Читать книгу The Great Book Of Bulldogs Bull Terrier and Molosser - Marlene Zwettler - Страница 9

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ith the Germanic tribes and until the Middle Age in the area of today’s Belgium, Holland, Germany and Poland have already existed strong, broad muzzled dogs, being called depending on their use boar catchdogs, bull or bear biting dogs.

A powder-bottle with carved big bear biting dogs and small bull biting dogs (Bullenbeißer) hunting wild boar, second half of the 17th century

Three Bullenbeißer by Johan E. L. Riedinger (1698 – 1767)

Johan E. L. Riedinger (1698 – 1767) of Augsburg has been known for his portraits of the German Molosser. He also described them as follows:

“The main part of the old German hunting packs consisted of rough haired, large dogs with a shaggy tail and wolf-like heads. The farmers supplied with these dogs the Court in great numbers, because there were high losses with hunting. On the other hand the mastiffs and Bullenbeißer knew instinctively how to catch the game from behind and to hold, so that they wouldn’t be injured severely and the hunter could kill it. Therefore they were more valuable for hunting. They were high praised and bred carefully.”

H. F. von Fleming describes detailed in his work “The perfect German Hunter and Fisher” (Leipzig, 1719-24) the bear biting dogs and Bullenbeißer and their use:

“From this big type of English dogs exists a special sort of medium, but sometimes strong size, with a wide chest, with short and thick head, short raised nose, stiff, erected, cut ears, double bite, so that they can get fanged, and a wide forehead between the eyes. These dogs are corpulent, strong and don’t run agile. They catch furiously and with grim, so that they begin to tremble and can be hardly broken up. The same dogs you’ll find at the butcher’s in Danzig …

Still another type, also medium, but somewhat lower, but almost in all limbs similar to the previous, exists in Brabant, they are called Bullbeisser, they almost have the same condition as the before mentioned, only they are smaller, as told. Usually one uses to breed oneself for want of the previous mentioned type. They get secretly cropped ears and tail in their youth and are led on collars; in the beginning they are tried on moderate boars until they are used to the boars. Finally, they are put on small bears and taught to catch it on the ears. If they don’t succeed immediately and they could catch hard, you have to tickle them with a packing-stick or better with a strong, rugged quill or a small stick in the throat, so that they let loose. Now you can discipline them so that they take a better hold the next time, at which you talk friendly to them. Through that they will be more enthusiastic and pinch, frighten and bother the bear, so that it retires into a corner until the dogs got tired and the mastery gets weary of it.

Where the bears are rare, some mastery uses to course stares, oxen or bulls, but which is an exercise, more for the butchers than the hunters, and unknown to me, because I only want to write about wild animals. However, I’ve seen in Brabant, that the stare is bound to a long rope and coursed by such dogs, mostly attacking the nose or the throat, and because they have a strong bite, as already mentioned, they take a hold and stay there without any movement, until they let loose, when they got tired.

Otherwise these dogs are the most usual as good yard and chain dogs, because they are of bad manner, strong and have a rough barking. They are very watchful and attack all with fierce, what they notice, although they are smaller than the English dogs and their dwarfs.”

In Germany one distinguished two kinds of Bullenbeisser, that was the Great or Bullenbeisser of Danzig and the Small or Bullenbeisser of Brabant.

Great Bullenbeisser or Bullenbeisser of Danzig

Duke Berthold von Zähringen hunting bears, by an upper German master, around 1480

(Colored pen-and-ink drawing from a handwriting by Rudolf von Erlach)

The dogs got the name Bullenbeisser because of the work they did. So called Bärenbeisser (= bear biting dogs) were a little bit taller than the Bullenbeisser and were used for hunting and fighting with the bear.

Bear hunting by Karl Andreas Ruthard (1630 - 1703)

The Bullenbeisser of Brabant got his name from the province Brabant in northern Belgium and was described as a medium sized dog. He was used for hunting and coursing bears. The Bullenbeisser of Brabant is said to be the direct ancestor of the Boxer. During the French Revolution when the great Courts were dissolved and the hunts belonging to a master were over, also the importance of coursing dogs diminished. The Bullenbeisser of Danzig already wasn’t mentioned in dog books on and after 1783. However, Bullenbeisser still has been bred pure on the electoral Hessian Court until 1866. The pack was solid-colored yellow. In 1805, Georg Franz Dietrich of Winkell describes Bullenbeisser or Bärenbeisser as not too big, but strong and courageous, with broad short heads, “they catch all, on which they are coursed, but are heavy”. Still in 1885 there is an ad in the “Suisse Papers for Cynology”, N° 3, vol. 1, January 30: “A magnificent, shining black dog, Bullenbeisser, about 30 months old, 26’’ at the shoulders, suitable for a country seat.” Tschopp-Spörr, Handlung, Sursee.

However, the smaller Bullenbeisser has been bred as a house dog in smaller stocks. When from 1830 the English Bulldog has been imported to Germany, it has been crossed with the Bullenbeisser of Brabant. Therefore, on the one side you got the type of Boxer, on the other side the white color too. In1860, the term “Boxer” has been used for these crossings for the first time.

It’s supposed the Great Bullenbeisser to be an ancestor of the Great Dane. Others again think that they are the result of a crossing of the English Mastiff with the Greyhound. Probably both versions are correct, for English Mastiffs and Mastiff crossings had been exported from England to the continent. In England the Mastiff had been crossed with the Greyhound and eventually with the Irish Wolfhound too to create a faster and more agile hunting dog. However, these dogs never got popular in England, but in Germany they found their fanciers. In the early German literature they were described as “English, Danish or Ulmer Dogges”. Together with the Bullenbeisser they might have been involved in the breeding of those dogs, which later got known as “Great Dane”.

Emperor Charles V with his Ulmer Dogge, ainting by J. Seisenegger, 1530

It’s a fact that there was hunted with Bullenbeisser like dogs in the Netherlands until the 1930’s, preferred badger and wild boar. Today this kind of hunting is banned there.

Successful boar hunting in Holland (before 1939)

So what seems more likely that Boers and German settlers took the Bullenbeisser with them to South Africa, where he was used as one of the breeds to develop the Boerboel and the Rhodesian Ridgeback.