Pied French Bulldogs - What is the pied colour in the French bulldog breed?

The French bulldog is the UK’s most popular dog breed overall, both in terms of new puppy registrations with the Kennel Club each year and also in terms of the number of advertsfor French Bulldogs for sale placed on the Pets4Homes website too, incorporating both pedigree and non-pedigree Frenchies.

These small, stocky and quirky little dogs are now such a common sight in the UK that most of us who are interested in dogs would be able to spot one if we saw one out and about, although individual French bulldogs can of course look quite different from each other in terms of physical appearance.

One of the most obvious and distinctive differences that we tend to notice between individual dogs of the same breed is of course their colour, and there are quite a variety of colour and pattern variants that French bulldogs can be seen in. As well as the standard French bulldog colours that are notated within the breed standard, there are also a number of other coat colours too that are not formally recognised by the Kennel Club, some of which are described by puppy sellers are “rare” or “unusual,” even though some are considered to be undesirable within the breed.

Whilst the names and terms used to describe most French bulldog colours are self-explanatory, others can be harder to work out if you’re not familiar with how dog coat colours are described, and what the various different terms used for different colours and patterns mean.

The pied French bulldog colour is one of these, and in this article we will explain in more detail what a pied coat is, what a pied French bulldog looks like, and how the colour is represented within the breed. Read on to learn more.

What is a pied French bulldog?

The word “pied” is a term used to describe a specific colour and pattern combination that can be found in some dogs of the French bulldog breed. The words “pied” and “piebald” are sometimes used interchangeably, but within the French bulldog breed, the correct term to use is “pied.”

A pied French bulldog is a dog whose coat colour is predominantly white, with clearly marked patches in another, darker colour covering parts of the body, head, or both.

How the pattern is distributed and what proportion of the coat is white versus a darker colour can be quite variable from dog to dog, and French bulldog breeders often put a lot of effort into producing pied litters with distinctive and desirable markings.

The shade of the darker-coloured markings classed as acceptable and desirable in pied French bulldogs should be either fawn or brindle.

Is pied an officially recognised French bulldog colour?

Pied is one of several officially recognised French bulldog colours that are listed within the Kennel Club’s breed standard, and there are a couple of variants of pied specifically mentioned within the breed’s list of registration colours. These are fawn pied and brindle pied, although brindle pied is often referred to as simply “pied.”

Interestingly, white French bulldogs can also be registered with white as their designated coat colour, but they are also grouped in with pied dogs for showing class purposes.

How are pied French bulldogs bred?

The pied colour and pattern trait in French bulldogs is passed on from dog to dog by means of autosomal recessive heredity, which means that a dog needs to inherit a specific combination of genes from both parents to display a pied coat.

• Two pied dogs bred with each other will produce a pied litter.
• Breeding a pied dog to a solid coloured dog that carries the recessive gene for pied colour will produce a litter within which 50% of the pups will have solid markings but carry the pied gene, and 50% will inherit the pied colour.
• Breeding a pied dog to a solid coloured dog that does not carry the pied gene will result in a litter that is all solid coloured, but that also carries the pied gene.
• Breeding two solid coloured dogs that both carry the pied gene will result in a litter within which 25% of pups will be pied, 25% solid colour without carrier status, and 50% will be solid colour but pied carriers.

What should a pied French bulldog look like?

A good quality pied French bulldog with a desirable colour and pattern mixture should have more white in their coat in total than the darker shade, and the white areas of the coat should be clearly delineated with crisp borders, and no spots or ticking.

To be considered a good quality pied Frenchie, the markings on the dog’s coat should be distinctive and attractive looking, which ideally means that they are well pigmented and even in colour, located symmetrically, and nicely distributed across the body, head or both.

Achieving this in practice is fairly challenging as you can never tell for sure how a dog’s markings will present themselves until they are born, and markings that are uneven or oddly placed can spoil the appearance of the coat and so, potentially make the difference between a show-quality dog and a pet-quality pup.

As well as the coat colour of a pied French bulldog, the breed standard also states that the dog’s lips, eyelashes and the rims of the eyes themselves should ideally be black (rather than fair or pink).