Anyone ever use Rottweilers

[Bucunter1983]

i worked a dogmans yard for a couple of years just as matching was beginning to be outlawed. i am well aware of the differences in both looks & personality between real bulldogs & the fat hippos being called pitt bulls. they were game dogs not modern "gamebred," not curs killed in a pit by being outmatched or any other modern nonsense. 95% of those dogs would have run past a dozen hogs to lay into another dog. the few you would have gotten to grab a hog would have done the job just fine except they were too small to stop a really big hog by themselves (on the ear anyway).
and the two small pits i pried dead off a hogs ears were NOT gamedogs, although by modern standards they would have been called gamebred.

I believe the dogs you are describing are fighting pit bulls and no more. Game bred bulldogs were a tool back in the day on the frontier and are completely different today. Ill stick with what I consider a "game bred pit" 45-50lbs of heart, courage, no quit, get the job done no matter what dogs.

[Pops]

just so you understand,
before a bunch of show fancy nimrods and dumb@$$es breeding oversized pets picked up on the term & started throwing it around, gamebred literally meant BOTH parents had been proven in the box or the dam was unproven but bred from proven stock and the sire was proven. some oldtimers only used the term if multiple generations (3 or more)were proven in the box.
gamebred dogs were not used on the frontier for anything but gambling. in the southern USA, when it was frontier, the main dogs were curs (not mutts but curs) and later herding dogs. in the plains herders & sighthounds were most common. the wooded northern states had a more varied mix of settlers and so didn't have a dominant type of dog during the frontier period. scenthounds came after the frontier had moved on and game was less plentiful or better educated. the few bulldogs in use were mostly in the south after the frontier period and were butcher's or farmer's type functionally identical to (and the main ancestor of) the modern American bulldog (although there was a fair bit of game dog crossed in). it was more widely used on free ranging hog herds than cattle. the high dog aggression made game or "pit" bulldogs more limited in usefulness then than now. the main reason they are more useful now is that a lot of cold dogs (not game) were & are bred and used for other purposes like hogdogs.
in fact the game dog as we know it was a creation of the early 19th century and didn't become start to become common (w/ sporting gentlemen & gamblers) in the USA until the mid 19th century. the war of northern aggression caused a huge setback in the growth of the breed which didn't kick off again real strong until the early 1870s in certain gambling hotspots like new orleans, & san fran. professional gamblers owned most of the breed but sporting gentlemen (who "bet on occassion") did most of the breeding. by and large cold dogs were put down until around the turn of the century. at that point a lot of cold dogs wound up being given to friends, family & neighbors as pets and they became popularly known as american bullterriers to differentiate from the english dogs which were now dominated by the all white hinks blood.

[lifreediver]

only two words ELI blood

[dogemdownsouth]

gameness has nothing to do with the dog wanting to catch another dog! gameness in the dog is the absolute lack of quit in that dog, that is what makes game bred dogs so good at dog fighting, or hog hunting, because the dog is going to give 100% to whatever you turn him on to.

if your bulldogs were truly from GAME lines they'd be worthless for hogdogging since they would only want to catch the other dogs.
lost of reasons a dog bays instead of catching might just be wore out, could be sick could be injured & you just don't notice. most every dog has a breaking point. if you haven't seen it in your dogs, you haven't pushed them hard enough. the right hog & circumstance will break most dogs.

[Pops]

you believe whatever nonsense you want to believe.
i worked them. i have seen LEGAL matches in 3 countries. i am aquainted w/ a fella that worked Maurice Carver's yard. & i am aquainted w/ a retired dogman (dog fighter/breeder) that literally wrote the book on the breed history. He can recite the ancestry of the dogs he raised all the way back to their first imports from britain & ireland. the sole freaking purpose for the creation of the breed & the sole purpose for it's existance until it was outlawed in the 1970s & 80s was matching. the simple fact is any other "history" is nonsense made up by the same kind of morons that would have you believe the english bulldogs smashed face helps it breathe while catching bulls (nevermind the fact it'll kill them to walk around the block).
yes the residual gameness in cold dogs makes them good at other things but a truly gamebred dog is a matching dog w/all the dog aggression that carries. no matter how many batteries you burn out in your hotshot a truly gamebred dog will light into another dog sooner or later.
OTH truly gamebred dogs are almost never available to the general public and even I no longer have the personal ties needed to acquire one.

but don't take my word for it. you're in AR, carry your happy uninformed butt down to see Mr Floyd and ask him to tell you about the breeds real history & what gamebred means. while you're at it swing through TX and pic up bucunter so he can quit spouting that frontier nonsense.

[Bucunter1983]

Some folks know everything, You say you have seen legal matches in different countries. There is nothing worse than a man that likes to fight and watch dog fights, In my opinion sir you are a piece of shit.

[Pops]

well if it wasn't for the oldtime pieces of shit you dipthongs wouldn't have a pit bulldog or any of the catch dogs descended from it nor the opportunity to create fantasies about it's history. in fact it's a-holes like you that think you can train the DA away and don't really understand the breed that cause all the pit bull bans. back when only dog fighters had the breed you never saw pit bull kills kid headlines & no one wanted to ban them. so go cry to someone that cares.

[desertdog]

C'mon Pop's, say what you REALLY mean..lol. Truthfully though, some lines of "gamebred" Bulldogs are MUCH more easy going and tractable than others. I had a Heinzl bred Bulldog that was real good with other dog's. And I read something Carver wrote about "the boy's" taking their Bulldogs out in the countryside outside of San Antonio and setting the dog's on Coyote's. Also, about the Pit that roamed the range with him when he was Cowboyin' in Texas. Sure, most of them are as you describe, but, some lines are different..M.B.

[Bucunter1983]

http://www.pitbull411.com/history.html

When English immigrants came to America, their dogs came with them. Not surprisingly, dog fighting was common in America throughout the 19th century. However, as the immigrants traveled west, the pit bull took on a broader and more humane function. On the frontier, pit bulls assumed the role of an all-purpose dog. In addition to herding cattle and sheep they served as faithful guardians, protecting families and livestock from the ever-present threat of thieves and wild animals.
Read up POPS, Pits originated as a war dog as in human wars not dog wars, bred then as a hearding dog that would take down unruly bulls on the way to market. But hey I dont know anything

[Bucunter1983]

http://www.pitbull411.com/history.html

When English immigrants came to America, their dogs came with them. Not surprisingly, dog fighting was common in America throughout the 19th century. However, as the immigrants traveled west, the pit bull took on a broader and more humane function. On the frontier, pit bulls assumed the role of an all-purpose dog. In addition to herding cattle and sheep they served as faithful guardians, protecting families and livestock from the ever-present threat of thieves and wild animals.
Read up POPS, Pits originated as a war dog as in human wars not dog wars, bred then as a hearding dog that would take down unruly bulls on the way to market. But hey I dont know anything

Also the original breed of pit bull were very large, bigger than the modern american bully and they have been bred down to be a more compact animal

[Pops]

http://www.pitbull411.com/history.html

When English immigrants came to America, their dogs came with them. Not surprisingly, dog fighting was common in America throughout the 19th century. However, as the immigrants traveled west, the pit bull took on a broader and more humane function. On the frontier, pit bulls assumed the role of an all-purpose dog. In addition to herding cattle and sheep they served as faithful guardians, protecting families and livestock from the ever-present threat of thieves and wild animals.
Read up POPS, Pits originated as a war dog as in human wars not dog wars, bred then as a hearding dog that would take down unruly bulls on the way to market. But hey I dont know anything

you really are rather ignorant (uneducated/uninformed) which is bad enough but you spew this ignorance as truth & that is worse.
the "pit" bulldog originated from crossing bulldogs & terriers (mostly but other breeds & crosses almost certainly contributed) in the early 1800s (about 1835 or so, long after the revolution & initial immigration). this cross was done for two reasons one being that butcher's bulldogs which had been used for bull & bear baiting was not as DA as was needed for matching (and terriers are very DA) & two along w/ the ban on bullbaiting came a death edict for bulldogs in all britain. because of this MANY bulldogs were exported to the colonies, former colonies & many places along primary trade routes where they contributed to the formation of many breeds like south african boerboels & presa canarios. this death edict also caused the brits to have to import bulldogs later in the 1800s when showing took off the noted foundation stud big head billy was imported from spain his descendants were later crossed w/ pugs (which at the time were as big as 35#). this expulsion of bulldogs (but not the already created bull & terriers) also lead to white markings in the dutch/german brabanter/bullen & baren beisers/boxer which had previously been solid brindle or fawn. the few true bulldogs retained in britain were permitted because they were kept by gamekeepers for crossing to the remaining mastiffs (which were nearly extinct as a breed by then) who also provided dogs to the police who enforced the law. the expulsion is also why the brits & later the american dogmen didn't have specific weight classes over 60# like the dogmen in spain & it's colonies. the bull & mastiff and bull & terriers were exempt from the expulsion because they were clearly not bulldogs (although larger bull & terriers were suspect and so the british lines tended toward smaller dogs which is why the staffordshire bull terrier only tops out around 40# and also why james hinks added more terrier to make the distinction more obvious).
the first bulldogs in america came over w/ the first colonies before the revolution and they were butcher's type bulldogs (the same kind used to bait bulls & bears). however they were not general "frontier" dogs as they were not herding dogs (yes they pushed cattle from one paddock to the next but they did not round up ranged cattle). the primary frontier dog was the cur or curX since they already had all the needed attributes for frontier survival (silent tracker, rough baydog, some treeing ability, general dislike of strangers & herding ability). cattle at the time were free ranged. fences were used to keep large livestock out not in. so a true herding dog was needed and many curs will in fact catch not only hogs but cattle & horses as well (although not as many as when i was a kid, which was also a lot less than when my dad was a kid).
the bull & terrier developed primarily by the working class & peasants as a means of supplementing their income by winnings in the box & by selling good stock to the gamblers among the aristocracy. when potato famine & grain blights hit europe in the late 1840s & 1850s mass emigration to the americas & australia brought a large variety of pit dogs here including the irish lines created by crossing the native red, blue & wheaton terriers to bulldogs, the scottish bred blue paul (blue/grey, black, & red smut) and the english lines primarily from staffordshire. here all of these lines were blended by breeding the best match dogs to the best matchdogs. this blending produced what we now call pit bulls.
as for your link, that guy is a breed ban causing idiot. just reading his advert for his book made me want to vomit. ten years of pet bulls & he thinks he knows enough to write a book. my aquaintance helped write the book in the 70s because of the HSUS nonsense. at that point he had owned & bred multiple gr ch match dogs for close to 40 years. but some pet bull nimrod w/ 10 years of experience must know more than him because he says it's all in the training.
i'll need two pages just to correct all the historical crap that chad dipthong got wrong. but we can start w/ this. the roman historianS that actually SAW & wrote about the war dogs of the Illyrian Molossi tribe stated that they were noted for "their large size, ferocity & WOLFLIKE APPEARANCE." not many wolflike bulldogs or mastiffs.
oh & one more thing, when i get to afghanistan or pakistan, i plan on attending the dog matches & bear baits. i'll be looking for bully kutta gyps to bring back for crossbreeding. if 1983 in your handle is your birth year, then i had already seen matches in two countries before you were born.
why is it people that understand good breeding will consistantly produce dogs that want to hunt cannot grasp that breeding is what makes pit bulldogs WANT to fight each other?
to everyone else that had to read all this crap, i'm sorry. i am just getting tired of all the nonsense about "pit bulls" especially the people trying to deny the fighting background. the crap called pit bulls & game dogs are not even remotely close and are a relatively new creation by idiots that wouldn't know a gamedog if it ate their poodle. and worse they all insist on passing bad info. again i'm sorry for making you guys read all this.

[dogemdownsouth]

apology excepted pops. now carry your old grumpy ass to pakastan. lol oh and be careful over there.

[Pops]

i got a while yet. the gov't has to send me to language school first and that is a year long.

[Bucunter1983]

Im going to leave this alone now, there is a smartass on every forum. The link is a plain and simple explination of the evolution of the pit bull and its origin. Plus what you are going on is the word of one man, while the link is a simple explination compiled by a group of historian's.

[cmogi10]

Pop's knows what he's talking about,

There's a lot of truths in that link, but it's also doing it's best to save the breed image to the public.

Coming from a Pitbull owner who looks down on fighting dogs.