A Family Built on Passion & Excellence
French Bulldog kennel in Sremska Mitrovica, Serbia. Breeding since 2007, registered with KSS, the Serbian national member of the FCI. One to two litters a year, raised in our home. Nikoleta is a licensed Group 9 FCI judge.
Goran Todorović
Breeder, Trainer, Handler, Nutritionist at Energy House
Takes care of all dogs' nutrition, supplementation and training; approves every good decision and pushes back on bad ideas.
Nikoleta Todorović
Breeder, barely a trainer, handler if necessary, at Energy House
Group 9 FCI Judge at the Serbian Kennel Club
Brainstorming the matings and calculating pedigree compatibilities, sole caretaker of the newborns (because nobody can do it better), troubleshooter, plans drafter, bearer of both good and disastrous ideas.
Structure, health, temperament
In that order, and never one at the cost of another.
We breed to the official standard and nothing else. No unrecognised colours, no coat varieties the standard does not describe, no exaggeration of type in any direction. A long haired dog with heavily overdone features in a colour the standard never mentions is not a French Bulldog, whatever it is being sold as, and we are strongly against the practice of producing them.
That is a position, not a marketing line. Fad colours command high prices right now. We do not produce them and we will not, because a breed standard is not a suggestion and the health cost of chasing novelty is paid by the dog.
What correct looks like to us
No written standard describes a dog in full detail, so understanding correct type always comes down to how an individual reads the words. This is how we read them.
A correct French Bulldog is proud and powerful. Thick, strong skeleton under well defined muscle, put together so that nothing restricts movement in any way. Short shiny coat. Bat ears carried vertically on top of a square head, always rounded at the top. Round dark eyes set just above the nose line, with a piercing, intelligent gaze. The nose is snubbed, but the nostrils are open enough never to restrict breathing. Upper and lower lip meet in the middle, the lower jaw broad, strong, rounded and turned upwards.
Nothing on the face should be loose. Wrinkles on the forehead and over the nose should be symmetrical and never exaggerated. When I look at a Frenchie's face and the first thing I notice is the wrinkles, that is a no for me. The roll over the nose should never be too thick or too emphasised, because experience has taught us that excessive wrinkle and a slightly lymphatic look affect breathing and restrict what a dog is able to do.
The head and face are the breed's trademark, together with the roach back, which seems to be undervalued and frequently misunderstood from one period to the next.
Look at a photograph of a well balanced French Bulldog with nothing beside it for scale, and the impression is of a huge, strong animal. In life, a Frenchie is a darling clown who leaves nobody indifferent.
What happens here
Health testing. Hearts tested young, plus knees and eyes, on every dog. We do not DNA test every dog and will not claim otherwise. Every litter is bred from at least one parent tested on the panel recommended for the breed, so the worst outcome for a puppy from a clear parent is carrier status, never affected.
One to two litters a year. Raised in our home, not in a separate building. Puppies learn household sounds and surfaces from the first days. We often practise early neurological stimulation.
Sixteen weeks before they go home. Not eight, not twelve. They leave after full immunisation, including the mandatory rabies vaccine at twelve weeks. Every puppy goes with an official pedigree, or an export pedigree where the new home is abroad, a microchip, and full travel documentation as standard. A contract is available if a buyer wants one, and is used in the rare cases of co-ownership.
We choose the home. We run our own background check on every potential buyer and decide whether the person is right for one of our dogs. So far we have very rarely got that judgement wrong.
If it does not work out, the dog comes back to us. We insist on this. We want to be the first to know if something goes wrong, at any point in a dog's life.
Dogs bred at Energy House live in Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Finland, Estonia, Iceland, Germany, Austria, Russia, Italy, Brazil, the United States, Canada, South Africa and the Philippines. Some went to show homes, some to families. All of them went to people we chose, scattered across a few continents.
Long before the first Frenchie
This story starts long before we ever met a French Bulldog.
We are children of the 1970s, born in the SFR of Yugoslavia, and we lived through a couple of wars in a country that only grew smaller. Through all of it one thing never changed: people here love dogs, and this part of the world has proven again and again that it can produce world class dogs in almost any breed you can think of.
During the difficult nineties a beautiful three year old Doberman came into our lives. He was not mine, he was my brother's, but he loved me and I loved him back, and he was the one who first showed me what a purebred dog really is: how noble, in both personality and looks, a dog bred with intention can be. Before him I was the kid bringing home stray puppies from the street, just to feed them and give them a bath. I always knew that sooner or later I would have a dog of my own.
What I did not know was that a boy was growing up close by with exactly the same longing. Years later that boy became my husband, and the name of our home is really just short for what we are, and what our names begin with.
The first real decision after buying our own house was which breed. It still makes me laugh that I did not want a Frenchie. It was entirely Goran's idea and I said yes more out of compromise than conviction. That reluctant okay turned into an unbreakable bond with Quirinus, a brindle male from Sirmiumkids kennel nearby, one of the few French Bulldog breeders in Serbia at the time.
The rest is history. A lot of learning, plenty of joy and love, and a fair share of heartbreak.
"He was a humanoid! We talked to each other, he knew everything."
And the story is still being written.