American Bulldog. Abe Fishman
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likely that the American Bulldog originated in rural America as a ranch and farm dog used for catch work and for protecting livestock from marauding packs of wild dogs. If so, it is likely that the kinds of crosses just described are the crosses that gave rise to the American Bulldog. Ideally, then, the American Bulldog would have been a hard, fast, working, tenacious, medium- to large-sized dog (65 to 85 pounds). From early photographs, we know that these dogs were always white. We also know that in order to be most effective at the task of catching wild free-range livestock, the level or scissors bite would have been preferable to the undershot bite. As expected, early photographs depict American Bulldogs with working scissors bites.
THE MORE RECENT HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN BULLDOG
Readers who recognize the modern American Bulldog will undoubtedly have questions about the breed’s ancestry as set forth in this book. After all, the breed described is a smaller, more agile breed than the dogs we know as American Bulldogs today. The breed described here had a level bite, and many of today’s American Bulldogs are undershot. In fact, some of the written breed standards according to which these dogs are being shown and judged today describe vastly oversized, undershot dogs. Some of the dogs being shown are not even white in color. Why should this be the case if this book’s theory is true?
The Plott Hound, shown here, is often crossed with Pit Bulls to produce a bear-hunting dog. Pure-bred Plotts are very able hunters in their own right.
BACK FROM THE BRINK
In 1980, the American Bulldog breed was at the very door of extinction. You could literally count on one hand the number of breeders producing these dogs for use as working dogs. Every breeder producing American Bulldogs, then known as the American Pit Bulldog (divulging the breed’s fighting ancestry), lived in the American Southeast, in the states of Georgia, Alabama and the rest of the Deep South region. It is very likely that had nothing at all happened to popularize the breed, it would not have been long before the American Bulldog would have become extinct.
In order to understand how the American Bulldog breed evolved from the creature it once was to the creature we see today, we will need to understand the breed’s more recent history. When I refer to the breed’s recent history, I mean specifically the year 1978 to the present. Before 1978, the American Bulldog was a very homogeneous creature with regard to its genotype and its phenotype. It ranged in size from 60- to 65-pound females to males that reached a maximum of 85 pounds. The vast majority of these dogs were all white, and those that were not all white were mostly white. The bite was level. The overall body shape was much like that of the Pit Bull Terrier, but the breed did not display obvious terrier genetic influence. The tail of the breed tended to be thicker and more “feathered” than that of the Pit Bull.
The very late 1970s to about 1980 found the breed low in popularity. Few breeders had any interest in the American Bulldog. Only farmers and ranchers owned the breed at this time. The breed was completely unknown to the dog fancy at large. No articles had ever been written anywhere in the world about the breed and the only information in print at all were a few advertisements that appeared in a farmer’s (stockman’s) pulp paper journal published in a small Texas town. These advertised American Bulldogs were bred by farmers solely for sale to other farmers. They were cheap to buy and not really thought of as pure-bred dogs at all. They were strictly working dogs.
POPULARITY PROS AND CONS
The good news is that as a result of Dr. Carl Semencic’s writing about the breed, the American Bulldog was brought to the attention of American pure-bred fanciers nationwide. The bad news is that it was not long after the American pure-bred and rare-breed fanciers became aware of the breed that a demand for oversized Bulldogs was created by these novice breed fanciers. Many American Bulldog breeders, having never witnessed any demand for their dogs before, were more than happy to cross their Bulldogs with other breeds in order to create whatever dog it was that prospective puppy buyers wanted. After all, those who were calling for pups at this time were not asking for dogs that could actually work the ranch or the farm. They were asking for pups that would grow into dogs that would simply look the part of the “big tough Bulldog.” It was at this time that the bastardization of the American Bulldog breed began.
There were many reasons for the fall in the American Bulldog’s popularity. It was not as if these dogs had a long way to go in order to reach a condition of total nonexistence. They had always been rare and they were rapidly becoming totally obscure. Even more significant was the fact that the Pit Bull breed exploded in popularity throughout the US in the early 1980s. Not only did the Pit Bull suddenly become popular but the influx of novices getting involved with the Pit Bull created a great demand for larger Pit Bulls. Whereas once the American Bulldog was seen as being a Pit Bull-like dog, only larger, suddenly it was the same size as a larger Pit Bull (only not as hard and without the great fighting reputation). This gave rise to a situation in which general dog fanciers had no reason to become interested in American Bulldogs, and even stock-dog and working-dog men found the larger Pit Bull to be easier to come by and perfectly satisfactory for farm and ranch work.
The American Bulldog was not bred to be a guard dog, but his looks alone are usually enough to scare off a potential intruder.
A European-bred American Bulldog with very nice conformation. The popularity of the breed in the US made its way across the Atlantic.
Fortunately for the American Bulldog, the breed captured the interest of American pure-bred dog historian Dr. Carl Semencic. Semencic had begun to research the breed during the late 1970s, and, by the very early 1980s, he had begun to publish articles about it. He wrote the first article about the breed in the American show-dog magazine Dog World. He titled the article “Introducing the American Bulldog” and offered an in-depth review of the breed and its condition. In 1984, he authored the popular book The World of Fighting Dogs, which included the first chapter ever written about the American Bulldog breed.
MODERN LINES OF AMERICAN BULLDOGS
When the American rare-breed fancy discovered the American Bulldog in about 1982, there were three breeders who were best known for their involvement in the breed. Today we think of primarily two but sometimes all three of them as being the fathers of distinct “lines” of modern American Bulldogs. One of these men was Joe Painter of Chicago, Illinois. Painter was widely thought to have been interested in breeding primarily fighting dogs, and his American Bulldogs were generally thought to have been crosses between American Bulldogs and highly game-bred American Pit Bull Terriers from the Chicago area.
This dog possesses many typical breed characteristics: mostly white, black nose and impressive head.
The second of these men was Alan Scott of Alabama. Scott was a young man in 1982 and could not have been involved in Bulldogs for very long. At the time, the American Bulldogs he owned and produced were pure working-type Bulldogs of the type that had been around for many decades. Scott turned his interests away from American Bulldog breeding for a few years, and it was only during the mid-1990s that he returned to it, using the stock that was available to him then.
This dog’s undershot jaw is typical of many American Bulldogs today but would not