Frenchie Tink

When it came time to leave Tink home alone, it was extremely hard for us to do. She’ll cry and sometimes try to squeeze herself through the door. Sometimes while standing outside the door, we’ll listen through it and hear her screaming and scratching because we were leaving her alone.

So we decided that every time right before we left her alone, we would give her a meal to distract her. This worked really well for a couple days. But, then she caught on to us. But it gets worst. Now every time we give her a meal, she thinks we are about to leave and she doesn’t even want to think about the food. She stays furthest away from her bowl as possible and follows us around the house and sometimes waits infront of the door.

No matter what, it seems like we make crazy decisions for Tink’s food life. During meals we would have to stay in the room with her and encourage her to eat. We’ll rub her back sometimes and say “good Tinky, yaaay!, good girl., mmm, food good”.

Right now, she’s back to putting her head in the plate before it hits the ground. But, the second we walk away, it better be to get comfortable on the couch.

We ran into a little problem for this week’s frenchie friday feature. It was mostly a timing thing but we also don’t have enough frenchies to feature every Friday. While deciding what to write about, I thought about French bulldogs that need love.

We were so caught up in our frenchie and finding owners that love their frenchies as much as we do, that we never thought about how many frenchies there are in this country that need some love. Furthermore, we never thought about the people out there looking for that perfect French bulldog to love/save.

For those of you looking for that perfect frenchie, consider a rescue one. A lot of the times foster frenchies show more love and companionship than a dog that you raise yourself. Some of these dogs have had tough lives and when showed that their are actually places in this world where they can have a pillow or even a dog bowl really does go a long way with them. They really appreciate it.

Here’s what a friend of ours told us.

“Harley was rescued from puppy mill and lived a tough life…. But it feels good to know that I brought that big ‘ole smile to his face. He is so loyal, listens, and you can tell he appreciates his new life.”

Just visit the French Bulldog Rescue Network’s website and read a couple French bulldog stories, I’m sure you will be touched. I certainly was.

After a couple weeks and several brands of food, we finally found a food our Frenchie Tink will eat. We have tried various brands of dry dog food and she refused to eat most of them, or was excited at first but then stopped eating it. She even started to be picky with wet food and we thought we were never going to find a food to her liking. As for the dry food, she would eat the wet off the kibbles and spit the kibbles out every time. After talking to a few pet store employees as well as other frenchie owners, we learned that it could be the texture of the kibbles and the sensitivity of her little puppy jaws. How could we expect Tink to go from the milky texture of mommy’s milk straight to dry rugged texture of kibbles? Or could we? Tinky was fine with dry kibbles and she was eating them at the breeder’s house until she experienced wet food. She was fine with Nutro Max, but we know how that goes. She liked Avoderm, but it contains iffy avocados and very little protein.

We heard of this brand called Orijen on the internet several times. I checked out the site and next thing you know I was calling Noah’s Ark to ask them if they had any Orijen Puppy in stock, they sure did. We introduced it to Tink as a treat. She gobbled it down without thinking if it was food or not. Then we put a few on a plate to see what she thought about the new food. She liked it, even though it was completely dry.

At this time Tink was pretty much only eating Avoderm wet. So we had to gradually switch to all dry. We actually tried dry a couple times and she still prefers it with some wet food. If we didn’t let her be spoiled, I’m sure she would love Orijen alone. We wanted to find a wet food to switch to because we were over Avoderm and I was scared about the possible effects of Avocados. We did a little more research and decided to try out Nature’s Variety Instinct. Tink loves the chicken, duck & lamb flavors. (We were told that we could switch it up.)

It’s been a full week now with our French bulldog eating Orijen Dry and Instinct Wet. She loves it and we love the fact that she loves it too. Our little Frenchie is so fat now and that makes us VERY happy.

Researching the French Bulldog breed can be a delight sometimes. Finding articles about them being dogs of historic belles and high socialites or learning that they’ll only weigh up to 28 pounds is always a great discovery. Sometimes you even run into a fact that’s kind of bizarre like that they fart a lot or that they have to learn how to bark.

The latest fact I discovered that I found interesting is that blue, chocolate or liver frenchies don’t fit into the French bulldog standard. They can’t show in AKC confirmation events. So, if you have one of those ever so rare beautiful blue (grey) colored $5-$10k French bulldogs, then you can’t show him. Nor can you breed him without getting your head cut off from avid Frenchie owners that aim to preserve the breed. If your frenchie is the color of delicious chocolate or tasty (to dogs) liver, then your dog can’t help toward French bulldog standards either. This is all a bummer to me because blue is my favorite color and I love chocolate. So if I were to ever get a blue frenchie, I wouldn’t be able to show him. Or if I decided to breed him, I would be going against AKC breed codes and qualifications. Which means I would actually be hurting the breed standard. That sucks.

Blue French bulldogs are so expensive because good breeders with a good cause (to better and protect the breed standard) are trying to eliminate all frenchies with imperfections like a diluted (d) black gene. Because of this they are rare and almost extinct.

I found this great French bulldog color genetics reference resource for anyone interested in learning more about frenchie genes and how they turn out the color they do. Here’s the link http://www.french-bulldog.com/page28.php.

To see pictures of beautiful blue French bulldogs visit this Blue French Bulldog Website or check out Shel-E’s French Bulldogs.

As for why the AKC disqualifies grey, brown and liver, I don’t know. I’m hoping to find out soon…

Maybe one day blues can show???

This week’s Frenchie Friday is Goose. You may remember Goose from our Mini French Bulldog Meetup at Petsmart. Goose is very special to us because he is the first and only Frenchie Tink has ever played with. Here is what Goose’s owners Nichole and Cody had to say about Goose.

“Goose will be 24 weeks old next week and he is loving his life! Goose comes to work with me everyday and gets to spend some quality time with Roscoe the Boxer. The two of them just lay in the sun all day, play with some toys, and of course get treats from the UPS man!

As with all Frenchies, everyone loves Goose and he get tons of attention. He is a great dog and we feel so lucky to have him in our lives.”

Below is a picture of G-Man graduating from puppy school isn’t he just adorable?

Tink is Looking Forward to Seeing Goose Again!

I have noticed that many of our visitors find FrenchieTink through search engines by typing in keywords such as “french bulldog breeder in California“, “frenchies for sale in Ohio“, “riverside french bulldog puppies“, etc.

We are not breeders nor do we plan to become breeders anytime soon.

For our visitors looking for a quality pure-bred Frenchie from a reputable breeder, here’s a tip to help you out.

Go to www.frenchieinfo.com and enter the site.

You’ll be taken to a search engine that helps you find registered AKC french bulldogs and their pedigrees.

Therefore, if you already know of an up-coming litter and know who the parent’s are, you can search that frenchie and see the parent’s pedigree to see how many champions are in their blood.

However if you are just looking for a place to start, follow these steps to finding the best french bulldog breeders in the country.

When searching in this engine: http://frenchieinfo.com/pp_search.htm

Keep the “number of generations” at “5″. This will show you the names of all the frenchies in the pedigree going 5 generations back.

Change the “Field to Search” to “pre-title”. This is the part given by the AKC and the breeders.

For “search string” enter “ch” this will filter out the results to only show french bulldogs that are champions. Keep it on ‘anywhere in the field” (although it’s always in front).

“Order” can be whatever you choose. I prefer name.

The results will deliver nothing but champions.

Now, here’s how to find that perfect breeder for you. Almost every champion dog has the reputable breeders’ names just before the actual name of the dog. If the breeder is a good breeder that has been breeding frenchies to fit the standard for awhile, they will normally have 2 or more dogs that have championed. If you sorted by name you’ll see at the top, breeders like Absolut, Afabulls, Adams, etc.

Now “Google”(search(msn & yahoo are fine too)) the breeder’s name. Sometimes all you have to do is search the name by typing in “Afabulls”. But sometimes a breeder has a common name like Adams (popular street name) or Absolut (popular alcoholic brand). In that case, just type in something like “absolut french bulldog” or “Adams french bulldog puppies”. If they have a website, it will show up otherwise you may find a directory with their contact information.

I hope this helps someone in finding the best frenchie for you.

Remember, these breeders make the best frenchies and they aren’t puppy mills. So waiting lists can be long and breedings can be few and far between.

Patience is a Virtue…

You can also use Frenchie Info.com’s search engine to research dog’s pedigrees. Sometimes you’ll find that some frenchies do a better job than others in passing on champion blood.

If you happen to be a overly obsessed frenchie owner like myself and can take pictures of your French bulldog all day, then welcome to FrenchieTink.com. We have something in common. I love taking pictures of Tinky. I also enjoy looking at pictures of other french bulldogs. I have a very active Flickr account filled with tons of pictures of our French bulldog Tink.

I still haven’t gone as far as having a picture of her in my wallet or taking a family portrait with her, but let’s just say “in due time”

In the meantime, here are 9 photography tips to help you take better pictures of your frenchies provided by digital photography school. http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/9-pet-photography-tips/

If you have any pictures of your frenchie and would like to see them in our french bulldog picture gallery or see him/her featured on Frenchie Fridays, just send then via email to mr_jamesharrison at hotmail com.

Every so often, our French bulldog Tink does something really mischievous or down right wrong. I’m learning a lot about how punishing a dog doesn’t work and that positive reinforcement is the only way to train your frenchie. Luckily I found someone on the net that says I can punish her when she acts up.

This is how I punish our French bulldog Tink.

When she is doing something wrong like biting my ankles or some books, or when she decides to go potty in the wrong place. I clap my hands really loud (once) and stomp away. When I clap my hands she gets distracted, forgets what she was doing and she no longer has me there giving her attention. She gets punished by realizing she loses a friend when she does something we don’t like.

The clap is just to get her attention with a little startle, plus we’re still working on her name recognition. It doesn’t help us always calling her Tink, Tinky, Tinkerbelle, Good Girl, Stop It, etc.

Anymore ideas??

I read an interesting dog blog post today on how to create a dog that will bite people. A lot of it is common sense, however it’s still a fun read.

Dog Bit Prevention - “The Disease is Us”

#2 is kinda funny…She’s a Pit Bull lover.

I have too many friends guilty of #5. Yeah, that taught Scout a lesson :) It definitely makes them go a little more crazy running laps in the backyard.