Let me give the raw feeders their due first, because the sneering you get elsewhere is not useful to anyone. Coat shine, smaller and firmer stools, a dog that actually looks forward to dinner. Owners are not imagining that, and there is a plain explanation: more fat, highly digestible protein and none of the bulk that comes out the other end. If that is what you are seeing, you are seeing it.
My reservations are not about whether your dog enjoys it. They are three specific things, in the order I met them in practice. Bones, which fracture teeth and lodge where they are not wanted, and a Bulldog is a short-faced gulper rather than a thoughtful chewer. Contamination, which is the one most owners have not thought about, because that risk lands on the people doing the handling at least as much as on the dog. And formulation, because home recipes assembled from the internet tend to come out short on the same handful of nutrients, which matters most in a growing puppy.
There is a sensible middle, and almost nobody selling you an opinion will mention it, because it does not make a good argument. It makes a good dinner.
Raw Diets are among a new class of “Boutique Exotic” niche food diets catered to bulldog and French bulldog owners
Your sister in law is the one I would listen to here, and the toddler is the reason.
Let me be careful about what I am and am not saying. I am not telling you raw food will make Otto ill. Plenty of dogs eat raw diets and stay perfectly well, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
What concerns me is the rest of your household. When the FDA tested pet foods, raw products were considerably more likely to carry Salmonella and Listeria than other pet foods. Those bacteria do not stay in the bowl. They are on your hands, on the sink you just rinsed it in, on the worktop, on the floor, and in Otto’s mouth and on his face for a while after he eats. You have a two year old crawling across that floor and being licked by that dog. Small children, older relatives and anyone whose immune system is not at full strength are exactly who gets caught by this.
On the breeder’s claim about skin: there is no good evidence that kibble causes the skin problems this breed is famous for. Those have far more to do with the skin they are born with, folds, allergies and the breed’s own genetics, than with whether dinner was cooked. Your breeder may be entirely sincere and still be repeating something that has been passed around rather than tested.
If you want to continue, talk it through with your veterinarian first and take the handling seriously: no rinsing bowls in the kitchen sink, hot soapy water then disinfection on anything it touched, thaw in the fridge rather than on the counter, and keep the dog’s face away from the toddler’s after meals. If that sounds like a lot of work to do correctly every single day with a two year old in the house, that is a fair thing to weigh up too.
Common Boutique Pet Food
- Grain-Free Diets
- Vegan Diets
- Human Graded Diets
- ALL Natural Diet
- Homemade Diets
- Gourmet Diets
- ETC
Owners of French Bulldogs and English Bulldogs are dedicated owners who seek to provide their dogs with the best diet and preventive care possible. They strive to align their bulldogs’ health and wellness with their own, advocating for healthy, balanced, high-quality, and safe food.
This article focuses on bulldog awareness and prevention not as an endorsement for any specific dog food brand or diet. I have no affiliations with dog food companies and do not favor any particular brand.
Regardless of your current or future dietary choices, I am confident you will find valuable information in this article.
Raw Food for BulldogsMyth Versus Facts
Our dietary decisions and choices must be fact-based. Browsing the internet can easily lead to confusion and distraction, but there are ways to help you distinguish factual information from non-factual.
It is best to avoid dietary advice and recommendations from
- sponsored online diet rating sites
- breeders’ dietary advice
- food companies’ “too good to be true” advertising material
- “marginal dietary advice” websites
- and anecdotal “success stories” posted on social media boards.
Even though these opinions and posts may be well-intentioned, they often lack factual scientific data.
Bulldog raw food myths
- “Bulldog raw food diet is superior to traditional cooked ones”.
- “Bulldog raw food diet is as safe or safer than the traditional cooked diet”
- “Dogs are descended from wolves, thus raw food is what is best for them”
RAW Food For Bulldogs And French Bulldogs
Below is a short list of a few important factual information
1. raw versus cooked pet food fact
No scientific studies show the health benefits of raw food diets over cooked diets.
The same benefits attributed to raw food diets for bulldogs can be achieved with cooked diets. Additionally, the risks associated with raw diets can be reduced or eliminated with cooked
2. pet raw food risks
Conversely, several health risks are associated with feeding a raw diet to French and English Bulldogs.
3. vegetarian pet food risks
Bulldogs are not wolves; they have evolved through domestication and are more like humans (omnivores) than wolves and cats (carnivores). They are not dependent on meat, and with careful professional supervision, they can live a healthy life eating a vegetarian diet.
The risk you are taking is not only your dog’s
When owners weigh up raw feeding they think about one animal. The question I would rather they asked is about everyone else in the kitchen.
The FDA tested pet foods and found raw products far more likely to carry Salmonella and Listeria than other pet foods. Their concern was not only for the dogs. It was explicitly a public health concern, because the people handling the food get exposed as well.
Think about where that food actually goes. It thaws somewhere. It is cut or portioned somewhere. The bowl gets rinsed somewhere, very often in the sink where you wash the salad. Your hands touch the tap, the fridge door, a phone, a child. And after the dog has eaten, his mouth and the fur around it carry it too, which matters a great deal in a household where he gets kissed on the face.
A healthy adult will usually shrug off a small exposure. A toddler on the floor, a grandparent, somebody on chemotherapy or on medication that dampens the immune system, those are different, and those are the people who end up genuinely unwell from a decision that was made about a dog.
It is the same reason you would not leave raw chicken on the worktop for an hour and then make a sandwich there. Nobody argues about that one. The same kitchen, the same bacteria, and somehow a dog bowl feels like a different category.
I am not telling you what to feed your dog. I am telling you that this particular decision is not only about your dog, and that is the part most owners have never been asked to consider.
Raw Diet French Bulldogs English BulldogsRisks
- EXCESS: Excesses of nutrients such as fats are often associated with a raw food diet.
- DEFICIENCY: Deficiency of essential nutrients, and minerals such as phosphorus & calcium is often associated with raw food diet.
Raw pet food contamination & public health risks
-
Bad Bacteria: Uncooked and unpasteurized raw food can carry harmful bacteria like Salmonella, Clostridium, and Campylobacter.
Immune Compromised: Bully puppies, seniors, and other immune-deficient or compromised bulldogs are particularly susceptible to these bacteria.
Public Health: These bacteria can also pose a health risk to your family and the public, especially children, seniors, and immune-suppressed or immune-compromised individuals
Raw pet food and heart disease risks
DCM: In recent years, we have seen an alarming rise in bulldog dilatative cardiomyopathy (DCM) along with the increase in popularity of raw food diets, grain-free food diets, and other niche boutique food diets, The latest data has shown a direct link between heart disease and those diets.
Raw Diet for Bulldogs and French Bulldogs Manufacturing
- Scientific Research: Peer-reviewed scientific research published in credible veterinary journals.
- Manufacturing Certification: Certified manufacturing facility
- FORMULATION: having a boarded certified veterinary nutritionist who oversees production, quality, and diet formulation
- AAFCO: Tested by the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO)
- Quality Control & SAFTY: Strict quality control, adherence to safety with proper certification
- Testing for pathogens, contaminants, and toxins
- Testing ingredients & nutritional quality
- Regular auditing
Dr. Kraemer’s V4B Raw Diet for Bulldogs DO & DONT
Below is a short list of raw food dos and don’ts courtesy of Dr. Kraemer
PET RAW FOOD MUST DO
- INFORMATION: Seek information, any reputable manufacturer should be willing to provide you with all the above requests.
- REPUTATION & LONGEVITY: Seek food manufacturers with a long history and solid reputation.
- Aafco Association: Seek bulldog food manufacturers associated with the American Feed Control.
- RESEARCH: Seek manufacturers who invest in research, ideally through independent veterinary institutions.
- FACTUAL: Seek manufacturers who publish factual data (rather than “sexy” fashionable claims and negative campaigns).
Bulldog raw food must not do
- INGREDIENTS: Do not base your bulldog food selection on the ingredients, for all intents and purposes they have very little value.
- LABEL: try to ignore catchy phrases such as
- “human graded”
- “grain-free”
- “no byproducts”
- “whole”
- “natural”
- “Fresh”
- “Gourmet”
It’s in your bulldog’s and your best interest to seek food companies that fund nutrition research and invest in quality and safety.
Investments in graphics and marketing offer little value to your pet.
Bones break teeth more often than owners imagine
The other thing I see from raw feeding arrives in my consulting room with a cracked tooth.
Bones are usually the selling point. The idea that gnawing a bone cleans the teeth the way nature intended is appealing, and there is a grain of truth in it. The problem is what else bones do. A hard bone against a strong jaw is a contest the tooth does not always win, and the tooth that loses is nearly always one of the big chewing teeth at the back. Those are not simple extractions, they are not cheap, and the dog has usually been quietly uncomfortable for a while before anybody noticed.
This breed has a particular problem here. Their jaws are short and their teeth are crowded into a space that was never designed for the full set, which means teeth sit at angles and take force in directions they were not built for.
It is a little like using your back teeth to open a bottle cap. It works, right up until the once it does not, and then you are dealing with something far more expensive than the thing you were trying to open.
If clean teeth are what you are after, there are ways to get there that do not involve a contest between enamel and bone. Dental rinses, wipes and water additives are used alongside what your veterinarian advises rather than instead of it, and a proper dental when your vet says one is due will do more for his mouth than any bone.
Raw Diets for French Bulldogs Tips & Warnings
Below is a short list of raw food tips and warnings courtesy of Dr. Kraemer
1. Bulldog supplements & consult tip
For bulldog owners who enjoy serving raw food or cooking homemade diets, consider consulting a veterinary nutritionist.
You might need to supplement with
-
multivitamins
minerals
fish oil
and amino acids
Additionally, it’s important to check taurine blood levels and consult your veterinarian about long-term monitoring of your bulldog’s heart for DCM.
2. Bulldog nutrient, not ingredients tip
The ingredient information is often more about marketing schemes than the actual value to the pet owner. Published ingredients can be difficult to interpret and have little to do with nutritional value, or contain a therapeutic dosage that is too low to make a difference.
3. BulldogHuman grade diet tip
Start by asking yourself if you would feed your kids any human-grade raw pet diets on the market. This marketing phrase adds little to no value to your pet.
What is good for humans might not be best for your bulldog. “human grade” has no legal meaning in the pet food industry
1. freezing raw pet food warning
To eliminate harmful bacteria, the food should be pasteurized (cooked).
Freezing raw food is not sufficient.
2. raw pet foodBones & teeth warning
Avoid a raw diet with solid bones, those can fracture your bully teeth, damage the esophageal and intestinal, and end as a GI forging body emergency.
Best Raw Diet for Bulldogs and French Bulldogs Final Thoughts
I’m often asked, “What is the best bulldog diet?” or I’m asked to recommend one. 🐾
My answer is always the same: “There is no one best bulldog diet.” Like us, each bulldog is different, with unique requirements, sizes, ages, and lifestyles.👨⚕️
I would replace “What are the best French bulldogs and English bulldogs raw diet” with “WHAT IS Best For MY BULLDOG”.
Raw Bulldog diet & heart disease
The cause of the higher occurrence of DCM among dogs fed raw, grain-free, homemade, and other “boutique exotic” niche diets is still unknown. In the past, the thought was that it was due to a lack of a critical amino acid named Taurine but those are the minority, most recent cases tested normal for taurine levels.
Bulldog Dilated Cardiomyopathy (DCM)
Bulldog raw diets financial motives
It is my suspension that DCM and other bulldog medical problems associated with raw diet have less to do with the raw factor and more to do with the manufacturer’s funding priorities.
research instead ofMarketing:
Many of those exotic diet manufacturers are relatively new to the market, they are vying for a market share in a competitive niche, and thus they allocate large sums of their budget to marketing.
On the other hand, the well-established, large, well-financed “boring traditional manufacturers companies” allocate a much larger sum to:
- Quality Control
- SAFETY
- Scientific Research
- TESTING
- Certified Nutritionist Oversight
It could be that those associated medical problems are less about diets and more about resources and funding allocation.
Raw Diets for Bulldogs Final Advice
As French bulldog and English bulldog owners, we want only the best for our bullies. It can be challenging to navigate the overwhelming amount of information to ensure we’re doing the right thing. Here are a few simple raw diet rules of thumb for your English and French bulldogs:
- Bully Simple: Keep it simple.
- Bully Better: More is NOT always BETTER.
- Bully Safer: New & popular does NOT necessarily mean SAFER.
- Bully Buzz: Buzz words are intended for you, NOT your BULLY.
- Bully Fancy: Fancy packing is intended for you, NOT your BULLY.
- Bully Dollar: A high $$$ price tag does NOT always equate with QUALITY & VALUE.
I would like to add my appreciation and thanks to my Tufts Veterinary School classmate Dr. Lisa M. Freeman who provided me with the most current update on those dietary topics. Dr. Freeman DVM, Ph.D., DACVN, is a veterinary nutritionist and a professor at the Cummings School. She published hundreds of articles in prestigious journals and received awards for her scientific achievements.
Plainly: nothing on this site sterilizes raw meat, and nothing on it balances a recipe you built from a forum post. If you feed raw, the two things that decide whether it goes well are how you handle it and how it was formulated, and neither of those comes in a jar.
Where a supplement may have a reasonable place is the gap a home prepared diet tends to leave. Home recipes come out short on a predictable short list of nutrients, and a daily multivitamin may help cover that while you get the recipe properly formulated by someone qualified to do it. I want to be honest about what that is: a patch, not a plan.
If you are feeding raw and intend to carry on, the raw diet selection is put together with that in mind rather than to talk you out of it.
To be clear: supplements are not a diet, not a treatment and not a substitute for veterinary examination, diagnosis or treatment. This page is educational only.
Is raw feeding safe for the people in my house?
This is the question I wish got asked first instead of last. Raw meat for dogs is raw meat, and both the American Veterinary Medical Association and the FDA have flagged the household side of it rather than only the canine side. The practical answer is the same discipline you would use with raw chicken for yourself, applied every single day: a separate board, hot soapy water on everything the food touched, hands washed properly, the bowl treated as dirty, and no licking faces straight after a meal. Where I would think hardest is a household with small children, an elderly relative or anyone whose immune system is not at full strength, because those are the people who pay for a lapse rather than the dog.
Can I give raw bones? I was told they clean the teeth.
They do scrape plaque, and they also fracture teeth, which is the trade nobody mentions. The tooth that goes is usually the big one at the back doing most of the chewing, and fixing it means a general anesthetic in a breed where anesthesia already needs care. Weight-bearing bones from large animals are the hardest and the worst offenders. A Bulldog makes this worse by being built to gulp rather than chew, so pieces go down whole. If you want clean teeth there are duller routes that do not involve an anesthetic.
Raw is what dogs ate in the wild, so is it not more natural?
Natural is a lovely word and it is not a nutritional standard. Wolves eat whole prey, bones, organs, gut contents and all, and they also have short, hard lives and nobody is measuring their calcium to phosphorus ratio. A bowl of supermarket muscle meat is not that diet, it is the easiest and least complete part of it. Dogs have also spent thousands of years alongside us becoming better at digesting starch than wolves are, which is an inconvenient fact for the argument but a real one.
Can I raw feed a Bulldog puppy?
This is the case where I would push back hardest, and it is not squeamishness. A growing skeleton is unforgiving about calcium and phosphorus, in both directions, and a Bulldog puppy is already carrying a heavy frame on joints that need every advantage. Getting that balance right in a home prepared diet is a job for a veterinary nutritionist with the actual recipe in front of them, not a feeding chart from a breeder or a website. If you want to raw feed this dog, the puppy stage is the part to get professionally formulated and the adult years are where you have more room.
I switched to raw to avoid the grain-free heart problem. Did that work?
Not automatically, and this trips a lot of people up. The reports that started that story pointed at peas, lentils and other pulses sitting high in the ingredient list, not at the presence or absence of grain. Plenty of raw and boutique formulas lean on exactly those same pulses, so swapping one bag for another can leave you in the same place you were trying to leave. Read your ingredient list rather than the category on the front of the pack.
My dog genuinely does better on raw than on anything else. Am I wrong?
No, and I am not going to pretend otherwise to win the argument. What I would do in your position is keep the result and remove the avoidable risk: use a commercial raw that has been processed to reduce pathogens rather than assembling it yourself, leave the bones out and clean the teeth another way, and have the recipe checked by a veterinary nutritionist once so you know what it is actually delivering. That keeps nearly all of what you are seeing and takes away most of what keeps me up. Feeding a dog is one of the few parts of this where the owner gets to be the expert on their own animal, and I would rather help you do it well than tell you to stop.
More Help from Dr. Kraemer
Raw feeding is usually one part of a bigger set of food questions, so these are the pages that go with it.
- Grain-Free Diets for Bulldogs and French Bulldogs
- The Best Food and Diet for Bulldogs and French Bulldogs
- Food Allergy in Bulldogs and French Bulldogs
- Digestion and Dental Problems in Bulldogs and French Bulldogs
- Dental and Periodontal Disease in Bulldogs and French Bulldogs
- Weight and Exercise in Bulldogs and French Bulldogs
References
- Get the Facts: Raw Pet Food Diets can be Dangerous to You and Your Pet, U.S. Food and Drug Administration
- Tips for Safe Handling of Pet Food and Treats, U.S. Food and Drug Administration
- Feeding Practices in Small Animals, Merck Veterinary Manual
- Dentofacial Trauma in Small Animals, Merck Veterinary Manual
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