How to Raise the Perfect Dog Read Online Free PDF Page B

mate the dog, to continue its valuable bloodline. I also agreed that, at the end of the puppyhood period, I would return the dog to her if I decided not to keep him or didn’t find a placement both she and I agreed was suitable. I greatly admire Brooke’s devotion to her litters.
    During the half hour or so we spent going over the puppy’s paperwork, Mr. Green sat next to me, quietly chilling out. That’s pretty amazing for any puppy. Then and there, Mr. Green confirmed for me that I had chosen the right miniature schnauzer puppy to raise for this book.
    After signing the papers and saying good-bye to Brooke, I brought Mr. Green to my car, first putting the blanket from his mother’s bed on the seat to attract him. Of course, I had to lift him from the ground onto the car’s running board, but I wanted to let him go onto the seat by himself as much as possible. With a puppy, patience is key, and the first time you separate a puppy from his first pack is one of those occasions when you need to call up all the patience you can muster. I held a bully stick—which is like a rawhide bone but is actually a dried bull penis—in front of his nose, and let him follow the scent as I gently pushed his rear up into the car. From there, I was able to easily guide him into the crate in which he would ride to his new home and family in Santa Clarita. Once I got him home, my boys were so impressed by his sweet temperament, they promptly gave Mr. Green the new name Angel.
    HAIL TO THE CHIEF
Mr. President, the English Bulldog
    Now that I had in place America’s next favorite pit bull, my happy-go-lucky Labrador, and my nose-driven terrier breed, I wanted to choose a breed with completely different inborn characteristics for the final puppy in the project. I’ve always had a special affinity for bulldogs—and in America, I’m not alone. According to USA Today , bulldogs have made their way onto the AKC’s “top ten most popular dogs in America” list for the past two years. 1 imagine many of you reading this are considering a bulldog-type dog as a possible breed for you. There are lots of stereotypes about bulldogs—that they are all lazy couch potatoes, that they don’t need much energy or stimulation, or that they are consistently laid-back, mellow, and gentle in temperament. In many cases, these stereotypes can prove true, but there is another side of the coin.
    The truth is, the bulldog originated in the British Isles, its name a reference to the purpose it was originally genetically engineered to fill—as a star player in the brutal but unfortunately popular sport of bullbaiting, in which a bull was placed in a pen or a hole, and one or more dogs were set upon him, to clamp down on his neck with their jaws. The first bulldogs—descendants of ancient Asian mastiffs mixed with pugs—were specifically bred for ferocity, staying power, and an astonishing resistance to pain. When bullbaiting was made illegal in England in 1835, a kinder, gentler generation of bulldog lovers took over the line, eventually breeding out most of the fierceness of the original Olde English bulldog. But those characteristics of pugnacity, persistence, and what many call “stubbornness” remain deeply lodged in every bulldog’s DNA. With some individual dogs, it can be quite a challenge to properly channel those breed-related tendencies.
    One thing that is little known about bulldogs of all varieties is that they are in a sense handicapped from birth by the fact that they have been designed by humans to have pushed-in, flat noses and small windpipes. Mother Nature didn’t plan this kind of nose in her blueprint for canines, but back in the bulldog’s history, humans theorized that a flatter snout allowed for a stronger jaw to clamp onto the bull. The fact that bulldogs wheeze and snore is often a subject of good-humored sympathy among bulldog owners, and this is one of the side effects of their unnatural physical design as dogs.
    Another