This week’s Frenchie Friday is the French Bulldog Village’s Boomer. Boomer is a 3 year old rescued French bulldog living in a Foster home here in Southern California. He is one of the French Bulldog Village K-kids currently staying in a foster home until he finally finds his forever pet home. Boomer’s life wasn’t always tough, at one point Boomer was in the same position Tink is in now. He lived with a happy couple that spoiled him for 2 years, until that couple had a baby. Having a new baby was something new to Boomer and he wasn’t very fond of someone new taking up all his attention.

Perfectly understandable Boomer…

He later found a second home. But in this home, he wasn’t the only dog/pet. Who knows how the originally coupled spoiled Boomer, because he made it clear that he wanted to be the only pet. After 18 months of unhappiness Boomer was forced out of his new home.

Poor Boomer has had a rough life; he is now living in a foster home and being evaluated to see if he could ever be safely put into another family again. He is settling in fine to his foster home however after being evaluated by Luciano Aguilar “Sit Means Sit” it has been determined that Boomer should go through a thirty day boot camp to increase his chances of being placed in a permanent home in the future.

This story is extremely aspiring to us. It has opened our eyes to the adjustments we will have to make in raising Tink to prevent her from becoming too spoiled that she is unable to welcome any other dog or our future baby into our home. Tink is our little angel. But one day our family will grow and we need to be prepared.

If we were experienced dog/frenchie owners, we would get Boomer in a heart beat. Look at his face. He’s a just a spoiled brat that wants some personal (all of your) attention. What better Frenchie to have…

It is through the help of French Bulldog Village and the K-Fund (Karen Krings Memorial fund) that Boomer is given the hope for a second chance. Without these amazing people dedicating their lives to the well being of rescued Frenchies, who knows what Boomer’s fate would have been?

We thrive on learning new things to help us give our French bulldog the best life possible. Tink is a very active puppy that likes to jump off things (beds, couches, etc.). The problem is, most of her body weight is in her head, so when she jumps she comes close to landing on her face. For that reason, we try our hardest to put her on the ground every time we feel she’s ready to jump off. We don’t want our puppy to hurt herself. It has been suggested that we never let her on the couch or bed in the first place. But, she’s our princess and loves to be by our side at all times.

Back to the head taking up a good proportion of the puppy’s total body weight, a fellow frenchie owner told us about a horrible experience she had with her frenchie. A friend of hers tried to pick up her frenchie like he would any other dog, however he didn’t know that Frenchies tilt forward because of the size of their heads. So the puppy fell on his face and ended up in the hospital. Imagine how the owner felt. Imagine how her friend felt. He felt horrible. But, he didn’t have no idea he could cause such damage. Just the other day, my 10 year old brother almost dropped her.

We must educate others before handing our dogs to them.

When we think about how much these dogs cost and hear stories like this, we sometimes get paranoid when people ask if they can hold our puppy. I personally don’t mind being mean and saying “No“. But for people like my girlfriend, there are ways to say No in a nice way. Say something like “I would, but the last time someone held her, she got too excited for the person to handle and fell” or “I would, but he’ll be mad at me”. You can think up a lie or just say ” I don’t trust a crazy $2,000 puppy in your arms, she’s not trained enough for that”.

But let’s face it. It never goes like that; somehow your puppy still ends up in your friend or stranger’s hands.

I suggest you educate them first. Let them know how (un)proportioned they are due to their heads and how excited they get in other people’s arms. Warn them to hold the dog the appropriate way, to pick them up closer to their heads. It’s hard to tell others no, or how to hold your dog. But just remember, frenchies do tilt forward and fall on their faces and you are the owner responsible for the dog’s safety regardless of how cute people think he or she is.

Oh, and don’t get me started on kids… (Just remember to always keep a close eye on your Frenchie)

This past weekend we decided to take a trip to Pomona LA fairplex to witness first hand the San Fernando kennel club dog show. We have seen many dog shows on TV but have never actually been to one. We were especially excited to visit the Frenchie ring and see a bunch of full grown Tinks posing and strutting their stuff around the ring. We awoke early Saturday morning to begin our long day, we had a two hour drive ahead of us and most of our friends thought we were crazy for leaving San Diego on memorial Day weekend but we were as excited as could be. We decided to make a weekend out of it and stay in LA and visit my family so not only was this Tink’s first dog show this was also Tink’s first vacation. We packed up all her food, treats, and her favorite toys and proceeded to Pomona.

We arrived at the dog show at 8:30 so we had time to get all our belongings together and figure out where we were going. We were told that we were not allowed to bring puppies but that it was ok as long as Tink stayed in our arms the whole time, considering we always keep her in our arms in public places anyway this was not a problem for us. We put her in a little bag with her cute head popping up and hopped on the first available tram to transport us to the show. On the tram ride there we saw one of the competing show dogs. She was a cute brindle with a poka dot coat on, she was extremely well behaved and you could tell she had her “A game” face on. When we arrived to the show building we quickly rushed to ring 18, the French Bulldog competition ring. I sat in the back with Tink while James got up close to watch the show and take pictures. We met a couple nice people that were willing to talk to us and answer all our questions regarding the show but overall most of the people were very serious and focused on the upcoming show.

We loved seeing all the French Bulldogs up close and admiring all the different types and colors of this precious breed. We hope one day Tink could become a show dog however it is way too soon to tell and she definitely needs a lot of training before she will be as obedient as the dogs we saw in the show. After the French Bulldog competition was over we walked outside and visited all the shops and exhibits. We bought Tink a collar, a frog/tennis ball toy, and some jerky. All the store owners were so excited to see a little French Bulldog puppy and they all wanted to kiss her and smell her wonderful puppy breath. At Lola’s collar stand we ran into a really nice lady with two brindled frenchie that had competed in the shows. She was very informative and we talked to her for about 30 minutes about Tink and her dogs and she gave us all kind of tips. I got down on my knees and played with her frenchie Charlotte and she was absolutely adorable, she was licking me and jumping all over me, it was great.

More Videos at Our French Bulldog’s Youtube Channel

‘Tiffany’s Chick’ is probably the cutest french bulldog puppy we’ve seen since Tink. She is 1 week younger than Tink (10/11 weeks old) and is as of now FrenchieTink.com’s youngest Frenchie Fridays feature.

Here’s a very small portion of what Tiffany had to say about her beloved frenchie.

“Chick is as sweet as can be. She is super loving and cuddly, but can also independently play on her own with no problem. She is a beautiful fawn girl and she is the joy of my life.“

Tiffany is an awesome lady who we’ve learned a lot from. She has provided us with very useful information on obtaining the right frenchie professionals and how to get involved in frenchie shows, games, clubs and meetups. She is an active member of the San Fernando French Bulldog Meetup Group and can be spotted at your next local frenchie conformation show. We are happy to feature Chick as this week’s Frenchie Friday featurette, not only because she is so adorable, but also because her mama (Tiffany) is one of the nicest ladies we’ve met since obtaining our frenchie and starting this blog.

Thanks Tiffany for all your great advice!

Pet Food Update - Nutro

As we have been hard at work searching for the perfect food for Tink (and with the help of others) we came across this interesting website called Consumer Affairs. There are tons of comments regarding Nutro and it’s negative impact on dogs. Customers are complaining about the quality of Nutro and even linking Nutro to the recent illnesses in their dogs.

All these consumer’s pets coincidently have the same symptoms of drinking excessive water, throwing up and diarrhea. Some consumers are even claiming their pets on Nutro are suffering from a deficiency in white blood cells and have had kidney failures. On our last trip to Petco we noticed the Nutro shelves were almost empty and there was a sign that read “This product may not be available at this time due to manufacturing slow down“, however as I recall there were still bags left on the shelves, it was as if there was a recall but they were going to go ahead and sell the remaining bags. I remember James and I saying good thing we decided not to go with that brand it would suck to come to a store for puppy food and it be out of stock. We did not even consider a possible recall.

However after reading all those consumer complaints I’m starting to second guess the nature of the almost empty shelves. One consumer even stated that she should have known better when her puppy did not want to eat the food. That’s pretty interesting considering Tink did not want to touch this kibble either (however Tink doesn’t want to touch any kibble).

Please take a look at this website and if you are using Nutro and have experienced similar symptoms write a comment hopefully this food will be recalled, I hate to hear about sick dogs, especially when they are getting sick off the food that’s supposed to nurture them and make them healthy.

Here’s a link to Consumer Affairs Nutro Compaints.

10 Minutes later, I read this : FDA Blocks Nutro Pet Food Shipment from Entering the U.S.

WOW! Thanks for the Warning Tati

While looking for the best food to feed our little Frenchie Tinky, we found this great French Bulldog Meetup post titled “How to Grade Your Dog’s Food“. It’s a fantastic post that implements a point system to grade your dog’s food. We decided to put the 3 foods we’ve been giving Tinky to the test. After going through the test ourselves, we found the list of foods that have already been graded. Here’s how the puppy food we’ve tried measured up against each other.

Science Diet Puppy - 80

Looks like Science Diet looses in everything. Not only does it contain by-products and a non-specific animal meat. It contains 2 types of corns, soy bean and salt. However, they did receive extra points for being supported by a nutrition group (The Hills Company) and for having beet pulp.

You may already know how I feel about Science Diet based on my previous post; What is the Right Food to Feed a French Bulldog.

Nutro Maxx Puppy - 84

We loved Nutro because we were sold by the PetSmart/Nutro sales lady. We had a big bag of Science Diet in our cart when she showed us how to read ingredients and things to look for. Mainly she told us to avoid by-products. Now that I think about it, she didn’t even know what a french bulldog was, however we were very naive and ready to learn whatever we could.

Nutro Maxx lost many points on the French Bulldog Meet up grading system as well. They lost points for not having a specific meat (poultry fat). They had 2 of the same grains and lost a little more points for corn and wheat. But they did get 3 points for also containing beet pulp.

Avoderm Puppy - 105

Lisa’s favorite fruit is the avocado and her main concern was having a healthy dog with a shiny coat. Luckily for Avoderm they claimed to give dogs shiny coats and it contains avocados from California. Avoderm only lost points for having 2 of the same grains. The problem is that both of those grains are too high on the list as if they are a majority ingredients. Avoderm did receive points for having fruit, oatmeal and herring meal also. Avoderm is a premium dog food just short of enough protein for a frenchie puppy.

Tink really loves wet Avoderm. But, this test was on the kibbles and we discovered that the wet food has even less protein then the kibbles. Being that protein is the most important part of a French Bulldog’s diet we have decided Avoderm is also not for Tinky.

Dang, off to more puppy food research…

UPDATE: NUTRO RECALL

Lisa and I have been going through the worst frenchie food experience ever. When we first got Tinky, she was healthy and was fine living off kibble dry dog food. However we wanted to give our little princess an awesome meal mixed with a little wet food. BAD IDEA! She literally sucked all the wet food off the kibbles before spitting them all out individually leaving only kibbles in her bowl.

We figured after a while if she was hungry enough she would start eating hard dog food again, so we tried giving her only dry food for a couple meals. Negative. It seems like she just doesn’t like kibbles anymore. Back to mixing, and back to getting the dry dog food spit out. We even counted how many kibbles we placed in her bowl. She would only eat about 3-4 out of 20 of them. We searched for solutions. We were told by a Pet People store worker that we should feed her a dry dog food more palable, tasty. On the same day we were discovering that Science Diet wasn’t a great choice. We thought maybe we can find a kibble Tink likes and is good for her.

While shopping at PetSmart, we were confronted by a Nutro person. She explained to us by-products and suggested a better quality meal like Nutro. However being a nutro employer, she didn’t explain to us how good the others were also. Ignorant to this situation, we thought Nutro was a life saving food that we could switch Tinky over to. While we were there, we picked up a bag of Avoderm as well, just in case she didn’t like the Nutro and we thought Avoderm would be a good choice based on ingredients and the benefits it offered to a healthy skin and coat.

Even with the new dry food options Tink would still only eat the wet food and a couple kibbles. After 10 days of putting Tinky through 3 food brands, (Science Diet, Nutro Max, Avoderm) she finally started to eat Avoderm wet and 5 out of the 20 Avoderm dry kibbles. She’s soooo spoiled. But at this point, we’re just happy she’s eating and not throwing up from a bad stomach. She’s a tough girl.

For the past 2 days, Tinky has been eating Avoderm wet mixed with very little kibbles. I forgot to mention that the only way we were able to get her to eat the food was for us to put it in the microwave. I don’t know if it is the aroma the microwave gives off or if it just taste better hot. But, one thing I’m sure of is the microwave is not good for the containment of essential nutrients in the dog food. Ever since we started heating her meals, she’s been eating the wet food so fast, a few extra kibbles slip past her here and there.

Here’s the worst part, we learned about the Dog Food Analysis, the possible dangers of Avocado to dogs and the lack of protein in Avoderm. So, we decided to switch her again. We heard it takes about 2 weeks for the dog’s previous dog food to fully leave the system. So we don’t really want to switch the food so fast again. We’re going to wait to at least she only has 1 food in her system.

We feel so bad for Tink because we know the dog’s (let alone, a puppy’s) digestive system is so sensitive. We just really want to find a food that is perfect for her with enough protein and hopefully something she will eat in the kibble form. What makes it harder is we can’t tell if and when she has a tummy ache. So far, the only sign of a tummy ache we can find is diarrhea, but all Tink eats is soft food, so all her stools are soft.

Well, off to more puppy food research.

If you have any tips, please let us know!

We want to make sure our French Bulldog Tink had the best food possible. I’ve been doing some research on the popular dog food brand Science Diet because that’s what our breeders were feeding Tink as well as the brand our Vet recommended. Since we posted a blog regarding Science Diet we have gotten many negative feedback, so we decided to dig a little further. Besides finding out that Science Diet has by-products in it, I have also read that the only reason why vets recommend Iams and Science Diet is because the two companies help put them through veterinarian school and are the ones who publish the textbooks they use while in school. The company that provides the vets with these textbooks, research labs and information is The Hill’s Company, which coincidently happens to be the makers of Science Diet.

I also read it is not recommended to trust vets when it comes to nutrition because vets spend very little time on nutrition while in school (some vets don’t spend any time on it whatsoever) and just aren’t qualified to render a good judgment as to what’s good and what’s bad. This is why people need to go to sites like Mordanna’s Dog Food Project (http://www.dogfoodproject.com/) and research for yourself as to what’s good and what’s bad. Or check out Ashley’s Pets Dog Food Info (http://ashleyspets.com/DogFood.html) for juicy veterinarian diet info.

I spent hours surfing through the Dog Food Project and found some very interesting reads about different dog food brands and the veterinarian politics around them. I also discovered an ex-veterinarian journalist named Charles Danten. He pretty much exposes all of the unethical veterinarian nutrition practices and how vets make money off brands like Iams and Science Diet.

Here’s the twist. Tink’s Parents are some of the healthiest adult frenchies we’ve ever seen. They have a good bill of health and have never had any problems. And when we got Tink, she appeared and acted as healthy as a French bulldog pup can be. And they eat Science Diet. hmmm… maybe all this controversy is a myth. It seems the more and more we research anything in the puppy world the more we realize that everyone has a different opinion, the question is who do we believe? Perhaps different brands work better for different dogs, I guess in the end as long as your dog is healthy and happy thats all that matters.

We know that French bulldogs are loving dogs and that they are great with people. We’ve also heard that they are great with kids, their owners and other animals as well. But there is one thing we’ve heard (and read) that is adding a little drama to our lives. It is that frenchies pick a favorite. We’ve only had our French bulldog puppy for a week now and we both already feel Tink has picked her favorite (well, kinda). The first day, it was me. Tuesday through Thursday it was Lisa and now it seems like she’s back to liking me more.

We both have our own strategies to winning the battle of ‘Tink’s favorite companion’. Sometimes Lisa and I do rock-paper-scissors or make up some deal on feeding our little frenchie. We sometimes think she likes whoever feeds her the most. We also fight over who should give her the treat when she goes pottie or who should drive, so tink can be on the other person’s lap. I’m telling you, it seems like Lisa and I compete all day to be Tink’s favorite. The only thing we can distinguish so far is that when she wants to play, she is all about me, however when she wants to cuddle she doesn’t want to have anything to do with me. When she wants to cuddle and snuggle up to someone all she wants to know is where Lisa is.

I’ve tried researching how to become the French bulldog’s favorite, but all I can find is that frenchies would rather play with humans over others dogs and other webpages about frenchie owners and their favorite things to do.

The problem is I don’t know how to determine which one of us is her favorite or how  I make sure I become her favorite.

Is it whoever takes her out to pottie and rewards her? Or is it who feeds her? Perhaps it’s the first person to come through the door when she has been left home alone? How about who plays with her in the morning? I just hope it’s not whoever cuddles with her the most, because Lisa has me beat in that category.

If anyone has any tips and advice, we I’d greatly appreciate it.

Today we took Tink on her first trip to PetSmart. At first we were reluctant to take her to a Pet store however we were told on a previous visit that we were able to bring her in and could even get her started on training classes. Apparently all the puppies as well as adult dogs in training classes are required to show medical records to prove that they are up to date on all their shots. We still are not sure if training classes are okay though please provide us with any input you can on when to start her, we thought we had to wait till all vaccinations are complete at 5 months, and our Vet recommends 3 months. We still held her the whole time to keep her safe. She had a ball exploring all the toys and looking at everyone. The employees and customers all turned their heads to get a peak at cute little Tink, we really felt like the proudest parents in the world. As I was walking through the store I peaked into the training class and saw another frenchie puppy. Immediately I yelled for James to come, this was the first Frenchie puppy we had ever seen in person besides Tink’s litter mates. The owner of the Frenchie saw Tink and was also excited to see another Frenchie puppy. Turns out her Frenchie is a 5 month old French Bulldog named Goose. He had fawn coloring and was absolutely adorable, it was amazing to see some sort of an idea of what Tink will look like in a few months. After discovering that Goose was up to date on all his shots and that it was ok for Tink to play with him we couldn’t resist the temptation to introduce the little Frenchies.

Tink loved having a real life friend, they were reluctant of one another at first but soon started playing and wrestling together. It was so great to watch Tink interact with another Frenchie, even though she was considerably smaller than Goose she still tried to hold her own. As the puppies played we got to know Goose’s owner and trade Frenchie stories with her. She told us that they are trying to teach Goose to roll over now but he doesnt like being on his back much, we laughed cause it seems that Tink’s favorite position is her back. Its funny that all Frenchies are the same in so many ways but yet they all have their own distinct personalities. We had a great day and of course managed to get Tink even more toys to add to her collection. We truly understand the word spoiled when we look at our little French Bulldog.

Shortly after this video, they finally started to play with eachother. Gotta Love Frenchie Puppies!