WASHINGTON — Owners of bulldogs and pugs, beware: Short-snouted breeds accounted for roughly half the purebred dog deaths on airplanes in the past five years, government data released Friday shows.
Overall, at least 122 dog deaths were reported since May 2005, when U.S. airlines were required to start disclosing them, the Transportation Department says.
The dogs died while being shipped as cargo.
English bulldogs account for the highest number of deaths among the 108 purebreds on the list: 25. Pugs were next, with 11 deaths, followed by golden retrievers and Labradors, seven deaths each; French bulldogs, six; and American Staffordshire terriers, four.
Short-nosed breeds — known as “brachycephalic” in the dog world — have a skull formation that affects their airways, said Dan Bandy of Shawnee, Okla., chairman of the Bulldog Club of America’s health committee.
Brachycephalic breeds tend to be heat-intolerant in general, Bandy said. They pretty much have the same amount of tissue and structures within their skulls as long-nosed dogs, but it is compressed, and that can contribute to encroachment on their airways, he said.
