Donkin's Byron. Show bulldog, 1873 model.
Donkin’s Byron was a linebred bulldog that was bred for the show ring. His parents were half brother and sister that shared the sire named Tiger. His color was red smut. I don’t know what that color is– fawn with a black mask?
He was a very different dog from his modern day counterpart:
Donkin’s Byron had legs, a decent muzzle, and a long tail.
Why on earth did we decide that the current conformation of he bulldog is so wonderful?
It’s not like they can whelp properly, breathe freely, cool themselves efficiently, or even mate naturally.
Maybe I’m just ignorant, but how are bulldogs of today an improvement?
Maybe their temperaments are better, but everything else is more than a little sideways.
I do know that back then red smut is what they called a red APBT…don’t know if it’s the same for other dogs though.
I see the same thing with ‘Bully’ Pit Bulls. People seem to think they look more ‘tough’ than the more moderate type. I assume that was what drove the bulldog fashion as well.
Pai, do you mean like in bully whippets? the actual myostatin gene? or the look of a double muscled dog?
smut is not plain red; it’s red with black overtones; sometimes called “dilute sable”
http://www.apbtconformation.com/colors.htm
If you think the “English” bulldog of today is horrible (and it is) you should see the monstrosities that they’re calling “American bullies”
http://www.AtomicDoggMagazine.com/
These guys are now flooding the pit bull rescues; sadly some pit bull people are actually accepting them. Even worse, some are registered with the UKC. Even though they are clearly mutts
That makes sense. I can see it that coloration in the depiction of Donkin’s Byron.
BTW, there are some people who are trying to breed this type of bulldog: http://www.victorian-bulldog.co.uk/
I met a woman who had one of the new bull dog breeds, it was impressive like, a bigger than a Cocker, but not much bigger, Bullmastiff.
We got friendly and she invited me over her house. Her dog growled at me. She said he was trained to do that.
End of new friendship, since she kept a dog trained to growl at visitors so that she would feel safe inviting people over her house – but no consideration for if the guest felt safe.
But the dog was NOT unhealthy looking. But I never saw it do more than walk a few feet.
I suspect those “American bullies” have a touch of Neapolitan mastiff in them. I have never seen one that wasn’t some version of blue dilution, which is ubiquitous among Neos.
There are blue AmStaff and “Pit Bulls”– derived from the blue pauls, possibly.
Emily, that thing is hideous! :(
Those dogs look like meat animals.
How sad it that video clip of the breeding!
but again, “Game American Bulldog” in google images yields a fair number of “bulldogs” who are not overly wrinkled, have reasonably straight legs (and mostly, longer ones), more moderate body, and an actual muzzle. Some probably don’t have a temperment suitable for a family dog, but some probably do. One really does have to wonder why English Bulldog breeders aren’t selecting for a more “old” type build.
Peggy Richter.
one has to wonder, indeed.
Self delusion has no bounds.. you can hear the blather of dogshow announcers proclaiming “their noses are on top of their heads so they can still breathe when they grabbed the bull.” It’s like they’ve never seen a picture of a 19th century bulldog actually baiting a bull (and there are MANY)… the dogs look much like the American bulldog (or even some heftier version of the APBT).
The process of shaping the bulldog away from its functional form began not long after bull-baiting was banned. I’m not suggesting that we bring it back at all, but the modern bulldog owes one important dog dealer to its development into something else.
Bill George was a major dealer in pet bulldogs. He bred them in toy strains and even imported a Spanish Alano dog to breed with his larger dogs.
From the depictions of the dogs he was producing, they were already starting to look like modern bulldogs:
holy crap, that looks like a dogfighters “yard”!
LOL. Bill George actually called that place his “yard.”
And that’s exactly what I thought of when I first saw that depiction of it.
Breathe while griping the bull?
Obviously they’re lacking basic anatomy information. A hunting dog holding a pigeon or a rat can’t breathe either?
That is one of the problems with all bully type dog breeding, isn’t it?
People don’t want to produce puppies who suffer, but they aren’t wanting to produce “game bred” dogs either.
While I am sure that some people really do want a game bred dog, I think that what many bully owners want is just a dog who looks masculine and heterosexual.
If Hollywood writers would give a pet pit bull to every homosexual guest star on their show, the pit bull image would crash.
And if a football player comes out of the closet – make sure to mention his two PIT BULL dogs.
Isn’t that what the pit bull rescue people complain about? That their breed gets a bad rap because of it’s image? That young toughs buy the breed to look tough? So if you want to change the image away from a tough image, why not do so?
When you show photos of pit bulls, don’t pair them with kids, pair them with upscale gay couples. You have to admit it would be an immediate image change.
No one produces “game bred” dogs except dogfighters and dogfighting cultists, because a “game bred” dog is one bred from 2 proven “game” dogs (“game” being a quality which in “pit bull” lore is only tested in the pit, unlike other breeds that have that characteristic). Some people may breed “dogs descended from game bred dogs” or mistakenly call their dog a “gamebred type dog” (assuming incorrectly that fighting dogs were all of one physical type). These latter terms are completely meaningless in terms of telling anything about a dog’s health or temperament (or willingness/ability to fight for that matteR)
I don’t know what “bully” owners want. The people I know who want American pit bull terriers/American Staffordshire terriers (or rescue dogs that appear to be APBTs or ASTs) want a healthy, moderately sized, athletic dog that is a balance between the bulldog (of yore) and the terrier(s) that went into the original composition. And they want a dog that is biddable, completely loving and never aggressive towards people, who responds enthusiastically and with extreme determination in every task it undertakes and whose “courage is proverbial”. Who is goofily friendly and yet capable of a “take no prisoner” attitude.
We can’t help it if the media insists on showing vicious snarling dogs (that for the most part of not purebred APBTs/ASTs) every time there’s a dogbite incident. Or promoting the “tough guy” image for cretinous morons who shouldn’t own any animal.
Personally, we revel in the photos of pictures of our “pit bulls” with kids, the elderly, in costumes, weightpulling, blah blah blah.
We’re just normal dogloving people, eh?
You are probably right, but there are days when I question, not just the normalcy of dog breeding, but the sanity of it.
And I speak as an ex-dog-breeder, an current dog lover myself.
From the black and white drawing, I’d guess that if he went into a rescue today, he might be called a bullmastiff. Of the show breeds, that is what the drawing of Byron looks most like to me, but it doesn’t give size or demenor.
Our neighbor’s 4 y/o bulldog was killed last month when her mother came over while she was out and put the dog in the back yard for less than three hours. It was a sunny day in the low 80’s.
They told themselves the dog must have been poisoned or snakebit, until they took the body to the vet. He diagnosed the cause of death in about 30 seconds.
I know someone whose expensive bull dog puppy grew to be a dog who couldn’t walk part way around the block on a nice early spring day. The dog literally laid down and could not get enough breath to get up.
I know someone with a pug with the some problem – if they try to walk it on a short walk, even on a nice cool day, it goes into wheezing gasping fits like it is going to drop dead right there.
Improved the breed? Double-talk!
Sounds more like ruined the breed to me.
Oh but really improve their line of dogs with Puggles, PugPins, or Bulleagles? Oh no, not when they finally are making money off of purebreds.
The dog show standards must be changed before the public sees the Emperor is nude, and he doesn’t even know it!
I do not know what red smut was back then, but in Bull Terriers it is a red dog with the black “eyeliner”, black muzzle/mask and usually black hairs mixed in down the spine and tail. Fawn (again in my breed) is a dilution of red and is a lighter color, they are usually smuts too. Maybe it’s just the resolution or something on my monitor, but that old time dog doesn’t look like he has much muzzle to me.
I just remembered my gravatar pic here….enlarge it and you can see the red smut puppy in it.
Hello All
Retrieverman, its good to see you and others ridiculing the modern show bulldog, but what you really should be ridiculing are the breeders, show judges and Kennel Club/Union administrators, since these are the real culprits in this tragedy.
The Bulldogs themselves are the victims and deserve our pity. By all means take a swipe at them, but do so to strike at the real culprits. I am fighting these feckers here in South Africa and its a very lonely one-man crusade with but a handful of friends cheering me on.
Besides my own website, I have a bit going on here:
http://www.vet2petnet.co.za/plugins/forum/forum_viewforum.php?27 and in particular here:
http://www.vet2petnet.co.za/plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?292 where I post as Radical.
Perhaps you would like to check out how I am trying to rescue what remails of the old English Bulldog (not recreate it) and contribute constructively to the cause.
Yours sincerely
Stuart Thomson
Actually, that was the main point of that post and the main point of this blog.
Bulldogs didn’t evolve such bizarre conformation from natural selection.
It happened because of a capricious fancy that mixed in various elements of English and British nationalism (John Bull in canine form). And because of the fads int he pet market: https://retrieverman.wordpress.com/2010/07/28/bulldogs-newfoundlands-and-britishness
Bulldogs were in trouble over 100 years ago. I have texts that talk about very modern bulldog problems as recently as 1900.
The destruction of the bulldog (ironically) began with the ending of bull baiting. A man named Bill George began transforming them from that pugilist stock into something rather different.
(No. I’m not defending bull baiting or dog fighting;)