Dogue de Bordeaux

Some men were sitting on a bench on the Links here in Edinburgh and behind them a couple of dogs were sitting. I thought I heard that maybe they were speaking Spanish and I asked who owned the dog and asked him if I might photograph the big brown dog.

He said yes and I got down close to the ground to get some shots. I asked what breed the dog was and we had a merry couple of minutes while they told me in Spanish and we agreed that Bordeaux was that place on the Atlantic coast of France that they were describing and that he (the dog) was a Bordeaux dog or a French mastiff or something else that I couldn’t make out.

I since found out the dog is known as the Dogue de Bordeaux, the Bordeaux Mastiff, the ‘Bordeauxdog’, and the French Mastiff.

As a breed it seems to have originated in the region of Albania / Greece.

I had this idea that I wanted to see it in more detail than I would get by looking at it face to face. That’s because on the few times I have seen the breed I notice that they always seem to have lots of white spittle hanging from their jaws, and that puts me off staring for too long.

Now in close-up on the computer screen I see he has a very warty nose. And of course he has the saddest Pagliacci expression with his downturned eyebrows.

Click on the image and then click again and you will see a larger version of the image.