What a flat face costs
3 min read · Updated
A pug, a French bulldog and a Persian cat all have roughly the same amount of soft tissue in the nose and throat as their longer-faced relatives, packed into a skull that has been bred considerably shorter. Everything on this page follows from that single fact, and none of it is the animal's personality.
The snoring is a symptom
This is the point that matters most, because it is the one most often got wrong with real affection behind it. A dog that snores, snorts, snuffles, breathes noisily while asleep or makes a rattling sound at rest is not being endearing. It is telling you that air is not moving freely.
Brachycephalic obstructive airway syndrome is the name for the combination, and it is a combination rather than one defect. The nostrils may be narrowed to slits — stenotic nares. The soft palate is often too long for the shortened mouth and hangs into the airway. The tissue at the entrance to the larynx can be sucked inward by the effort of breathing and become permanently everted. The windpipe itself may be narrower than it should be.
Each of those makes the others worse, because the harder the animal has to pull to breathe, the more the soft tissue collapses inward. It is progressive, and it usually worsens through the first few years.
Heat is the thing that kills
Dogs cool themselves almost entirely by moving air over wet surfaces in the mouth and airway. An animal that cannot move air efficiently cannot cool efficiently, and brachycephalic dogs are massively over-represented in heatstroke cases — several times the risk of a longer-muzzled dog of the same size.
In practice that means no exercise in warm weather, walks early and late rather than in the middle of the day, and never, under any circumstances, left in a car.
Use a harness rather than a collar. Pressure on the throat of an animal already struggling for air makes the obstruction worse.
Many also cannot swim. A body shape that is front-heavy with a face that has to be held clear of the water is a poor combination, and drownings in garden pools are well documented.
Eyes, teeth and spine
The eye sockets are shallow, so the eyes sit proud of the skull with less bone protecting them. Corneal ulcers are common, and in the most extreme skulls the eye can be displaced out of the socket entirely by a knock or by rough restraint. Any squinting, cloudiness or pawing at an eye is same-day urgent in these breeds.
The number of teeth has not reduced with the jaw, so they are crowded, rotated and often overlapping. That traps food and plaque, and periodontal disease arrives earlier and more severely than in a longer-jawed animal. Daily brushing genuinely matters here.
The screw tail seen in bulldogs and Boston terriers is a malformed section of spine. The same malformation — hemivertebrae — occurs further up the back in some individuals and can cause hind-limb weakness or incontinence.
And many of these breeds cannot whelp naturally, because the puppies' heads are too large for the dam's pelvis. A high caesarean rate is a fact about the breeding of these animals that buyers are rarely told.
Surgery helps, and earlier is better
BOAS surgery is not cosmetic. Widening the nostrils, shortening the soft palate and removing everted saccules can transform an affected animal's life, and owners routinely describe a dog that plays for the first time.
It works better done early, before years of increased effort have permanently deformed the larynx. A vet who suggests it in a young dog is not upselling.
It is not a cure. The skull shape does not change, and the animal will still be heat-intolerant.
Choosing better
Look at the actual animal rather than the breed. Within every flat-faced breed there is a range, and the more moderate individuals live substantially better lives.
Check the nostrils are open holes rather than slits. Check there is a visible muzzle rather than a flat plane. Listen to the animal breathe while it is resting and quiet — that is the test, not what it sounds like after running about.
In dogs, ask whether the parents have been graded under a respiratory function scheme. The Kennel Club and the University of Cambridge run one for bulldogs, French bulldogs and pugs, and it produces a grade rather than an opinion.
Several breeds now have moderate-muzzled lines being bred deliberately, and some countries have restricted the breeding of the most extreme animals. Choosing a moderate dog is the part of this that an individual buyer actually controls.