Friday, May 2, 2008

Tugboat-of-War

Tugboat gets into all sorts of trouble with his propensity to hanging onto things, preferably swings. He flipped out a mother and her dogphobic girl a few years back by jumping onto her swing (the SWING, not her), which resulted in Tugboat having his mug shot taken by the police. (However, the officer took one look at him and laughed.) Anyway, I have to keep him on a short rope in the company of swings.
Last night we visited our neighbor's fenced-in backyard, which has a swingset. When Tugboat's in the vicinity, we keep the swings out of jowls' reach. However, he got a hold of one swing and hung on so much the other neighbor thought he was caught on the swing. Although Tugboat would have loved that, I had to get him back down so he wouldn't tear the swing.
All this, I presume, comes from bulldogs being raised way back when to hang onto bulls' noses during a fight; that's why they were bred with folds--so the bull's blood would stay out of the dog's eyes. Yuck. And why they have flat noses.
This was barbaric, but it resulted in the breed being the mutated blob we all love so much today.

1 comment:

Jack Bleck said...

I didn't know bulldogs were bred to do this. For what purpose...purely sport? And which culture/society practiced it? I thought it was China, but I may be mistaken.