Health

Those ears. Those glorious, enormous, satellite-dish bat ears that make French Bulldogs look like they’re permanently trying to pick up radio signals from distant galaxies. They’re adorable. They’re expressive. They’re also surprisingly disgusting if you don’t clean them regularly. I discovered this the hard way when Buster started shaking his head like he was disagreeing with everything I said. (More than usual, I mean.) Turned out his ears were gunky, irritated, and well on their way to an infection that cost us £85 at the vet. ...

Buster snores. Not cute little puppy snores — proper, window-rattling, “is there a motorbike idling in the bedroom” snores. The first night we had him, we genuinely checked the windows to see if something was wrong with the house. Nope. Just Buster, doing his impression of a chainsaw being fed through a tuba. Jago, meanwhile, sounds like a tiny steam engine when he’s excited. Running toward food? Steam engine. Greeting visitors? Steam engine at full throttle. Sleeping peacefully? Somehow also steam engine, but on low. ...

Let me address the elephant in the room: French Bulldogs have a reputation for being lazy, snoring lumps who’d rather nap than exercise. This is partially true, but also wildly misleading. Yes, Buster would happily spend 23 hours a day asleep given the option. Yes, Jago treats long walks like some sort of personal affront. But that doesn’t mean they don’t need proper exercise—it just means their requirements are different from, say, a Border Collie who’d run marathons given half the chance. ...

If your Frenchie’s face smells like a cheese counter at Waitrose, this guide is for you. Those adorable face wrinkles are one of the things we love most about Buster and Jago — they give them that perpetually concerned expression, as if they’re deeply worried about the state of the economy or whether we’ve remembered to buy their favourite treats (spoiler: it’s always the treats). But here’s the thing about those gorgeous folds: they need regular cleaning, or they quickly become breeding grounds for bacteria, yeast, and what can only be described as biological mysteries. ...