Brachycephalic dog breeds including Bulldogs and Pugs face severe respiratory, eye, and joint welfare problems caused by extreme selective breeding for flat-faced appearance.
Brachycephalic dog welfare represents one of the most significant ethical failures in companion animal breeding. The extreme phenotypes selected for aesthetic reasons impose lifelong suffering on millions of individual dogs — chronic respiratory distress that sounds like normal breathing to owners who have normalized it, eyes that dry and are injured because they cannot be closed fully, and skin that folds against itself and becomes chronically infected. The snoring and snorting that owners often find endearing are the sounds of an animal struggling to breathe. Breeding reform that reduces extreme features is a welfare obligation that the dog breeding community has not adequately addressed.