The Pedigree Project

This project started innocently enough. We have been breeding British bloodlines for the past 12 years and take our genetics seriously. We're not talking alleles and chromosomes but rather identifying the dogs with the qualities we find desirable in a bulldog and who's breeding them. With that in mind, we borrowed a set of The Bulldog from Mrs. Carol Newman (Wencar Bulldogs - Blackpool, England) and began to supplement our pedigrees with the three generation pedigrees they provided. Looking at the magazines, we were struck by the fact that many people know the names of these dogs but don't have a clue what they looked like or how they were bred. Beth and I scanned over 300 photos before returning the copies of The Bulldog to Mrs. Newman, added a couple of hundred more photos from Barb and Ed Scully's (Boo's) collection, and are now starting in the dogs of the 1950s from Bob Blanchard's (MidAnglia) collection. In 2002, Mrs. Maggie Story, the longtime secretary of the Bulldog Club, Inc., gave me her collection of The Bulldog Magazine dating back to the late 1940s.

As an annual visitor to London, I became a regular at the Kennel Club library on Clarges Street and over several years was able to photocopy the Bulldog sections of the Studbook and the Breed Supplements dating back to the late 1890s. We now have a complete set of the Breed Supplements for the Utility Group, which records litter registrations with names, transfers of title, challenge certificates, titles and export records from 1989 forward. Using this information and CompuPed, we assembled database of over 15,000 English-bred bulldog. CompuPed allowed us to create a five generation pedigree in either HTML or in print format in the blink of an eye or do a ten generation gene search in a matter of seconds. We have now started adding inbreeding coefficient results from 10-generation searches. With the untimely death of Larry, the creator of CompuPed, the program was not kept up-to-date with the latest Windows™ technology and the project was suspended from 2002 until 2004.

We recently switched to ®Breed Mate and have converted our database into its format. Merging our "English" database with data provided by Ed Scully, Boo's Bulldogs, and Carla Smith, Buldawg British Bulldogs in Australia, the BreedMate database now contains nearly 45,000 records. In May 2004, we decided to make the entire database available on the Internet through the use of a Web Pedigree Generation program created by Jim Tretheway of Alfirin Technologies. While this site provides linked, multi-generational pedigrees on-the-fly, it does not contain photographs, inbreeding coefficients or owner records. We will continue to develop and expand the static web pages for English Champions and in time hope to add more comprehensive information on British bulldogs. Now none of this matters, of course, if you don't think that pedigrees matter but we do, and it is fascinating to study the way in which the "old timers" in England developed and maintained their "lines".

The old timers knew their dogs intimately: what lines complemented theirs, what lines to avoid. This knowledge is being lost as many of these individuals have passed on. Many new people have gotten into bulldogs in Britain in recent years and their enthusiasm is vital to keeping the breed alive. But their knowledge of blood lines and traits is limited by lack of access to pedigree information and to those who have been around. As a result, some of the old lines are being lost or diluted as people breed without reference to where their line comes from. We would not presume to comment on the strengths and weaknesses of any particular dog or kennel, but we sure can help sort out who's related to whom for anyone who's interested.

We believe that breeding matters. I once commented that we collect genes like some people collect baseball cards and its not a bad analogy. But we aren't just collecting any old cards. We have dogs in our pedigrees that do not appear until the fifth generation yet have the same genetic impact as a grandsire. You need to know the dogs, their strengths and their weaknesses before you can do effective line breeding. We're putting together some of the best of the old and new British bloodlines (in our opinion anyway). Take a tour and decide for yourself. Whether you agree or not, we feel confident that you will find it is time well spent.

A word of caution and a request. While we have made every effort to provide accurate information, we've found that hand written pedigrees and even show catalogs can and do contain errors. We've corrected these as best we can and the acquisition of the bulldog pages from the Kennel Club Stud book has certainly helped. But if you find any errors or you simply have photos or pedigrees you would like added let us know. Finally, please consider yourself a welcome guest but don't abuse our hospitality. These pages represent hundreds of hours of work and, in true web tradition, are free for you to enjoy. You may copy images or pedigrees for your personal use or to share with friends provided you acknowledge the source. You may not, however, download any of the material in this site for resale.

We hope you enjoy getting to know these dogs as much as we have while putting this collection together. These may not be the modern "ideal" of the bulldog but neither are they just "names". These were sound and solid bulldogs who deserve a second look and whose breeders may still have something to teach us. If you have any requests, comments or corrections please drop us a line at Wimsey Bulldogs.

Phil

Phil and Beth Handrick
Wimsey Bulldogs

Created: October 1998
Updated: September 5, 2004

© Wimsey Bulldogs 1998-2004

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