I'm very keen to own a Dogue de Bordeaux and have met with some breeders who have been kind enough to introduce me to this wonderful breed - I'm led to believe that they have a life expectancy of around eight years or so. However, as I have been visiting the many websites from around the world from DDB breeders I have noticed that there seems to be quite a few sites with pages dedicated to dogues who died suddenly(of things like bloat, "spleentorsion") at relatively young ages. As these were all dogues belonging to (I presume) experienced DDB owners/breeders will I fare any better as a novice DDB owner? Also as they are still relatively expensive to buy, I would be pretty hesitant in paying a lot for a dog with a (very?) short life expectancy (and upset in losing a pet!). I understand that life expectancy is a difficult thing to predict and these may be a few unfortunate isolated cases but can anybody shed any light as to how common premature death in DDB's is?

sorry no idea.