The dog David Leavitt went looking for
Most breeds arrive by accident, shaped over centuries by whatever work was in front of them. The Olde English Bulldogge arrived on purpose, and recently enough that we know exactly who started it, when, and why.
In 1971 a Pennsylvania man named David Leavitt began a project with a very specific target. He was not trying to invent a new dog. He was trying to get back to an old one. The bulldog painted and described in England before 1835 was a taller, longer-legged, freer-moving animal than the bulldog most people picture today — an athlete with a broad head and a long stride, kept for a job that Parliament outlawed in that year. Once the job was gone there was nothing practical left to select for, and over the following century the breed was bred toward the show ring instead, growing lower, heavier and more exaggerated with each generation.
Leavitt had the old paintings, the old written descriptions, and a clear picture of what he wanted: the outline of the Regency bulldog, on legs that let it move, in a dog that could live as a family animal. What he did not have was any surviving stock of the original. So he set about rebuilding it from the pieces still in circulation.
The plan behind the reconstruction
The method is the interesting part. Leavitt did not simply put likely-looking dogs together and hope. He worked from the linebreeding scheme Dr. Fechimer of Ohio State University had developed for cattle, applying a livestock geneticist’s structure to a dog project, and he chose his foundation stock to supply particular things.
English Bulldog gave him the head and the broad front. American Bulldog gave him leg length, drive and working ability. Bullmastiff supplied size and substance. Bull-and-terrier stock brought athleticism and a tighter, more mobile frame. From there the work was selection: generation after generation chosen for a dog that moved freely, stood taller, carried less exaggeration in the face and body, and had an even, biddable temperament to live with.
Leavitt founded a breed association in the 1980s to hold the standard, and the breed has been carried forward since by clubs on both sides of that lineage — he later gave his own line the name Leavitt Bulldogge to distinguish it. The United Kennel Club recognized the Olde English Bulldogge in 2014. Fifty years on, the project has produced something unusual: a modern breed with a written, documented, deliberate origin, which is more than almost any ancient breed can offer.
What the reconstruction looks like
An Olde English Bulldogge reads as a bulldog at a glance and then keeps surprising you. Males stand around seventeen to twenty inches at the shoulder and weigh roughly sixty to eighty pounds; females run a little under that. The frame is broad and thickly muscled through the chest and shoulders, but it sits on noticeably more leg than people expect, and the dog covers ground with an easy, powerful stride rather than a roll.
The head is large and square with a broad, well-defined muzzle — shorter than a mastiff’s, considerably less compressed than the show bulldog’s. The eyes are set wide, the ears are small and carried rose, button or tulip, and the whole expression is alert and good-humoured rather than sleepy.
The coat is short, close-lying and glossy. Colour comes in brindle of every shade, fawn, red, black and solid white, with or without white markings and often in a pied pattern. It varies enormously from litter to litter and tells you nothing at all about the dog underneath it.
Grooming is close to the shortest job in the dog world. A rubber curry once a week lifts the loose hair and brings up the shine, and most bulldogges lean into it and fall asleep partway through. Any folds around the face get a wipe and a dry while you are already there. Nails are thick and grow fast on a heavy dog, so trim a little and often rather than waiting, and brush the teeth from the first week. Ten minutes a week covers the entire routine.
Steady, confident and thoroughly attached
Temperament is the thing Leavitt selected for hardest, and it shows. An Olde English Bulldogge is confident without being busy. It takes a while to wind up and comes down quickly, and it spends a good part of the day as furniture, lying somewhere it can see the room and the people in it.
With its own household it is affectionate in a very physical way. Bulldogges lean. They sit on feet, they arrive at the sofa with the clear assumption that space will be made, and they follow whoever is doing something interesting. Most families find the dog installs itself in whichever room is busiest and stays there until something better comes up.
With visitors they are self-possessed rather than effusive, which is a formal way of saying a bulldogge decides about you in its own time and is then completely yours. They will let you know when someone is at the door, and then go back to what they were doing. Children they generally take in stride: this is a patient, tolerant breed with a good sense of humour about being climbed on.
Early, generous socialising is the thing to prioritise while the puppy is small. Take it out through the first year to meet ordinary things and ordinary dogs behaving normally — different floors, hardware stores, umbrellas, hats, bicycles. A bulldogge that has met a hundred ordinary things by six months finds the hundred and first unremarkable.
Training, and what a day looks like
Bulldogges learn through motivation rather than pressure. A dog built this solidly has its own view about being pushed, and a piece of chicken gets you further in ten seconds than an argument gets you in ten minutes. Keep sessions short, apply the same rules the same way from everybody in the house, and pay generously.
Two things deserve real time while the puppy is still small enough to pick up, because bulldogge puppies are dense, strong and growing fast. The first is loose-leash walking, which turns into a pleasure for the next decade once it is installed. The second is handling — feet, ears, mouth, face, all of it, ten seconds at a time with a treat — so that routine care is uneventful for life.
The daily routine is moderate and regular rather than intense. Two decent walks, some play in the yard, and something worth chewing keeps a bulldogge in good order. This is not a distance-running breed, and it is not a sofa ornament either; it wants a proper outing and then a proper sleep. In a Florida or Tennessee summer the early and late hours are the pleasant ones for both of you, with shade, grass and water rather than hot pavement in between.
Give the mind something as well. Bulldogges enjoy a puzzle feeder, a food-stuffed toy, or five minutes of trick training before dinner, and a dog that has used its head settles more completely than one that has only walked.
Come and meet an Olde English Bulldogge
Build and character both vary within the breed, and a photograph flattens both. What you notice standing next to one is how much dog there is, how easily it moves, and how quickly it decides to lean on you.
Our Olde English Bulldogge puppies come from our network of licensed breeders, and our team can tell you what a particular puppy’s parents were like. We have a store in Orlando and one in Nashville, and you are welcome to sit down 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.