Kinked Tail The Ridgeback is a great cocktail of a dog, resulting from the artful merging of many breeds. One of them was the Bulldog – not the squat, lumbering creature that we know today, but his leggier, more athletic 19th Century ancestor. The Bulldog contributed a strong holding jaw and general athleticism to the Ridgeback, but he also brought along one undesirable trait: the “dud” or bob tail. We see the vestiges of this today in the occasional puppy born with a kinked tail. Such puppies are not bred because the fault is highly heritable: Breed authority Major Tom Hawley called it “as
...more
