French Bulldog"Early years 2"

On the rare occasion when a dog had a tail docked, it was done within a couple of weeks of age. Arthur had a good pair of surgical snippers, my dad had a good pair of teeth! He bit the tail off.
Terrier breeders came from far and near with their pups for dad to perform on. I was the one who usually held the pup. He would feel along the tail, one, two, three joints, then nip with his teeth, as clean as whistle.
I have mentioned already about the pied dog, the one of which I corrected the ear. Pied dogs were very rare and it was the ambition of every breeder to produce a specimen. There were no hard and fast rules about this, no guarantee that by using such dogs as parents they would produce offspring of the same colouring.
My dad and Arthur thought they would introduce something new into the line of one of the breeds. We had and English Bull bitch name Sally, the ugliest dog I have ever known, but a loving, faithful old girl. She was a splendid mother, very good at fostering and produced quite good specimen pups. She also had nice colours, dark brindle and white.
Sally must have thought it was her birthday. We mated her with a handsome, lively, young Frenchman, all to no avail! She had a litter of six, every one as black as Newgate´s Knocker. I like to think that somewhere there is a nice pied running around that owes its colouring to old Sally in those far off days.
I remembering seeing a completely white dog, it caused quite a stir. I think it must have been an albino. It was not a nice looking dog, pink nose and face with pink eye rims.
Some of the light brindle dogs had a chocolate coloured nose, Dudley it was called. It was considered a fault and I had heard cases of some dogs having the nose tattooed black. I cannot vouch for the truth of this statement, but I think it may have been posible.
By the age of twenty five I had severed my connections with the dog world. The breeding circle had broken up and I had other interests. War was soon to be upon us.
My interest was revived once more in my early fifties. I was very happy to browse in second hand book shops. Every district seemed to have at least a couple of such places. Lately they have disappeared from the scene. One day I found a wonderful doggy book, published in 1990. It was most informative about dogs of the alter part of the nineteenth century. It contained over sixty portraits of dogs from the Victorian era. Some that are now extinct, some that have change their appearance. Every dog and the owner is named and nearly all the dogs were champions. Many were owner by the Royal family. The prints were taken from drawings by a Victorian artist commissioned for the book. There was nothing of the chocolate box about the drawings, just basic, down to earth, black and white, true to life reflections of the subjects, drawn to perfection.
Page 267 hit me like a bolt of lightening. There was a drawing of our friend the Frenchie, but it was named as a Toy Bulldog. Were old Arthur´s claims about to be justified? The text that went with the print stated that the finest specimens came from France. The dog in the picture has rose eras. Tulip eras seemed to be most popular, but the purists still wanted rose eras.
I spent quite some time tracing the publishers of the book. This proved difficult as the name of the company had changed. After I had finally found the firm I tried to persuade them to issue a collection of this unique set of prints, which I am sure would have been welcomed by dog lovers and fanciers all over the world. Using modern methods of enlarging and printing, this would have been quite a simple matter.
Unfortunately, they were not the least bit interested, saying that they were publishers of books not prints.
They did give me permission, however, to approach other companies specialising in the reproduction of prints, providing, of course, I informed them of any connections and developments I had made.
I was now in my seventies, almost house-bound, and did not have the energy to go visiting printing firms to see if they would be interested in prints. I did some small experimental work myself and produced a couple of splendid specimens printed on the finest quality parchment-like paper. If framed. They would have graced the walls of any room.
It is a great pity that this slice of English history of dogs of the last century could not have been perpetuated in other ways than between the covers of a few old dusty books