Let's get one thing straight--dogs invented dog fighting and men watched, amused and interested. Try this mental exercise: you are standing on a street corner. On one corner some guys are shooting hoops; on another corner they are playing stickball; on a third they are shooting craps and on the fourth the two biggest toughest dogs in the neighborhood are stiff-legging and growling (these are not pits as they don't behave that way) and start to fight. Which corner do all the men run toward? Right. They will run to the dogfight! Because that's how men are. They like boxing type sports too. Men enjoy combat although combative sports have become non-politically correct. Come to think of it men have too. Men are not really allowed to be men anymore are they? 

If you will imagine for a moment what it must have been like back in the early days of the man/dog relationship. Man was a hunter and killer of wild animals for his food. The wild dogs hung around the campfire until some became rather tame and man started to utilize them to help with the hunting. the dogs had better ears and much better noses than his new masters but man could use crude weapons and kill larger prey and from a greater distance. Both benefitted from the relationship. Hunting dogs are a tough breed. They have to be.  Long, hard days of running, searching for prey and then, long after exhaustion has set in, one may find the prey and have to engage it in combat and make the kill. Prey animals may look sweet but they are not. A deer can easily whip a man, even kill him. Imagine what animals had to be contended with 20,000 years ago!

The point is, the early dogs that hung with mankind were probably the toughest. Early man wasn't going to share his food with a dog that quit during the hunt and didn't do his share and pull his weight. And the tribe could only afford so many dogs on the "payroll" so I imagine they culled the dogs pretty hard and kept only the best and toughest hunters.

As dogs will do these tough hunters would fight over bones and scraps and the best females. Men would watch the dogs fight and be amused (possibly even betting a steak or a good stone "knife" on which would win)  probably for thousands of years before deciding to try breeding dogs that were particularly good at fighting. They soon found that the better fighters were also the tougher hunters and that was just what they needed. The more the dogs would do the less danger the men would be exposed to on the hunt. And there were no doctors or clinics or emergency rooms. For either dog or man back then, if you were seriously injured and couldn't pull your weight...well, who knows.

So, the fighting dogs were an offshoot of hunting dogs. With the eventual onset of civilization these types of dog were used in warfare and were extremely ferocious and terrifying to an enemy. Eventually, probably in around the 18th century or so dogs were being bred exclusively to do combat with other animals. The elite rulers didn't like that as their wives complained of the "cruelty" but the serfs (slaves) needed their recreation and so were left alone until the early 1800's when the official "banning" of animal combat (for the poor) became the norm. 

(To be continued)

 MYTH--"Cattle prods are used to make pit bulls fight"

More absolute nonsense propagated by the humaniacs. If you were to hit a dog that WAS FIGHTING with a cattle prod he would probably stop fighting! It certainly wouldn't make a dog want to fight another dog although some dogs would probably bite the person who "prodded" them real good.  This myth often includes "feeding them gunpowder to make them mean." More humaniac BS. If you want to eat out the lining of a dog's stomach, make him sick  and eventually kill him, feeding gunpowder would probably do it. Only a moron would engage in such treatment of a dog.

 MYTH--"a pit bull will kill anything that moves"

Only very partially true: most pits kept as pets can be trained to tolerate other animals, even cats and often other pit bulls. There are a few exceptions to this rule however. Ocassionally a dog is born that will literally hit anything with fur on it. It may not be possible to train one of these rare individuals to get along with other animals.  Normally, however, a pit with sufficient obedience work can become a good "canine citizen."

 MYTH--"Pit bulls always fight to the death"

The fact is in "real" dog fights, that is, professionally conducted ones by experienced pit dog men, the dogs are "matched" perfectly by weight (down to a 1/4 pound) and fought by a strict set of rules (usually known as Cajun rules nowadays) that were implemented for the specific purpose of shortening dog fights and offering any dog that chose not to continue, many opportunitites to quit the fight. This fact, of course, does not fit the humaniacs' goal of demonization of pit dog men and the sport so they generally leave this information out of their propaganda pieces which are liberally picked up and distributed as "fact" by the sensationalist American media.

For you history buffs we will soon be posting "Cajun Rules" so that you can see for yourself how it really used to be.

 MYTH--"dog fighters steal people's little dogs and kittens for training bait." 

Nonsense. Do race horse trainers steal mules and plowhorses to train their thoroughbreds with?  Do professional boxers kidnap high school kids to beat up when training for a big fight? 

First, a pit bull could kill a kitten or puppy so fast there would be no training involved and secondly, I assure you, MANY PITS WILL NOT HURT A PUPPY OR KITTEN (or any animal that doesn't want to fight) ANYWAY! You couldn't make them kill one.

Back in the 70's when I got involved with the breed there were hardly any pits kept as pets. Those that were weren't causing any trouble as they were, presumably, kept by responsible citizens. Those in the hands of "dog fighters" were kept on chains in yards that were mostly in remote areas, far out of towns and cities. If a dog got loose it just got on another of the pit dog man's dogs and a "yard accident" ensued, they didn"t go running around a neighborhood when they got loose, jumping on people or their pets.

Then around the mid-70's a funny thing happened. The humaniac groups started ranting and raving about dog fighting (a big fund-raiser for them) so they could get felony laws shoved through our state legislatures. They told outrageous lies (and created many of these myths we are addressing) and made up stories about horrific abuses carried out by dog fighters for the purpose of demonizing them and the sport in the eyes of the public. This has been a very successful campaign.

A by-product of all their lies, such as this "stealing puppies and kittens for training bait" lie is that, thanks to humaniac propaganda in the media,  young, impressionable kids heard about the big, bad pit bull, wanted one, got one and actually started believing these alleged, horribly cruel practices  were the thing to do in their training programs.  So the humaniacs in their zeal to condemn and vilify dog fighting and those who engaged in it, with the help of an all-too-willing media,  actually created what is called a "self-fullfilling prophecy." Now, in many cities across the land,  young street thugs actually do these things to pit bull dogs, mostly ones they have stolen from other people. They do a lot of other horrible things too as you have probably read, from burning them to hanging them.  None of this has anything to do with the sport of dog fighting. It just happens, unfortunately,  to pit bulls that fall into the hands of scum. That sort of behavior, as well as stealing people's pets and feeding them to pit bulls, is, in fact,  universally condemned by real "pit dog men" (if there are any left) to this day. 

MYTH-- "rednosed pits are a different breed than regular ones."  False. We will answer this with a response to a recent email question that was sent to us.

Question: My friends and I have an ongoing debate. Is there a specific breed called a red nose pit bull? Or is a red nose considered a trait, like a brown or black coat? Any information is greatly appreciated.
Thank you, Ryan W.

Good question, Ryan! "Red nose" is simply a trait, it's true. As is the case with "chocolate" Labrador Retrievers some pit bulls are born with red noses. They are often born in litters of black, brindle and buckskin colored black-nosed dogs although some breeders have isolated the red/rednose trait and bred for it exclusively. They are still the exact same breed of dog; American Pit Bull Terrier and proof of that is that there is no differentiation made when registering APBTs between red nosed and black nosed individuals or lines.  They are all simply registered as APBT.