Alarming Rise In Dog Facelifts: Is Celebrity Culture To Blame?

You can blame celebrity culture for a lot of the ills that plague our society and it’s also quite fun to do so, but can we really blame the rich and the famous for the alarming rise in dog facelifts?

Apparently so. Bulldogs and pugs with wrinkly faces are all the rage with celebs such as Sharon Osborne, Kelly Brook, Paula Abdul and Jessica Alba, and where celebrities lead, you can bet your bottom dollar hordes of gullible and docile sycophants will surely follow.

The Uk’s Royal Veterinary College has warned that the celebrity-driven pug fad has led to an 80 per cent increase in medical face-lifts for pets in the past four years. A statistic which has to be said, is pretty pug ugly.

Pugs are a pedigree breed, but when pugs are bred to look even more puggish, certain problems arise.

The excess skin on a pug’s face can, if left untreated, cause blindness, or in severe cases, death, caused by the obstruction of the airways.

The Royal Veterinary College’s Dr Gert ter Haar revealed to The Telegraph that he has seen a dramatic increase in the number of dog facelifts, rising from an average of 30 five years ago to more than 260 a year now.

The doctor explained:

“We handle four to five of these operations every week and it has increased over the last few years. breeding has led to shortening of muscles in their faces, most are fine but we see the ones that have problems because of their breeding. the main problems are that their airways are obstructed and some have problems with their hearing and eyesight. we treat them as soon as possible. we find it is due to the breeds becoming more and more popular.

“We do not undertake these operations unless there is a medical reason to do so. we find some of them have excessive skin folds which can cause severe infections. it can cause blindness and if the folds cover the nose they cannot breath.”

Pugs have been a favorite with royalty for centuries and more recently celebrities have appeared to adopt them as their dog of choice.

Critics would argue that deliberately breeding dogs which suffer from life-threatening physical defects and grossly debilitating conditions in the name of cosmetic appearance is pure animal cruelty.

Yet others would argue that for many celebrities such suffering is a way of life.

Do celebs such as former pugilist Mickey Rourke love the pugs so dearly because they can so readily identify with the crosses they bear, one wonders.

What do you think. Is it plug ugly the way pugs are bred to be physically deformed, or are people just jumping on the celebrity bashing bandwagon again?