Comedy Icon Carol Leifer Barks Back at Kennel Club’s Sickly ‘Top Breeds’ in New PETA Videos

For Immediate Release:
March 18, 2026

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

Following the American Kennel Club’s (AKC) announcement of its “Most Popular Dog Breeds” of 2025—which put French bulldogs at #1 for the fourth year in a row—comedy legend Carol Leifer, of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Seinfeld, Hacks, and Saturday Night Live fame, is lambasting the AKC’s promotion of the breathing-impaired breed (BIB), along with others including English bulldogs and pugs, with a pair of new videos for PETA.

In the first spot, Leifer—dressed up as “your 2-pack a day Aunt Doris” in a bright red wig and tropical muumuu—struggles to breathe as she blows up a busted air mattress to mimic the painful, labored breathing of flat-faced dogs. “As vets have described it, every breath these dogs take, it’s like breathing through a small straw,” Leifer says in the video, before gasping into an oxygen mask.

Leifer also sat down for a more serious PSA to call out the sordid and greedy “torture breeding” industry that intentionally breeds dogs to have extreme features such as flattened snouts, which distort their airways, shorten their lives, and cause them to pant, snort, wheeze, and struggle for air. “Every French bulldog photo on Instagram should come with a disclaimer: ‘Warning—may cause lifelong vet bills,’” Leifer says. “Breeders cash in on the look, and the dogs and their guardians pay for it—literally.”

While many countries, including Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, and Norway, have banned or restricted the breeding of some or all breathing-impaired breeds, it’s still legal in the U.S.—and as Leifer explains, breeders keep selling them because people keep buying them: “As long as there is money to be made selling, showing, and breeding dogs,” she says, “breeders will continue to produce more, regardless of how much they cause dogs to suffer in the process.”

Leifer joins a long list of celebrities—including Tom Hardy, Ron Perlman, Edward James Olmos, Brian Cox, Joaquin Phoenix, Anjelica Huston, and Gillian Anderson—who have teamed up with PETA to promote kindness to animals.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.