American Pit Bull Terrier Handbook. Joe Stahlkuppe
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the genetic framework, with or without the help of terriers, of the ancestors of the APBT.
Any student of English history during this period knows that life in the British Isles was quite harsh for the majority of the people. This majority excluded those of royalty, nobility, and wealth. Average Britons were abysmally poor. They could not read. They worked from dawn to past dusk at backbreaking work in mines, on small landholdings, at the docks, in factories, and as servants to the large landowners. Their lives were hard and short. In Ireland and Scotland, existence was even more precarious. Opportunities for pleasure and relief from drudgery were rare.
Perhaps as an opiate to their lives of pain and bleakness, the British developed a callused view of life. Cockfighting was brought to its highest zenith in the British Isles. Bulland bearbaiting were the only major diversions many common people had in their entire lives. When these activities were outlawed in 1835, they continued to be held clandestinely. But bears and bulls cannot be baited quietly in some out-of-the-way place. More often, a simpler form of blood sport, dogfighting, replaced bull-and bearbaiting. The British people’s hard and brutal lives were sometimes reflected in the hardness and the brutality of the only spectator events they were able to see.
In bullbaiting and later, in dog-fighting, the element of chance was always there. The much smaller dog might somehow triumph over the much larger bull or bear, just as a poor person might somehow one day become a person of wealth. In dogfighting, a poor dogfighter who could develop a great dog could go head to head vicariously with the son of an earl or with the rich landed gentry. Just this glimmer of hope was enough for many poor Britons.
A Tale of Two Terriers
A brother breed to the APBT is the Boston Terrier (colloquially and unpopularly still called the “Boston Bull Terrier” by uninformed people). The original Boston Terrier is clearly a very close relative of the original APBT. A number of books about the Boston Terrier make the following assertions:
• Both breeds were originally about the same size, approximately 35 pounds (16 kg).
• Hooper’s “Judge,” the founding sire of the Boston Terrier breed, was identified as a bull-and-terrier cross and was imported around 1865 from England by William O’Brien of Boston, Massachusetts.
• Judge, described as “more like a bulldog than a terrier” was dark brindle with white markings on his face and a white chest.
• Judge had cropped ears, a common surgery performed on pit dogs.
• Judge weighed 32 pounds (14.5 kg) and “…was a well-built and high stationed (tall) dog.”
• Both breeds clearly demonstrated their bull-and-terrier heritage.
• An early name for the Boston was the “Round-headed Bull and Terrier.”
• Another early name for the Boston was also an early name for the APBT, the “American Bull Terrier.”
• Both breeds are athletic and packed with power; prominent writers still remark on how much the physiques of the two breeds look alike.
• Both were originally bred and then imported to America for the same purpose—to fight in the dog pits against other dogs.
• From bull-and-terrier stock, imported to the United States from Britain, the APBT was sent to fight in the pits.
• From bull-and-terrier stock, imported to the United States from Britain, the Boston Terrier was number one on the American Kennel Club’s list of most popular breeds in America for many years.
It would be unfair to the people of the United Kingdom to say that dogfighting was universally accepted. It was not. Most of the population, rich and poor, felt the sport was cruel and that the practitioners were of a lower moral status, if not lower social status.
Many British residents felt they had a chance for a better life in America and immigrated to the United States and Canada. They brought with them many of their customs, their language, their laws, and their blood sports.
Early Bulldogs
The bulldogs of the bull- and bear-baiting days were nothing like the snuffling, short-faced Bulldogs seen at the dog shows today. Bulldogs can be excellent pets, but their grotesque heads, bodies, and breathing apparatus prevent the kind of exertion required to tangle with an angry bear or bull or even an angry dog. The bulldogs of those early years about two-and-a-half centuries ago were quite different. In fact, the paintings of bulldogs of that time show them to closely resemble the APBTs and Amstaffs of our time.
Just as lighter, quicker, more agile dogs, such as Brabanter and the early bulldog, replaced the mastiffs in bull- and bearbaiting, so would a more nimble dog replace the bulldog as the primary fighting dog. This dog would need the bravery of the bulldog and the key ingredient, gameness, to become the preeminent pit dog.
Other Bull-and-Terrier Breeds
There are perhaps as many as 25 breeds, which stem from either the early bulldog or the bull-and-terrier crosses. These breeds include the APBT, the American Staffordshire Terrier, the Staffordshire Bull Terrier, the modern Bulldog, the French Bulldog, the Pug, the Boston Terrier, the Boxer, the Dogue de Bordeaux, the Bullmastiff, the Bull Terrier, the American Bulldog, and others.
Some of these breeds greatly resemble the APBT; others do not. When the resemblance is there, it is usually on a larger dog. Though the most accomplished fighting dog breed in the world, some countries thought that the APBT was too small and produced their own larger versions.
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