Video: French Bulldog’s Guardian Says Please Stop Breeding These Suffering Dogs

For Immediate Release:
June 20, 2024

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

“I am so sorry that you had to live your entire life like this because we, as people, thought this was cute.” That’s the message Las Vegas dog guardian Heather Hanna has for Arnie, her French bulldog, in an emotional new video produced by PETA and released on the heels of the discovery of an illegal puppy mill in the northeast valley, from which police seized nearly 40 dogs—mostly French bulldogs—on June 12. Arnie—like all breathing-impaired breeds (BIB)—constantly wheezes, snorts, gasps, and struggles to breathe because he was intentionally bred to have an unnaturally flat face and a distorted airway. Since witnessing Arnie’s plight, Hanna has dedicated much of her life to advocating for BIBs and trying to stop others from suffering.

A breeder gave Arnie to Hanna when he had outlived his usefulness as a “show dog” and a breeding machine. Arnie, like many other French bulldogs, suffers from a variety of debilitating conditions, including a severely obstructed airway, intervertebral disc disease, and syringomyelia (a neurological disorder in which a fluid-filled cyst forms in the spinal cord). Hanna flew Arnie to Germany for advanced airway surgery, which gave him a reprieve from struggling to breathe, though his symptoms have begun to return. She started a Facebook group—which now has over 25,000 members—to educate people about the chronic suffering of flat-faced dogs and is contacting veterinarians and BIB dog guardians across the country to push for legislation that would ban breeding dogs with extreme features that cause lifelong health problems (aka “torture breeding”).

“I feel like society at large has made it seem like it is absolutely normal for these dogs to sound that way. … But we are laughing at an animal who is struggling to breathe,” says Hanna in the video. “They’re gonna struggle to breathe their entire life. I wish no more dogs would have to go through this.”

A study published in Nature found that French bulldogs have the shortest life expectancy of any breed studied, at just 4.5 years, and the Royal Veterinary College found that they’re 30 times more likely to have brachycephalic obstructive airway syndrome. A recent undercover video released by PETA showed an employee of a pricey pet store admitting that the business provided no lifetime warranties on BIBs because they would inevitably have health problems.

PETA points out that breeding any dog contributes to the companion animal overpopulation crisis, in which around 70 million cats and dogs are homeless in the U.S. at any given time.

Despite Arnie’s host of health problems, his breeder was named an American Kennel Club “Breeder of Merit,” a title given to breeders who have supposedly gone “above and beyond on health issues, temperament, and genetic screening.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.