CHAPTER XXXV 

 THE DOGUE DE BORDEAUX 



OF comparatively recent introduction from abroad, the Dogue de 

 Bordeaux, or Dogue of the South of France, as it is more familiarly 

 called, is one of the few varieties that have not taken a hold in this 

 country. Any popularity that it might have attained was endangered 

 at the outset by the edict that went forth against cropping. Indeed, 

 those who championed its cause here suggest that it was the abolition 

 of cropping that was mainly responsible for its fate here. 



Apart from the cropping, which militated undoubtedly against 

 the Dogue's popularity here, there were other factors that contributed 

 to the same end. It was a dog with a "past," and, for that 

 matter, a " present." The Dogue de Bordeaux was and is a fighting 

 breed purely and simply, and if there is anything that is repulsive 

 to English dog-lovers, it is the knowledge that by encouraging such a 

 breed they are giving a direct incentive to those degraded forms 

 of " sport " that once obtained here, but are now happily relegated to 

 the limbo of forgotten cruelties. On the Continent it is customary 

 to pit the Dogue against all sorts of animals, including the bear 

 and the wolf, as well as against it own kind. Then, again, by 

 no stretch of the imagination can the Dogue de Bordeaux be 

 described as anything but decidedly forbidding in appearance ; and 

 it was the combination of circumstances enumerated rather than 

 cropping alone that prevented the variety from obtaining any 

 hold here. 



The chances are that had the Dogue been free from taint as a 

 fighting animal, it might have survived the cropping, just as the 

 Great Dane and many other breeds that at one time were similarly 

 treated continue to flourish. As a personal protector for keeper 

 or night watchman, or anyone whose business took him in 

 doubtful "country," the variety might in time even have ousted the 

 the Bull-Mastiff, and more especially as the watch-dog of antiquity, 

 the Mastiff, has so deteriorated physically and numerically as to be 

 numbered amongst decadent varieties. 



From a glance at the illustration (Fig. 92) it would not require 



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