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The ADBA standard was written by experienced dogmen (people who actually fought their Pit Bulls in dogfights) who realized that it was impossible to define the physical traits that make a dog a good fighter. Instead of trying to describe every part of the dog, as most breed standards do, they focused their descriptions on those physical characteristics that they felt related the most to fighting ability, while ignoring those they felt had little or no relationship. Thus the ADBA standard is less a standard of perfection than it is a checklist for evaluating a potential fighting dog.

The ADBA standard evaluates the American Pit Bull Terrier on a basis of 100 points (100 points equaling the ideal dog) that are broken down as shown in Table 2-1.

TABLE 2-1 The ADBA Breed Standard

Category	Point Value	Criteria
Overall appearance	20 points	Health, height-to-weight ratio, overall body shape
Attitude	10 points	Alertness, carriage
Head and neck	15 points	Eyes, size and shape of head and neck, teeth
Front end	20 points	Chest, front legs, ribs, shoulders
Back end	30 points	Back legs and feet, loin, hip, hock, set of tail, stifle
Tail and coat	5 points	Gloss and length of coat, length and shape of tail

The ADBA standard uses some terms that may be confusing. For example, Bulldog refers to the Pit Bull. Dibo bred refers to a particular well-known strain of Pit Bulls. A nose-fighter is a dog who tends to grip his opponent’s nose; an ear-fighter is one who tends to grab the other dog’s ear. Fanging refers to the case in which a dog bites through his own lip, getting his fang stuck in it, in the course of a fight.

The ADBA standard can be found at www.adbadog.com/heritage-american-pit-bull-terrier-conformation-standard. The ADBA also publishes a Basis of Conformation, as follows (with a few more of my definitions interspersed):

1 Look at the overall profile of your dog.Ideally, he should be square — that is, he should be about as long from the point of the shoulder to the point of the hip as he is from the top of the shoulder to the ground. A square dog will stand high and have maximum leverage for his weight. This means that — when standing normally with the hock slightly back of the hip — the dog’s base (where his feet are) will be slightly longer than his height. Use the dog’s hip and shoulder as guides to keep from being fooled by the way he is standing.Your dog’s height-to-weight ratio is critical. Because dogs were fought at nearly identical weights, the bigger your dog was at his weight, the better were your chances of winning. Stocky dogs with long bodies, heavy shoulders, and thick legs usually lost to taller, rangier opponents.A tall, rangy dog is usually blessed with a fairly long neck. This is a tremendous advantage in a fight because it enables him to reach his opponent’s stifle when the other dog has his front leg, to take his shorter-necked opponent’s ear and hold him off, or to reach his opponent’s chest when the other dog is trying to hold him off. Ideally, your dog’s neck should be heavily muscled right up to the base of the skull. The point of shoulder is the front of the joint between the shoulder blade (scapula) and upper arm (humerus), situated at the foremost part of the dog’s body. The point of hip is at the rearmost part of the dog’s butt.

2 Look at your dog’s back end — that’s the drivetrain of any four-legged animal.A dog does 80 percent of his work off his hips and back legs. A long, sloping hip is most important. By its very length, it gives leverage to the thighbone (or femur). A long hip will give the dog a slightly roach-backed appearance (hence the low set tail so often spoken of). The hip should also be broad. A broad hip carries with it a broad loin and permits a large surface for the attachments of the gluteal muscles and the biceps femoris muscles, the biggest drivers in the powertrain.The upper thighbone should be shorter than the lower leg bone (or tibia), with the stifle joint located in the upper third of the hind leg. Dogs with a low stifle are not uncommon. Although these dogs are usually impressively muscled because of their bigger biceps femoris, they are surprisingly weak and slow on their back legs because leverage is lost by a long thigh. A short upper thighbone and a long lower leg bone usually mean a well-bent stifle, which in turn leads to a well-bent hock.A well-bent hock is critical to good wrestling ability. When a dog finds himself being driven backward, he must rely on the natural springiness of his well-bent hock and stifle to control his movement. Dogs with a straight hock (or the frequently seen double-jointed hock of many of the Dibo bred dogs) will wrestle well as long as muscle power can sustain them, but, if pushed, they will tire more quickly in the back end and will soon lose their wrestling ability. The stifle is the knee of the hind legs, located at the junction of the upper thigh (femur) and second thigh (tibia and fibula). A roach back refers to a back that is arched dramatically upward. The hock is anatomically comparable to the human ankle, although dogs walk on their tiptoes all the time. The gluteal muscle is the muscle just behind and below the front crest of the pelvis; the biceps femoris is the huge butt muscle making up the bulk of the upper thigh.

3 Look at your dog’s front end.He should have a deep rib cage, well-sprung at the top but tapering to the bottom. An elliptical — almost narrow — chest is preferable to a round, or barrel, chest. The rib cage houses the lungs, which are not storage tanks but pumps. The ribs are like a bellows, and their efficiency relates to the difference in volume between contractions and expansions. A barrel-chested dog, in addition to carrying more weight for his height, has an air pump with a short stroke. He must take more breaths to get the same volume of air as a dog with a deeper rib cage (which has more room for large lungs).At the eighth rib, the shoulders should be a little wider than the rib cage. Too narrow a shoulder does not support adequate musculature, but too wide a shoulder makes a dog slow and adds unnecessary weight. The shoulder blade should be at a 45 degree (or less) angle to the ground, and it should be broad and flat. The upper arm should be at an equal angle in the opposite direction, and it should be long enough that the elbow comes below the bottom of the rib cage. The elbows should lie flat, and the upper arm should run almost parallel to the spine (not jut out at the elbows, which can give the appearance of a wide English Bulldog stance and makes a dog more prone to fractures and dislocations).The forearm should be only slightly longer than the upper arm, and it should be heavy and solid — nearly twice the thickness of the metatarsal bones at the hock. The front legs and shoulders must be capable of sustaining tremendous punishment, so heaviness can be an asset here. The relationship between front and back legs should be, at first appearance, of a heavy front and a delicate back. In an athletic dog, the metatarsal bones, the hock, and the lower part of the lower leg bone will be light, fine, and springy. The front legs will be heavy and solid-looking. The experienced Bulldog man, however, will note the wide hip, loin, and powerful thigh, which make the back end the most muscular. The metatarsal bones are the bones leading from the toes to the second thigh, comparable to those of the human foot. This area is also referred to as the hock in a dog. The loin is the area just in front of the hips, over the abdominal area.

4 Look at your dog’s head.The head varies more than any other part of the body in the present day Pit Bull — probably because his head’s conformation has the least to do with whether he wins or loses. Certain attributes, however, do appear to be of advantage. First of all, consider the overall size of your dog’s head. A head that is too large simply carries more weight and increases the dog’s chances of having to fight a bigger dog. A head that is too small is easily punished by a nose-fighter and is especially easy for an ear-fighter to shake. In an otherwise well-proportioned dog, the head will appear to be about two-thirds the width of the shoulders, and about 25 percent wider at the cheeks than the neck at the base of the skull. The distance from the back of the head to the stop should be about the same as that from the stop to the tip of the nose. The bridge of the nose should be well developed, making the area directly under the eyes considerably wider than the area at the base of the ears.The depth from the top of the head to the bottom of the jaw is also important. The jaw is closed by the temporal fossa muscle exerting pressure on the coronoid process. The deeper the head is at this point (that is, between the zygomatic arch and the angular process of the bottom of the jaw), the more likely the dog is to have leverage advantage both in closing the jaw and in keeping it closed. A straight, boxlike muzzle and a well-developed mandible will not have much to do with biting power but will endure more punishment. “Lippy” dogs are continually fanging themselves in a fight, much to their disadvantage. The dog’s teeth should meet in the front, but more importantly the canines (or fangs) should slip tightly together, the upper behind the lower when the mouth is closed. Fangs should be wide at the gumline, taper to the end, and be sound and healthy (with none of them missing). The dog’s eyes should be small and deep-set — elliptical when viewed from the front and triangular when viewed from the side. In general, the ideal head is wedge-shaped when viewed from the top or from the side, and round when viewed from the front. The stop is the transition point (when viewed in profile) between the muzzle and the back of the skull. The zygomatic arch is the flare of bone that runs just below the lower margin of the eyes, essentially the widest bony part of the face. The coronoid process is the rear part of the lower jaw (the mandible) that extends upward under the zygomatic arch and has a broad area for muscle attachment. The angular process is the very rearmost part of the lower jaw that you can feel. Lippy means that the dog has loose or pendulous lips.JAWSA popular myth is that Pit Bulls have locking jaws with 1,600 pounds per square inch biting pressure. The anatomy of the Pit Bull’s jaw and skull is no different than that of any other breed. Yes, the skull is wide and the muscles well developed, but no mechanism exists that would allow the jaws to lock in place. Besides, how would the dogs eat? As for their strength, Pit Bulls do have strong jaws, but accurately measuring biting pressure in dogs is difficult. With any strong dog, it’s not so much the strength of the bite as it is the intentions and the determination of the dog that decide how serious a bite is.

5 Look at your dog’s appearance.The coat can be any color or any combination of colors. It should be short and bristled. The gloss of the coat usually reflects the health of the dog and is important to an athletic American Pit Bull Terrier.The skin should be thick and loose, but it should not fall in folds. It should appear to fit the dog tightly everywhere except around the neck and chest. Here, the skin should be loose enough to show vertical folds — even in a well-conditioned dog.The set of the tail is also very important. It should be low, and the length should come just above the point of the hock. The tail should be thick at its base and taper to a point at the end, hanging down like a pump handle when relaxed.The feet should be small and set high on the pasterns. The dog’s gait should be light and springy.

6 Finally, look at your dog’s musculature.When you look at muscles from a breeder’s standpoint, it is much more important to look at the genetic features of musculature than at those features that result from conditioning. A genetically powerful dog can be a winner in the hands of even an inept owner, but a genetically weak dog needs a good matchmaker to win — conditioning alone won’t do much for him.Imagine the bones as levers with the joints as the fulcrum and the muscles as the power source. The power being applied to the lever is more effective the farther away it is from the fulcrum. In the same way, muscles should be long, with attachments deep down on the bone and well past the joint. Short-muscled dogs are impressive looking, but they are not athletic. A muscle’s power value lies in its ability to contract. The greater the difference between a muscle’s relaxed state and its contracted state, the greater its power.Above all, the American Pit Bull Terrier is an all-around athlete. His body is called on for speed, power, agility, and stamina. He must be balanced in all directions: Too much of one thing robs him of another. He is not an entity formed according to human specialists. In his winning form, he is a fighting machine — a thing of beauty.