a recent history lesson for me

while talking with a good friend and someone i consider a mentor, i received what i consider to be an important history lesson. so i thought i would share. with his permission i'm copying and pasting this in his exact words.

American Pit Bull Terrier aka APBT,
American Staffordshire Terrier aka AST and
Staffordshire Bull Terrier aka SBT.

I will start with SBT.
The SBT is suppose to be a direct descendant from the dogs from the county of Staffordshire England.
Over the years the conformation and temperament breeding standards have change.
The size has been change to a standard of a smaller breed and the instinctive traits of gameness have been bred out of the breed.

The dogs from the county of Staffordshire was only one of many breeds of dogs which help create the APBT.
IF there was terrier bred into these dogs this is the only known breed, which helps make up the APBT, makes any reference to it.

Since the SBT wasn't recognized as a pure breed by the Kennel Club of England until 1935, it is hard to make the claim this is the same breed or standard of the breed, which was brought over from England and was used in help making the APBT.

The APBT has been known to be in the U.S. as early as the late 1700's.
Many well known matches were advertised in public papers in the middle 1800's
APBT was recognized as a pure breed by UKC in 1898.
The APBT was recognized as a pure breed for 38 years, almost 4 decades before the SBT was recognized as a pure breed.
If anything, one must question if there might have been APBT bred into the SBT to help standardize the breed for recognition.
So at best, the claim would have to be, they are distance cousin breeds, but clearly are and always have been, two different breeds and APBT didn't evolve from the known SBT.

In 1936 the Staffordshire Terrier was recognized as a pure breed by AKC.
In 1972 the name was changed to American Staffordshire Terrier so it wasn't confused with its cousin the SBT.
During this time animal cruelty laws were being passed into law.
Books like Beautiful Joe, Beautiful Joe's Paradise, Punch the Cruisin Dog and Just Happy were wrote about dogs saved from Pit Fighting.
AKC believed it wasn't in the best interest of the breed to have the name (pit) included into the name.
Precedent has always been for AKC to follow the lead of the Kennel Club of England, thus by doing so, again the name took reference to an area of English descent.
The name American Bull Terrier and Yankee Terrier was also denied.
By doing this, they also only wanted dogs who had the looks and characteristics of the dogs from the county of Staffordshire or of Great Britain.
The language of the land is English and England has always been credited for everything being founded and descended from, for the whole United States..
Some of the members of the AKC Staffordshire Terrier club didn't want certain strains from the breed of the APBT.
This is why the standard of the AST excludes red nose, liver colored dogs or black and tan dogs.
Some have questioned whether or not racism didn't play a part in eliminating these strains. Red nose was known to be from Ireland and even today Great Britain and Ireland still don't see eye to eye, like with Northern Ireland, and also during the 30's was the raise of the German power of Hitler. Black and Tan bulldogs were believed to trace back into the Germanic Mastiff.
This helped exclude the complete spectrum of the APBT and only focused on a limited fraction of the breed.
The look was one of brindle and white black nose or white with black brindle cow patch colors.
The one which almost all the strain was converted over to AST was the dogs from the strain of the Blue Pauls aka Blue Paulies, another strain from (Scotland) Great Britain.
Very few blue colored dogs today are from the straight bred APBT bloodlines.
Look far enough back into their pedigrees and you find dogs registered and bred to the standard of the AST.
If you read the old Bloodlines Journals published by UKC, their policy was to bar anyone who would try and dual register their dogs both UKC and AKC.

One of the founding members of the AST was John P. Colby.
John P. Colby was known not for using UKC, for whatever reasons.
As late as the 1950's, dogs like Colby's Dime wasn't UKC Purple Ribbon registered.
ADBA was known basically as a private registry for Colby dogs.
A Colby dog was almost used as standard for AST and if that dog was used,
then the standard would have included undershot dogs, so it was claimed.
The first 9 dogs weren't from UKC registration.
It is believe these from ADBA registration.
The 10th dog was none other then the famous Petie of the Little Rascals aka Our Gang. Petie was the first UKC registered American (pit) Bull Terrier registered with AKC as an AST.

It is a known fact AST evolved from the APBT.
Question is, are they the same breed?
NO!

Since the full spectrum of the APBT wasn't used in creating the AST,
their heritage isn't the same as a breed.

The conformation standards are not the same.
The AST has over sized head and front end. Isn't athletic as the APBT.
AST are straight back with less dexterity and a smaller rear end.

The temperament and instinctive traits are not the same.
By breeding all gameness out of the AST,
the APBT has a much more stable temperament.
Much more soundness, more fearless, more trustworthy of people.
Less apt to fear bite or turn on its owner.

If AKC can say the Mini-Bull Terriers and the Standard Bull Terrier are different breeds because of size and registration can not be crossed registered or the Toy, Miniature and Standard Poodles are different breeds and can not be crossed registered because of mire size,

HOW CAN THE APBT AND THE AST BE THE SAME BREED?

 

From what I've seen, and this is just the flat truth, Staffy bulls (NOT AmStaffs) are the most people friendly little dogs anyone could wish to meet. I've never met or seen a human aggressive Staffy bull.

I've only ever read about one attack on a human by a Staffy bull.

 

where does it say sbts are human aggressive? while i don't know the temperaments of all asts, from personal experience i've been bitten by one and have a friend who is a very well known breeder who has had a couple who were prone to not trusting strangers. not to mention my cousin had one who had to leave her household b/c of her temperament. as i said i don't know about all asts but this has been my experience, so i believe my friend's history on that point too. i, however, did not see anything in my friend's history lesson about sbts being human agressive.

 

Your friend information is inaccurate, majority of all Colby dogs were UKC registered and had been since the late 1800's.
JP did help found the ADBA but it was not just for his dogs but for all APBT's.

 

Colbydogs that is how I understand it as well that most of colby's dogs were UKC registered .. and I have also read and you can correct me if I am wrong that John P. Colby also registered some of his dogs with the AKC as Staffordshire Terriers.

 

isnt it true the UKC at one time only registered fighting dogs?

 

The UKC started as a registry for the APBT, and they did publish rules and offer a pit CH title way back then. I don't think it was widely utilized, though. And I doubt they registered "only" fighting dogs. They started registering coonhounds and stuff like that later on.

 

Yes when the AKC first started up JP did registers some dogs, that didn't last too long and he ended up abandoning the AKC after a short period.

 

I'll agree with the idea of the red nose and black and tans being dicriminated against. How is rednose pitbull not a pitbull? Why did they want these strains out?

 

from what i'm to understand excluding red nose possibly had most to do with england and ireland not getting along as i was told many of the red nose strains came from ireland. there could be other reasons, but that would make sense. there was once great conflict between england and ireland.