Much younger than some of our lads is your newborn son. What have been some of the best moments since little Levin was born?
Anthony Jung: When I found out I was going to become a father, I started listening to other fathers I knew more closely when they started to speak about their kids. But at the end of the day, you just have to find out for yourself. Having a kid completely changes your life, because you’re not just living for yourself anymore, and you develop a very different view of almost everything. I think we’ve been very lucky with our little boy. If he’s fed, slept and is freshly changed then he’s a little bundle of joy for around three hours. It’s really a lot of fun.
Are your dogs jealous?
Anthony Jung: No! We were a little nervous that might happen, because both our French Bulldogs take time to get used to strangers. It’s important to let the dogs do what they need to do and not just send them away immediately. We did have to move them off from the couch when they were puppies, however. But if the little one is being breastfed and the dogs sniff at his head a little bit then we’re OK with that. I don’t think they’re feeling excluded and I also think they’re coping really well with it all (laughs).
Where does your passion for dogs come from?
Anthony Jung: My wife and I grew up with them, and we always said we’d get a dog when we moved in together, so we got researching French Bulldogs. First of all we got a male one, and then some time later we thought it won’t make too much of a difference to get a second, and we were wrong (laughs)!
One of the dogs is in a wheelchair. What happened?
Anthony Jung: It’s due to a slipped disc injury, and he needed an operation before half a year of physiotherapy, and we hoped he’d be able to stand on his hind legs once again. Our biggest hope was that he’ll be able to ‘do his business’ alone again, and we could take care of everything else. Recently the pain has become too much and the hind legs have not got better so we started to look into what our options were. French Bulldogs are actually very robustly built on their front legs and you can actually buy wheelchairs for them if they lose functionality in their hind legs. You see it a lot more in the USA than you do in Germany at the moment. A lot of people ask us about in the street, because they’re fascinated by it all, and we’ve only received positive feedback. We’ve always said from the start that if the dog gives us and has a poor quality of life, then we will put him down, but we wanted to give him every chance to recover, and now he’s blossoming and has found a new lease of life.