A buyer's guide
How to choose a French Bulldog breeder in Australia
Every breeder says their dogs are health tested. Almost none of them mean the same thing by it, and the difference matters more in this breed than in almost any other.
This is written to help you work out who you are dealing with. Ask these questions of us and ask them of everyone else you talk to.
Start with the paperwork, because it is quick and it is public
Before you ask anything about health, check that the breeder is who they say they are. Three things are worth confirming, and all of them can be checked without taking the breeder's word for it.
Breeder club registration, and whether it is current. A registered breeder has a prefix, which is their kennel name, and a membership number. Registration lapses if it is not renewed, so ask for the number and check it directly with the association, since a logo on a website tells you very little by itself.
State registration. Most Australian States require anyone breeding dogs to hold a registration number and to display it on every advertisement. It is called different things in different States, and the requirements change from time to time. Whatever it is called where the breeder lives, ask for it and look it up on the relevant State register.
Council permits, where they apply. These vary from one local government area to the next. Some breeders need one and others do not, so the absence of a permit is not automatically a problem. It is still worth asking.
None of this tells you whether the puppy is healthy, only that the breeder can be identified and traced and is answerable to somebody. That is the starting point for everything else on this page.
DNA testing and health testing are two different things
Understanding the difference will tell you more about a breeder than almost anything else you can ask.
A DNA panel is a cheek swab. It goes to a laboratory and comes back telling you which inherited variants that dog carries. Prices vary between providers and depend on how many variants the panel covers, and it only has to be done once in a dog's life. Every responsible breeder does it, and pairs their dogs so that no puppy can inherit two copies of anything on the panel. It is the minimum any breeder should be doing before they put two dogs together.
Health testing is what you do to the dog itself. It means putting that animal in front of a veterinarian and finding out how it is actually built and how it actually functions.
- Respiratory Function Grading, an assessment developed at the University of Cambridge, where a trained veterinarian listens to the dog before and after exercise and grades its breathing from 0 to 3
- Spinal radiographs, to count hemivertebrae and see the shape of the vertebrae
- Hip radiographs, scored independently by a specialist radiologist
- Craniofacial and tracheal measurements, taken from those films
- Cardiac assessment, patellas and eyes, depending on the dog
That work costs hundreds of dollars per dog per test, usually involves sedation, and it can only be interpreted by someone who knows what they are looking at.
So when a breeder tells you their dogs are fully health tested, ask which of the above they have done and ask to see the reports. A DNA certificate on its own only covers the inherited variants, and says nothing about how the dog itself is built or how it breathes.
The questions worth asking
What is the RFG grade of both parents? Grade 0 means no signs of Brachycephalic Obstructive Airway Syndrome were detected at assessment. A breeder who has not come across RFG is unlikely to be assessing breathing at all.
Have both parents had their spines radiographed, and how many hemivertebrae do they have? Over 93% of French Bulldogs carry the DVL2 mutation that causes malformed vertebrae, so a breeder who cannot answer this has almost certainly never had the films taken.
What are the parents' DVL2 and CDDY results? DVL2 causes the screwtail along with the hemivertebrae that come with it, and CDDY causes the disc degeneration behind intervertebral disc disease. Both can be tested for, and there is a free plain English guide to both on this site.
Has either parent had airway surgery? This one matters and people rarely ask it. A dog that has had its nares widened or its soft palate shortened will breathe better than it was born to breathe, and it will still pass on the airway it was born with. The RFG assessment form requires certification that the dog has had no respiratory tract surgery, so a graded dog cannot be an operated dog.
What happens if something goes wrong in two years? Listen to the whole answer. A breeder who has thought about this will have one ready.
Can I see where the puppies are raised? The answer should be yes, whether in person, on a live video call, or through photos and video taken where the puppies live.
Take the full list with you
We have put together a longer checklist of questions to ask any breeder, with an explanation of what each answer actually tells you, and a list of what you should receive when the puppy comes home. It is free to download and free to share.
What French Bulldogs cost, and why
French Bulldogs are among the most technically difficult and most expensive dogs in the world to breed, for reasons that come down to how the breed reproduces.
Most litters are conceived by artificial insemination, because the shape of the breed makes natural mating difficult.
The stud is also rarely down the road. A breeder choosing the right sire for a particular dam is usually looking well outside their own area, and often interstate or overseas, because that is how you find the health results you are after and avoid close relatedness between the pair. Every one of those pairings has to be timed by progesterone testing every couple of days, then the semen is collected, prepared, chilled or frozen, and transported to the dam, and then the insemination itself is done. There is usually a stud fee on top of all of it, and the timing has to be right first go, because a shipment arriving on the wrong day is money gone with nothing to show for it.
Most litters are then delivered by caesarean section, because a French Bulldog puppy's head is generally too large for the dam's pelvis. Litters are small, commonly three or four puppies, and sometimes one.
Then the puppies have to survive their first weeks. A newborn litter is supervised around the clock, so someone is awake with them through every night for several weeks. A dam can lie on a puppy without meaning to. A puppy that slips off the teat and stops feeding will fade within hours, so they are weighed daily and any that is losing ground gets topped up by hand every two hours. The whelping box is kept at temperature because newborns cannot regulate their own.
Nobody is paid for those weeks. It is simply what it takes to have a whole litter thrive, and a breeder who is not doing it is losing puppies.
Set against that, the health testing described above happens before any of it, on dogs that may or may not turn out to be suitable for breeding at all.
The range, and what moves a puppy within it
In Australia, a French Bulldog puppy from a registered breeder who health tests commonly sits somewhere between five and twelve thousand dollars. Where a puppy falls in that range depends on more than the puppy itself.
The lower end is generally a pet puppy on limited papers with no breeding rights. That means the puppy is registered and pedigreed, its parents are known, and it comes with everything a family needs, though it cannot be bred from and its progeny cannot be registered. For almost everyone looking for a companion, that is exactly the right puppy to buy.
The upper end is a puppy with breeding rights, or one carrying results that are genuinely rare in this breed. Those puppies are priced differently because of what they represent to a breeding program, and they usually come with conditions attached.
Puppies advertised well below this range are usually either an unregistered breeder or a breeder who has skipped the testing described above.
Colour sometimes affects the price and sometimes it does not. Studs carrying rarer colours generally charge more, and if a breeder has used one then that cost ends up in what the litter sells for.
What is worth asking about is the order it was decided in. A breeder working on health goes through a stud's health results before anything else and only looks at colour once the dog has come through that. Where a stud was picked for its colour and the testing was skipped, whatever those dogs are carrying goes straight into the next generation.
Most of what you pay for is the veterinary work done on the parents and what it costs to get a litter here safely.
Three things that should stop you
No registration number in the advertisement. It is required in most States, and without one the dog cannot be traced back to whoever bred it.
A breeder who will not show you results. Health testing exists so it can be shown. Anyone who has spent the money is usually pleased to be asked.
Pressure to decide today. Being told to commit within hours, with a reason why the offer will be gone tomorrow, usually means the seller wants the puppy moved on quickly. Take the time you need to decide, and expect a breeder to be comfortable with that.
Deposits themselves are a different matter, and worth understanding before you are asked for one.
Why good breeders take deposits before a litter is born
A deposit taken well ahead of a litter is normal in this breed, and it is usually a sign of a breeder planning properly. Homes are found first and the litter is bred afterwards, so that every puppy has somewhere good to go before it exists.
Breeding the litter first and looking for families afterwards tends to work out worse for the puppies. People are ready when they are ready, so an expression of interest made months ahead often comes to nothing once someone finds a puppy available sooner somewhere else. The breeder then has eight week old puppies who need homes now and no waitlist to draw on, and puppies placed under that sort of time pressure are the ones most likely to end up in the wrong home.
So being asked for a deposit before a litter is on the ground is not a warning sign. What matters is that the terms are in writing, that you know what happens if the litter does not eventuate or the puppy you were matched to is not suitable, and that you were given time to decide in the first place.
Ask us the same questions
Everything above is what we do here, and the results for each of our dogs are published on this site with the numbers attached. If any of it does not stack up, we would rather you asked.
We are on the Gold Coast, registered with the MDBA since 2017, and our puppies have gone to families in most States and to homes overseas. We are happy to talk to people who are still deciding. Detailed questions are welcome. They are the ones we most enjoy answering.