The Nature Of French Bulldogs

This article is about nature versus nurture in humans and animals: meaning- are you who you were born to be or is it the nurturing that you got through your life that turned you into who you’ve become. An example might be: were you born with a temper because you are Italian or did you learn to have a temper? The answer to that, by the way, is, in fact, that you learned to have a temper by observation of someone in your life having a temper. But that’s for a whole other conversation. Right now I want to concern our thoughts with the idea of nature versus nurture in regards to dogs and ultimately you should feel more comfortable with breed descriptions.

When talking about dogs some statements might be somewhat true like that there are terrier breeds that Bark more than other breeds or that Chihuahua’s seem to shake easily or that a Labrador or a Golden Retriever loves to swim and we can also add to that list that French Bulldogs are extremely social and there isn’t a person that they don’t like. But despite the fact that we could say that a French bulldog is an extremely social breed, is it not possible to also say that other breeds couldn’t learn to be nurtured to be more social? I had Shetland sheep dogs growing up and they would run and hide whenever strange people came around.

Back to humans for a moment because in fact much of what we learned about humans is carried over to animals including specific medications given to animals that have been only tested on humans and then seem just sort of work on animals in the same way. I speak from my own experience as I have a dog that takes medications for its heart that were never tested on animals and are daily prescribed to humans. All that being said the twin studies or the triplet studies with humans have the most to say about nature and nurture in creatures that are brought up in different environments yet born from the same parents. After 25 years of living separately, separated at birth, triplets brought back together for study were noted to have an astonishing amount of similar traits. These traits included things like the way that they dressed, the music that they preferred, the names of the women that they married and what they looked like, the kinds of perfume that they preferred and whether they were outgoing or introverted and so on.

I was at a dog park yesterday, where I had never been to before, with a French bulldog puppy, age 5 months, that I was delivering to her forever home Owners. I walked around there the only French Bulldog for a while. Then progressively others arrived and suddenly there were six French Bulldogs and it was fascinating to see that the French Bulldogs all gravitated towards one another. Would you say it’s because they recognize that they look alike or would you say that perhaps like people we are attracted to energies that are similar to our own? Sometimes our curiosity is roused by something entirely different but the truth is, the friends that we choose, the people we hang out with to do the things we like most to do, we all have many traits in common. So I see this same kind of thing happening with dog,s that similar dogs are attracted to one another and I don’t think it’s a coincidence. I could only prove this to you if I again and again set up a scenario similarly were I would bring similar dogs into a common environment over and over and take note of how the similar dogs start to group up together. The point here really is just that energy attracts like energy. I’m sure you’ve heard about the condition of “manifestation” and how to create what you want by thinking about it. Well that’s all about energy and therefore people that have similar energies are attracted to each other and animals that have similar energies seem to be attracted to one another. The point is though, as this article began, that we were questioning is if this is something they are born with or is it something that they are taught. I am here to say that it something that is inborn and therefore one can develop a preference for a certain breed of dog based on the inherent nature of the animal which, in this case, French Bulldogs, is that they are an extremely social breed with people, perhaps sometimes more likely to have an alpha nature, but not certainly always, just maybe more often than not, and with this in mind, when brought up special consideration should be given to the fact that French Bulldogs can be bossy and therefore you don’t want to reinforce this behavior because it could get worse. Remember about time – outs when your puppy is a brat!

If you are thinking about getting a dog for the first time or the second time, whatever it is, just be mindful that the dog that you get is more than what it looks like. Do your research and read descriptions about the nature of different dog breeds. Natures are very specific to the breed and if a French Bulldog interests you at all you need to know that it is definitely a more lazy dog. It is often a very funny dog with dance like “Hello” antics. It very loyal everyone (easy to jump in a strangers car) never being hostile towards people. It will sometimes be skeptical of other dogs and then from there you can train your dog to bloom in certain areas like deterring it from aggressive bossy behavior by never reinforcing the bad behavior.

 

Author: Dr. Marika Zoll is a clinical psychologist and breeder of French Bulldogs. Her site is https://frenchbulldogsla.com. She practices alternative medicine healing along with traditional preventive medicine.