Pictures of American bulldog Vinny – his recent PennHip scores are excellent.

I had vinny’s hips and elbows checked. I got his PENN back today I attach it to this. “GREAT JOB”.

thanks
paul

The United Nations reports that there is a worldwide food crisis. World economies are on downturn for years now and this affecting not only the poor countries such as Egypt in recent news, but countries such as the United States and Canada along with Europe. Many economies have failed across Europe and the United States already and more will follow. In recent times world grain pricing along with weather anomalies and poor global fiscal management have depend us to the storm we are currently riding. The Bible calls this the end times. Other say it is the storm before the new day. If you ask me what I think of all of this from a dog breeders perspective, well I think its a challenging time for sure but a time when man needs a good dog to protect the homestead more than ever.

Here at the kennel we have had to reduce the number of hold back pups by a fair margin as overhead costs have soured over the last 3 years. We also cutback the number of adults dogs under our care in half. This is due mostly to lack of proper housing and overhead to care for the animals rather needs of the kennel.
The upside is we have only kept the dogs we felt the strongest about . Truth be said we missed a lot of opportunities in puppies we never got see develop and had to sell off.
This bothers me as a breeder because, obviously. No one likes to see the fruits of there labor passed by and your hard work wasted on a pet home.
In this tough economic climate were thankful we have been able to stay afloat at all as many haven’t been so lucky.
Just yesterday I read about a breeder who had to cull 100 of his dogs because he just could no longer care for them in this current state . His dog sled business became unavailable due to a drop in tourism in his region. The man had to kill 100 of 350 dogs with his own hands.
Stories of desperation and breakdown of the fabric of our culture/ society are becoming every day news more and more. Some one told the other day that humanity is loosing its humanity. Maybe it is or maybe definition of humanity differs in different dictionaries. Either way it sure seems like survival of fittest is the law of the day.

At the kennel we have made changes and are making more as time goes on. We have found it challenging to find red meat suppliers in quantity and we are using poultry as the main muscle meat in the dogs diet.
This is ok but I’ve taken steps to license myself to hunt game in Ontario.
Our goal is to feed the dogs a diet that is 2/3rds muscle meats the rest is kibble and organs. Red meats can be comprised of beef, steer, sheep, goat, elk, moose and some other more exotic hybrid animals newer to the commercial farming crop in Ontario.
Recently we have gone from feeding two meals a day down to one and skipping one day a week for the sub to adult dogs. We do this to give the dogs a chance to digest and cleanse there from the weeks feed. This is not something we will do on a continuous basis but a good way to shed a few unwanted pounds and cut costs at the same time. Our vet likes how our dogs look with the new diet, and even complimented what a fresh breath of air it is to see dogs that aren’t grossly overweight come to his clinic. This took me a bit of guard but comes with no surprise when you look at the make up and feeding directions of retail dog food.

This winter has been especially harsh on the animals due to the extreme cold weather in the region we are living in. We have already gone through our stores of allotted firewood for 2010/2011 season. The extreme cold has kept the dogs in the make shift kennel rather than in the outside runs where cleaning is much easier, cheaper and time effective. Injuries for the dogs in the cold weather have a much higher probability as we have seen. Our best prospect female blew her knee out back in Dec on the patch of ice. An easy thing to do for an animal that start life weighing a pound on day 1 of her life and 365 days later is well over 100lbs. It’s unfortunate that ligaments don’t grow strong as quick as muscle tissue grows dense. The vet tells us $ 3500 and should be fine. The flip side is her hips look great and once she is fixed she’ll be able to breed. She is by far the best female we have produced and kept to date.
Heating and cleaning of the makeshift kennel is never ending job that never stops and is never finished. Our week is comprised of around the clock work with no time or finances allotted for socializing or entertainment of any sort. Down time comes mostly in the form of my wife’s and I company and the time with the animals. The best way to sum it up is to say its overwhelming at times. Just now my wife got home from one of her 3 jobs and is having a fit as the house smells like urine as we have just run our of disinfectants. Fights are not uncommon in this household when the situation is as such. For the most part the fight are between the wife and I rather than the dogs. To say the least our make shift kennel doesn’t work at all but its all we have so all we can do is look forward to spring and suck it up for now.

Our best kennel to date was a 20 by 30 wood heated shop. Inside the shop were 4 by 6ft cubicles which had access to 4 by 25ft outside runs. The ambient temperature at night was kept in the mid 60′s in the winter with the wood stove. In the summer we used heavy duty commercial fan to keep the air moving to keep the dogs comfortable..The floor of the shop was concrete and we put cardboard and hay on the floor of each cubicle to keep the cold winter out for the dogs. We found the dogs didn’t soil that much in those indoor spaces which was bonus to.
In the 20 by 30 shop we had 6 runs. For a total of 8 or 9 dogs in the shop/kennel. Whelping moms would be in our residence along with the litter. Also we had a dog or two from the shop/kennel on rotation spending time with us in the house for a total of 12 or so dogs on the property not including pups.
At that we also didn’t have any animals considered pets or retired dogs which we kept back due to a sense of commitment and sentiment the pack was strictly breeding stock or potential breeding stock.
Not an ideal setup or a state of the art facility but a fair balance to raise quality well socialized animals for the general public. The balance part did not come from the handler point of view but rather pack numbers for start up breeding program on the fast track.
Fights between my wife and I weren’t uncommon back then either but the was more overhead to go around.

Looking back on those years all we really had to show for it was the memories my wife and I made over the years and a select group of quality dogs which would rival any in there breed standard.

Hello Martin and Kinga,
We just wanted to send you a short video of what we taught Stella (Chopper x Tyra Sept 09 litter) to do. We are soo proud of her, she is extremely smart and always eager to learn something new. We will send more pictures your way, soon

American Bulldog Lola:

Hi Martin and Kinga
attached are some pictures of american bulldog T-Bone and a couple with his best friend, my son!
It has been one year since we traveled to meet all the american bulldogs and the puppies. From all those american bulldog puppies we remember the moment we chose T-Bone and he became a part of our family. On the ride home he fell asleep in my son’s lap and they both stayed that way for the 3 hour ride to our house. They have been inseparable for the last year with T-Bone slowly taking up more and more room on my son’s bed!
On average T-Bone has grown 10 pounds a month for the first 10 months and slowed down, he eats Royal Canine and raw ground beef, raw beef soup bones are his favorite snack! At 14 months he’s at 105 pounds but muscular and fit due to ongoing off leash exercise with his brother Gator and other Am. bull Callie!
Clearly, I think T-Bone’s confirmation is awesome! His head and build are totally Johnson american bulldog!! The funniest reaction is when I tell people he is still a puppy at 14 months and he is still growing…but although we are proud of T-Bone’s physcial presence we are most happy with his disposition and demeanor. He is a supremely confident dog with all people and other animals, he is non-aggressive but is quick to be assertive if needed. Bottom line, he is a wonderful dog and we couldn’t imagine our home and family without him.
I am looking forward to getting him to some shows in Ontario this summer for you to see him!

martin kemnitz
to Euan

he is beautiful. thank you for the photos – keep an eye on him playing with the brother – testosterone may kick in around females just keep that in mind.

Euan Reid
to me

Oh T-Bone has quite a lot of testosterone….and we watch and listen to Gator and T-Bone carefully when we are hiking. The key is to stay moving and roam, they crash through the bushes and play keep away with sticks, and when they playfight we listen to the pitch of their barks and snarls to change, but the playfighting has really declined instead they enjoy playing with an object (sticks, balls etc).
T-Bone also goes into boarding kennels when I travel where they do supervised playgroups and they always tell me he plays well with others!

martin kemnitz
to Euan

hi
that s good ! he is very well socialized
Congratulations !

We wanted to send you a few pictures of Floyd. He is 13 weeks old in these pictures…we have some more recent ones we will send soon too. Thank you so much, he is an incredible dog, mellow but playful, not afraid of anyone or anything, stubborn but oh so funny!! We love him a lot.