Our Thoughts about Dog Health and Pug Breeding

As dog owners our dogs' health means everything to us. Besides only using healthy dogs for breeding, what we do as dog-owners also effect our dogs' health. We have decided to give some advice on Exercise, Weight Management, Feeding, Dentalcare, Eyecare and Socialization for dogs that can optimize a dog's health.

We will also share our views and goals for Pug Breeding.

Exercise

Dogs are made to walk and eventhough not everyone runs with their dogs it is important that pugs get daily walks of around 40-60 minutes besides the short walks for doing their business. Sometimes when it is really hot or cold outside it can be better to go for shorter walks. It is also important to always bring water with you on a hot day and stay close to the shade. Heat and cold regulation is very individual in dogs. Lali and Athletic Pug's Caroline Seger have great heat control and can walk without any issues when it is 30 + Celsius outside, but that is very individual from dog to dog. It is pretty common in pugs with aversion to rain. Both our pugs and our parttime pugs loath to go outside on a rainy day. 

If you decide to run with your pug it is important to start with shorter distances and increase the length over time. We began running with our pugs around 14-16 months of age and about 1-3 km and now they run 6-8 km, but have also on a few occasions ran more than 10 km. Around 1 year is often considered a safe time to begin running with your dog on a lead and before that one can run shorter distances with your dog off the lead. 

Weight Management

The most important thing you can do as a pug owner is to keep your pug at a healthy weight and that is rather too lean than a few extra grams too much. Studies have shown that up to 80 % of all pugs with breathing issues are overweight and when they loose their extra weight their breathing becomes normal. Extra weight also increase body and joint issues. 

Lali is 30 cm in height and her perfect weight is 6.1-6.3 kg, which are muscles. Normal weight for pugs is usually 6,1-8.5 kg. A healthy weight depends on the height, muscle mass and fat proportion of the pug's body.

Feeding

Feeding your dog a high quality food is really important for your dog's health. An imbalanced diet can cause inflammation in the body which can cause itching, ear and stomach issues among many other things. Imbalance in the gut caused by low quality food which can increase the risk of allergies. We use a high quality dry food, that is high in protein (28 % or more). The food is either lamb based, fish based or based on lamb and duck. The food we use is also dairy and gluten free since that is harder for dogs to digest. Additionally, we give our pugs BARF.

Dentalcare

Dentalcare is really important especially in small dogs and can prevent expensive trips to the vet for dental issues. Daily brushing of your dogs teeth with an enzyme toothpaste is a great dental regime. We also give additional gluten free vegan bones to our dogs to chew on.

Eyecare

The eyes of a dog are exposed to all elements and eye injuries are rather common in dogs. If a dog gets some dirt in their eyes it is really great to have eyedrops at home to flush the dirt out. Using eyedrops after getting dirt into their eyes can also prevent eye injuries and bacteria from getting stuck in their eyes. When running with your dog when it is very windy outside you can also give an eyedrop to protect the eyes if something blows into your dog's eyes. If you go to a very sandy place it is important to check your dog's eyes afterwards in order to make sure that no sand is stuck in their eyes.  Examples of eyedrops are Sentrx Eye drop and Vita-Pos.

Socialization

Most pugs are very social but socialization is still important for every dog to grow confidence and understand how to hang out with other dogs. It is also important to introduce dogs to different places, smells and people when they are puppies, otherwise they can develop fear of the unknown.

Pug breeding

Our goal for our pug breeding is to breed healthy, happy pugs with great mentality. There is never a guarantee that any dog or human is going to be 100 % healthy their entire life, but we want to do our absolute best to breed healthy dogs. In our selection for breeding we use testing to see that we only use the healthiest pugs. 

Besides the tests we also want to see if the pug lives up to the standard we have concerning their anatomy. We want to improve the overall health of the breed. In order improve the overall health of the breed, we select pugs with the aim to increase the size of the nose. A less flat face protects their eyes and improve their body heat regulation. We only breed pugs with long necks so the throat fits which is crucial for healthy breathing. Our kennel also want to focus on pugs with slightly longer legs, than what has been popular for the last 30 years. Shorter legs increase the risk of patella and movement issues. Longer legs improve the movement of dogs and make them able to do all activities a dog should be able to do in life. 

Additionally, we also want our females to have 4-6 puppies per litter, which is considered to be a normal sized litter fertility wise. Lali's litter called litter 1 consisted of 5 beautiful pug puppies.