nearly all of that is bone and muscle. The chest is broad and deep, the shoulders are wide, the front legs are short and set well apart, and the whole dog is built like a small piece of furniture.

The head is large and square, flat between the ears, with a rounded forehead and heavy folds above a short nose. The eyes are dark, round, set low and set wide, and they carry most of the expression. The tail is naturally short — either straight or in a tight screw — and has been since the breed took shape; nobody docks it.

Underneath all that, a Frenchie moves with an unhurried rolling gait that covers less ground than you expect and looks thoroughly pleased with itself.

Brindle, fawn, cream and pied

The coat is short, smooth, fine and close, and it is one of the simplest coats in dogs to look after.

The colours run further than most people realise. Brindle is the classic: a dark ground shot through with lighter hairs, anywhere from a fine tiger-striping to a coat so dark that the pattern only shows in direct sun. Fawn covers everything from pale honey to a deep red-gold, usually with a black mask. Cream is a clear off-white with no mask. Pied is a white ground broken by patches of brindle or fawn, often with a patch over one eye and a scatter of ticking through the white.

Markings move around as well — a mask, a white blaze up the forehead, a white chest, white toes, brindle flecks running through the fawn. A litter of Frenchie puppies is rarely a matched set, and the one that ends up coming home with you is usually not the one you had pictured on the way in.

A companion breed, and it shows

Everything in the French Bulldog’s history points at one job: keeping a person company. It was never asked to herd, guard a boundary or work a field, and the temperament reflects that. A Frenchie wants to be where you are — in the kitchen while dinner is made, on the sofa afterwards, in the bathroom doorway, in the room. Give it that and you have about as easy a dog to live with as you will find.

They are funny, and they know it. Frenchies play in short bursts — a toy flung about, a run at a cushion, a tug game that ends with the dog sitting down on the toy in triumph — and then they lie flat and sleep. They are good with children, sociable with other dogs and generally delighted to meet visitors. They do not say much; a Frenchie will let you know when someone is at the door and then leave the matter with you.

Space is not a consideration. A Frenchie is as content in a small apartment as in a house with a yard, so long as the people it likes are in it.

Grooming and the shape of a Frenchie’s day

The coat takes minutes. A rubber curry or a grooming mitt once a week lifts the loose hair and brings up the shine, and most owners do it on the sofa while the dog falls asleep against them. Wipe the folds above the nose and under the eyes with a soft damp cloth in the same session and dry them properly afterwards. The ears are large and open, so a wipe round the inside once a week keeps them clean and gets a puppy used to having its head handled. Nails a little and often, and teeth brushed early enough that a puppy decides the toothbrush is a game.

Exercise is modest and pleasant. Two short walks a day with some play in between suits most adults, which is a large part of why the breed fits so many households. In a Florida or Tennessee summer the early and late hours are the comfortable ones for both of you, with shade, water and a cool floor in between — a mid-morning walk in January and a sunrise walk in July is roughly the pattern owners settle into.

Most owners measure meals rather than filling the bowl, and count training treats against the day’s total, because a Frenchie will cheerfully eat whatever is put in front of it. That appetite is also the training budget. Short sessions, one thing at a time, paid in something worth having, and you will get a long way — this is a quick dog that learns fast when there is a reason to.

Come and meet the French Bulldog puppies

A photograph flattens a Frenchie into a shape. In front of you it is a dense, warm, surprisingly solid little dog that comes straight over, sits down on your foot and looks up to see what happens next. The weight is the first surprise, and how quickly one decides you are its person is the second.

Our French Bulldog puppies come from our network of licensed breeders, and our team can tell you how a particular puppy has been getting on with people. We have a store in Orlando and one in Nashville, and you are welcome to sit on the floor with a puppy for as long as you like before deciding anything. Find directions and hours, and ask about financing while you are here. Every puppy here goes home with its vet records, its vaccination history and a health warranty, and our team will walk you through what those cover.