Forgotten: Americas Favorite Dog and Hero

Once this had been noticed, and history had showed them to be great “preformers”, these tenacious dogs were thrown in the ring with bulls as a sport. At first it was just a show of the dogs talents, but it later became a very popular sport and many people reasoned that the torture of the bull “keep the meat tender”.

Bulls were not the only animals matched up against the dogs, so to were monkeys, horses and bears. The dogs were to attack the oppossing animal until it died, or the dogs collapsed from exhaustion, injuries or both.

It became so popular that it was actually outlawed in 1835. Sadly, this did not stop people from coming up with other similar forms of entertainment that were not yet illegal.

Ratting became very popular for a while, which was a game where the dogs were placed in a “pit” that kept the rats contained and they were to kill the rats as quickly as possible. Dogs would compete to get the highest amount of kills in the fastest amount of time against other dogs.

Eventually, people grew tired of this and sadistic money hungry entertainers decided to “spice things up a bit” by introducing dog fighting. In which the dogs were turned against each other instead of against other animals.

The dogs loved their masters, and as history shows, went into battle against other dogs and did everything to injur and kill the opponents dog. Once again, they were bred to be completely human friendly as owners would often have to pic the dogs up in the middle of fights.

This fad grew very quickly as it was easier to hide from the law and easy to conceal. As it continued, breeders took the mighty bulldogs and bred them with terriers to get the same fierce fighter in a smaller body with a bigger drive to do what is asked of it. Terriers were known for their intelligence and tenacious drive to loyalty to please their owners.

The dogs were essentially bred to be the “Ultimate Gladiators”.

This created the makings for the first “Pit Bull Terrier”. These bull terriers were trained rigorously and cruely to keep them in condition to fight fiercly in the ring.

When America was found, naturally, pit bulls and their sport travelled west with the people. As America was not under the same regulations as the british empire, pit bull fighting became very popular in our history for some time.