Читать книгу American Pit Bull Terrier Handbook - Joe Stahlkuppe - Страница 32

Some of the world’s greatest terrier breeds come from England. With all due consideration to the bulldog-only claims of the game-bred APBT fans, it seems almost certain that the breed we know as the APBT is most assuredly of bulldog-and-terrier blending. The very availability of many excellent terriers in Britain bodes well for the proposition that these sturdy “earth dogs” fit in somewhere in the genetic amalgam that is the APBT.

That the word “terrier” has always been more or less historically attached to the pit dogs is another dispute to the “pure bulldog of ancient origins” theory held by many game-bred dog and dog-fighting enthusiasts. Even if the “bulldog” meant any dog that fought bulls, as some of this theory’s proponents strongly assert, that does not mean that all dogs that later fought in the pit were bulldogs. This is more than just an argument based on semantics; this is an argument based on genetics.

Breeders of Germany’s bulldog breed, the Boxer, have never denied that a Bulldog, Dr. Toenniessen’s Tom (an English import) was the grandsire of the great matriarch of the Boxer breed, Meta Von der Passage No. 30. Meta appears in the extended pedigree of most of the great modern Boxers. Tom, the Bulldog, was described as not at all like the “… cloddy, low-to-the-ground, grotesque English Bulldog…”

Tom, also possibly contributed some of the genes for all-white and predominantly white dogs that still occasionally appear in Boxer litters to this day. Tom was “… muscular, square-built, long-legged,” a small mastiff-type dog. Wagner says of Dr. Toenniessen’s Tom, “He probably did much to help in those early days [1890s], particularly in speeding the arrival of our present head characteristics, which are so essential to good general appearance.”

The point of mentioning the Boxer in the history of the APBT is that Boxer breeders strongly assert that their breed too has absolutely no terrier ancestry. None! The head of the Boxer is much more like that of a lightly built Bulldog than is the classic head of an APBT. If this one Bulldog, Dr. Toenniessen’s Tom, impacted on the Boxer’s head shape so much, why then, if they are completely descended from the original bulldog of England, do not more APBTs have heads like Boxers? Could it be that APBTs have some terrier ancestry and Boxers don’t? The long-held terrier theory makes as much sense as claiming that a breed that has been bred specifically for gameness and pit abilities would never have been crossed with terriers at any time over the past two centuries!

The pit dogs that became the ancestors of the APBT weren’t the only pit fighting dogs in England, even if they were direct descendents of some sort of “original bulldog.” In the American Book of the Dog, by Shields, 1891, an Englishman relates his story about his experienced fighting terrier “Crack,” that killed his pit opponent in 48 minutes. He also had a bitch named “Floss.” Floss fought a female pit dog (described as a bull-and-terrier) until “Floss set to and killed her.” The defeated dogs were recognized pit dogs of the day while Crack and Floss were both Airedale Terriers.

This was a time when pit winners brought good prices and were bred to other pit winners to produce more pit winners. Is it really logical to believe that with dogs like Floss and Crack (and many other good fighting terriers), no significant terrier ancestry crept into the APBT?