Yoda

 Steve and I always dreamed of owning a French Bulldog. We lost Subee so unexpectedly and after a few nights of crying ourselves to sleep, Steve suggested that we look at Frenchie puppies. I wasn’t ready but I knew a puppy wouldn’t be a bad thing. The thing about marriage is finding a place where you both exist happily and I could see that looking at puppies was bringing joy back to Steve in a time that felt somewhat joyless.

I don’t want to go too much into the details that come along with becoming a Frenchie parent because I will touch base in more detail later but here are some key points:

1. They are expensive.
2. Many of them will have some sort of health issue(s).
3. They fart a lot. A LOT. A LOT. A LOT. More than you could imagine.
4. They are absolutely adorable and every single one of them will melt your heart.
5. They’re worth every second and every dollar you put into them.

My life motto is, “You don’t know until you know.” That really applies here because you can Google your little heart out about owning a Frenchie but I can guarantee you will never know the truth until you actually own one. I’m going to try to help you but I could never cover all of the things that come along with being a Frenchie parent.

Okay, blah, blah, blah,back to my sweet little Yoda. There’s a well known Frenchie Facebook page with THOUSANDS of breeders selling Frenchies. We made a post explaining how we lost Subee and we were trying to find a French Bulldog to add to our home. We received so many messages from breeders and so many pictures! I had to leave all of the searching to Steve mostly because I was trying to heal and because I literally never would have been able to choose ONE puppy. 

We received a message about Yoda. He was from a well known breeder with lots of happy customers. Yoda was different though. He was a lilac fawn male whose price was reduced incredibly because he was 4 months old (which is an old puppy when it comes to breeders). They sent us a video of him doing a big puppy yawn and my husband knew he was meant for us. We reached back out and the breeder said we could come get him over the weekend.

That weekend we drove about three hours to go see Yoda. When we got there we were greeted by an army of English Bulldogs which they also bred. Yoda was brought into the room with another little girl Frenchie who was much younger and smaller than Yoda. My heart melted for the little girl instantly because I was still missing Subee. I knew Steve really had his heart on Yoda so we played with him and inspected him. It was disclosed to us that Yoda had a pigeon chest, which we could only feel and it wasn’t really visibly noticeable. We also noticed a scar on his left eyeball that was a result from one of his litter mates poking him in the eye. The moment that sealed the deal for us is when Yoda crawled onto Steve’s chest and oinked like a little pig just like Subee used to do. So we signed our contract which allowed us three days to take him to our vet and if they thought he had any life threatening issues we could return him for a refund or exchange him. Contracts and dogs were such a weird concept to us. I’ll go into questions to ask a breeder in a different post but just know any reputable French Bulldog breeder should present you with some sort of contract.

We traded off while driving home so we could both hold Yoda. He was so sweet and Steve and I were beaming with excitement over our new family member. We took him to the vet and our vet felt all of his health issues were going to be manageable and probably wouldn’t affect his quality of life. He did have Giardia that took a long time to treat (I’ll touch more on this later) but all was well.

Enter Zeke: Highly offended we came home with a dog that wasn’t Subee, even more offended there was another boy in the house, completely unphased by the fact that Yoda was so stinkin’ cute. Zeke was fairly aggressive towards Yoda for about a month. (Insert pic of Yoda laying with Zeke). With a lot of work and patience Zeke eventually became okay with the fact that Yoda was going to be a part of our family.

Yoda is remarkable. To know him is to love him. He has an incredibly sweet demeanor with the occasional bulldog attitude, he’s smart, and he was very easy to train. All we heard when we wanted to get a frenchie (even the breeder told us this) was that they are difficult to train and will never be fully house trained. This is WRONG information. Yoda was incredibly easy to train, picked up quickly, and was completely housebroken in under a month. Our other Frenchie Luna took a little longer to catch on but she is also completely housebroken. Don’t let anyone tell you these dogs aren’t trainable. They totally are! I could seriously go on forever about Yoda. He’s our magical Frenchiecorn but you will get to know him better through my future blog posts.

How will Yoda help you to keep up with essential Frenchie care tips?

1. Yoda has had seizures/tremors due to medication used to treat Giardia and we will discuss how we manage this.
2. Yoda has food and environmental allergies that we have managed.
3. He has had Brachycephalic Surgery to correct his breathing.
4. Unfortunately, while Zeke loved having him around for the first two years he’s not so in love with Yoda anymore. So we will discuss how we manage a home with a dog that is aggressive towards another dog.
5. Yoda can sometimes be a little overbearing and protective and we will discuss our training options for this.
6. He’s a great road dog so we will inevitably talk about taking short term and long term trips with your pup.
7. We will discuss “designer colors” of French Bulldogs, how those colors are achieved, and how sometimes these specialty characteristics can cause problems in the dog.
8. The list will most definitely go on forever because this little boy keeps us on our toes!

So stay tuned because you’re not going to want to miss this little boys adventures.

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