Legal game testing, IS IT POSSIBLE???

Even if peds were 100% honest there is still admitted HEAVY inbreeding in pretty much all gamedog bloodlines, seldom were they temperament testend and ZERO health testing was done. To be fair, at the time these bloodlines were developed there were less options for health testing, but it seems that breeders now are either afraid to test their dogs or dont want to spend the money. There are plenty of stories of unstable dogs, and before you say 'those are just stories', THEY ARE ALL STORIES, much of the history of these dogs as pit dogs is anecdotal. No breed is immune to behavioral and health issues. We have more knowledge and methods of testing our dogs and bettering breeds, there is no longer any excuse not to except laziness.

 

I'm not trying to trash talk the breed or dogmen who created impressive animals, just saying it is unrealistic that a dog off famous bloodlines will have no problems or that there were never unstable or unhealthy dogs thrown into the mix.

 

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hey mister - i'd like you to show us YOUR pedigrees of honest bred dogs.
i acknowledged there are competent, well intentioned APBT breeders out there. maybe you think you fit that category.
however, the majority of breeders in the US claiming to be breeding game dogs (READ for illegal purposes) are not honest, nor competent nor have any business owning even a gold fish.
..and no motherfucker i don't work for peta.

 

You obviously know far more than I. I know from talking with my dear friend that is no longer with us that the game testing that goes on for hours and is often used by the animal rights wackos that isn’t the method used by good dog men. Guys that knew in the first 10 minutes what a dog was made of. He also talked about properly schooling his dogs back in the day and that it was so important. I didn’t ask questions and I didn’t learn and I’d give anything to have him back. I’d ask every question I could think of and cherish every moment. It’s funny how as you age you realize how foolish you are when your young, and how it’s the good people around you that provide the knowledge that helps to mold you.

 

This discussion has pretty much answered the question about legal game testing. People need to know that just because they believe something does not make it a fact. In the old days there wasn't many discussions like this one. If there was any question about gameness of a dog all you had to do was sign the paper and the gameness could be tested.
Today we cannot do that. The problem with testing a pit bull on a wild animal is the lack of knowing if the dog or the animal will scratch. A dog that will fight for 15 minutes does not answer the question about gameness. 15 minutes would be considered a short roll. Any person who thinks they can tell if a dog is game in 10 minutes is not familiar with the breed. Some of the great dogs did not even get serious in the first 10-20 minutes.
If you look at the pit bull of years ago and compare the pit bull of today you can see what has happened to the breed. There are very few who game test and the breed has lost much of what made it so great in the first place.

 

Plenty of dogmen with extensive experience with pit dogs didn't roll their dogs to the brink of death to discover their dog is game, once you get a good eye you don't need to nearly kill your dog to see what it is made of. Your statement is simply not true.

 

If you are a good experienced dog man you do not have to roll your dog to the brink of death. It is a game test. Your dog should show he will scratch after the first heat of battle is worn off. Even a cur will last 10 minutes but curs will not scratch when they get a little heat against them.
Experienced dog men know what to roll their dog into to game test them.
Many people who have pit bulls do not match them. That is fine and they do not need to know if their dog is game. Most pit bulls are not game but the % is much higher than any other breed. It would be nice if people were honest about their dogs, especially if they plan to breed them.
If a person does not game test their dog or don't know how to test their dog they should never tell anyone their dog is game.

 

I agree there, these days the way people use the term 'gamedog' can almost always be replaced with 'game bred'. I don't believe in preserving the trait only for the sake of preservation, breeds are forever evolving just like anything else, there are plenty of uses today that dont require gameness, uses beyond petty entertainment.

From reading old articles and words of dogmen vs imitators today it seems like a lot of people change definitions and history to suit their preference as well, gameness was never breed specific but dogmen fetishists are trying to claim otherwise. It's no different than ARAs claiming this breed was not created for fighting.

 

Game bred is a term that has been used by many people who have no idea what game is. Usually just to sell puppies.
Gameness is what the pit bull is known for. It was the main thing people tried to produce when they picked breeding animals.
There are many breeds to chose from. Dogs for just about thing a person could want. Even with that some people want to change hundreds of years of selective breeding just because they cannot understand how hard it is to keep it.
I could never understand why people would want a pit bull then try to change it . Why not just get a breed of dog that already has what they are looking for? It should be very simple. If you do not want a dog that is very fast, why get a greyhound and try to breed the speed out of it? If you do not want a dog that will run rabbits, why get a beagle?

Even though the pit bull of today is not nearly as game as the dogs in the past it is still the gamest breed of dog there is.
Why do people want to destroy hundreds of years of breeding?

 

Why someone would want to change them? Good breeders are forever trying to BETTER their breed, not keep them the same, that is why.

 

Absolutely, the dogs ARE capable of so much more. I believe the intense breeding for gameness in the past and somewhat less today HAS given us the dog that is capable of so much more. It's the "leftovers" of all that breeding for gameness that gave (give?) us the remarkable dog capable of so much that we have today, in many cases.

I look at it this way: A great sled dog may drop dead dead in harness before he'll stop running -- he's game for a racing husky. A great Chesapeake Bay Retriever will retrieve through ice waters all day long - he's game for what HE was bred for. The game test for Pit Bulls happens to be quite a stylized contest, and an argument can be made for it's intrinsic value, but it IS the game test for APBTs. It would not be fair to the dogs of the past to now change the definition of game FOR THE APBT.

 

I think we really have to be careful with this whole "to better the breed" thing. The whole notion of "purebred" dogs has resulted in some hideous consequences that certainly has not resulted in "bettering" in many cases. But humans are going to tinker and I think much of the time there is no "bettering". I think we need to think of it more as PRESERVING a breed.

 

If we could depend on people of the past having the right goals in might and making intelligent choices in breeding, but even then the good breeders then were limited to testing options and the knowledge of behavior and health back then. We are forever learning. Why should we keep breeding the english bulldog for extreme looks when we know now how horrible it is for their health? Breed preservation?

A fair number of old gamedogs had terrible structure, there is no reason to continue these flaws and I see them in many of todays dogs off famous bloodlines. Gameness itself isnt a flaw to be bred out, but these dogmen fetishists value gameness over all other traits and believe a game dog is worth breeding solely for their gameness. There are so many other aspects to ethical breeding! If you're producing game pups with easty westy feet, rear high, poor angulation etc etc this impacts their performance. These things are something that many dogmen did not think about and produced a lot of dogs with these flaws, but we know better now so why not change this and better the breed? Everything can be improved, nothing is perfect.

 

That's sort of my point. Bulldogs, German Shepherds today -- people think we have bettered them when all that really should have been done is PRESERVE what they WERE. (As in very early pictures, paintings of a breed -- what would have been wrong with preserving those old original style dogs?

I agree about how some of the old game dogs LOOKED. But there were and are some awfully nice-looking ones too. The fact that gameness in this breed depended more on a mental attribute than anything else allowed some pretty bad conformation traits to get passed on. I guess if I was involved, I'd have to pick the game ones that were conformed nicely as well!

 

Original GSDs were nothing compared to todays WL GSDs, just going to put out there.

You can better a breed and still preserve GOOD traits, but preserving a singular trait while continuing so many bad ones? I see no point in that, that's what I am getting at.

 

In any breed there are always those working-style dogs that tend more to the original style, with much less exaggeration of features. The breeders that throw around the "bettering the breed" mantra seem to be the ones doing the most damage.

There will always be those game dog breeders that the way the dog looks (or acts as long as it is game) just will not be of concern, but I contend the good ones that are nicely-conformed and have great temperaments and have the required gameness are out there and that's what you can have if you want. The breed has quite a unique history -- and good and bad is done in the name of the breed -- but all in all, we have a pretty darn good breed.

 

It is very hard to explain the pit bull to people who do not know the history of the breed and have never seen a game dog.
There is a difference in a working dog and a show or pet dog. Some breeds were bred for a purpose to preform a job where looks did not matter. There are breeds for those who want a true working dog and usually another breed that looks like that breed but with the working ability removed by people who valued looks over performance.
If a person values looks over performance there is always the amstaff. They have the looks but have lost their working ability. Many of the people who want to change the pit bull are the same people who have removed the working ability of the amstaff.
There is already a breed of dogs that is exactly what they are trying to change the pit bull into.

I know of a pit bull who won a match in the pit the same weekend he won best male in an UKC conformation show. He later won his championship in UKC and won best senior male in the Nationals. He won two matches that I know of.

 

I'm not talking about aesthetics, the flaws I mentioned directly effect performance. Also, to me there is a HUGE difference between work and sport, AmStaffs still make excellent sporting dogs, but the original purpose of the APBT was for sport not work.

No, it isnt the people who claim to be bettering breeds that do damage, it is the backyard breeders who have no real goal in their breeding and the people who continue to breed untested dogs who damage breeds.

ETA: test as in health, temperament and ability

 

I think of the "show dog" mentality when one breeds towards a "standard of perfection" and are always thinking of "bettering the breed" when all that is really happening is tinkering with this and that part of the dog to make it "fit" the standard. Also, more recently, "bettering" a breed often means health testing out the wazoo and putting all kinds of sporting titles on the dog and then breeding those results and titles!

Find those people who breed how you like and promote them and use their dogs! The dogs and breeders who do what you like are out there!