Home / Questions / Dogue de Bordeaux
Five to eight years is the honest range, among the shortest of any breed in the world. Heart disease, breathing problems and cancer head the health list behind it. Short lifespan is the central fact of Dogue ownership, and the breed's people accept a short, enormous love entirely knowingly.
Calm, devoted and gentle at home, good with children, good with other dogs in the record and friendly with strangers once introduced, it is a family guardian of immense softness. Apartments fail on size and stairs alone, matching the record's not ideal.
Take the verdicts here as the breed's honest average, then go and meet real dogs: an afternoon with adult Dogue de Bordeauxs confirms or corrects every line of it.
The temperament record reads: Sweet, adaptable, playful and devoted. Energy scores 3 out of 5, the middle of the scale: the Dogue de Bordeaux needs its 30 to 60 minutes daily and then settles like a sensible dog.
The record in one place: 23 to 27 inches at the shoulder, 99 to 150 lb, a lifespan of 5 to 8 years and 30 to 60 minutes of daily exercise. Most questions about this breed become easier once those four numbers are in view.
For the record's growth table: the Dogue de Bordeaux passes 8 weeks at about 10 to 15 lb, 9 months at about 59 to 90 lb, 18 months at about 87 to 132 lb, and tops out at 99 to 150 lb and 23 to 27 inches. Standard colors: all shades of fawn, from a dark red fawn to a light fawn. A rich coat color is considered desirable. Limited white patches are permissible on the chest and the extremities of the limbs. The breed belongs to the Non-Sporting group and its home ground is France.
The stranger test summarises the social side: rated Friendly with strangers, the Dogue de Bordeaux meets the world as this page describes. It is the daily routine, repeated for years, that decides whether the match works, not any single trait. Start from the Dogue de Bordeaux profile if you are still deciding: it gathers every figure quoted here into one place.
Questions multiply once the dog arrives, and most of them are answered somewhere in this breed's section: the profile, its other question pages and the tools linked below.
The record's verdict is Not ideal. Suitability turns on the daily routine more than the floor plan: an exercised Dogue de Bordeaux, given its 30 to 60 minutes, settles in small spaces, while the same dog left idle in a large house becomes the problem. Meeting adult dogs of the breed remains the best final check on any written answer, this one included.
The standard range is 23 to 27 inches at the shoulder and 99 to 150 lb, with a typical adult near 124 lb. The growth table on the Dogue de Bordeaux profile shows the expected weight at each age on the way there. The breed quiz on this site runs the same record against your household answers, which is a useful second opinion.
Every breed carries a short list of conditions it sees more often than average, and the Dogue de Bordeaux, living 5 to 8 years, is no exception. The profile's health record names them with notes; screening breeding stock for those conditions is the buyer's strongest protection.
A Dogue de Bordeaux question answered from the breed's own record: temperament, workload, costs and daily life.
The Dogue de Bordeaux is a giant Non-Sporting breed with energy at 3/5; plan on 30 to 60 minutes of activity a day to keep that engine honestly spent.
How long a Neapolitan Mastiff really lives, stage by stage, with the screening and habits that move the odds.
Last updated: November 6, 2026