Articles about American Pit Bull Terrier
For example, wild boar hunting, in spite of the high level of risk to the dog involved, doesn't really test the limits of a dog's gameness. The tangle between boar and dog is fast, furious, and generally quite short (compared with a pit contest). Athletic ability, agility, explosive power, strength of bite, and smarts are of a higher priority here than gameness, which never really has a chance to come into play in so brief an encounter. The dog will either take the boar down or be killed before the depth of his gameness can make much of a difference. Several larger breeds of dogs--American Bulldogs and Argentine Dogos--seem to be at least equally adept at boar hunting as pit bulls. But this doesn't make them as game as pit bulls. Just because a game disposition will aid a dog in excelling at many different activities--such as agility competition, flyball races, tree-climbing, etc.--doesn't mean that these activities are sufficient tests for gameness. Gameness is multi-dimensional; the above activities do not stress all of these dimensions simultaneously to their extreme limits . Gameness is, in positive terms, a happy eagerness to pursue a challenge; but it is also, in negative terms, the stubborn refusal to heed the cries of the nervous system to stop struggling and and to flee the situation that is causing so much pain. None of the activities above can fully assess this second dimension. Unfortunately,the only activity that really tests the full extent of a dog's gameness is pit contests. It's a pity that this is the case. Many don't much like the idea of dog fighting, especially when money is involved and takes precedence over the well-being of the dogs. If there is another method--say, a DNA test--which could determine gameness, some'd be happily promoting that method right now. But genetic research has a long way to go before it could provide such a test. Many still prefer game dogs. Understandably, breeders only want to choose the very best exemplars of the breed in their breeding programs. If you breed APBTs without regard for their degree of gameness, their gameness will gradually be lost with each succeeding generation. This is essentially what has occurred with Am Staffs and Staffy Bulls, which for many generations have been selectively bred for appearance rather than for the invisible inner quality of gameness. (Furthermore, less than scrupulous selection of all these breeds also risks the loss of the breed's excellent dispostion toward people.) In order to maintain a high degree of the desired qualities, a breeder must carefully select only those dogs that have them in the highest degree. Gameness was an extremely difficult trait to develop; it took more than a century of tiny, incremental improvements through selective breeding to produce today's APBT. Though achieved only with great difficulty, gameness is easily lost, sometimes even in the hands of good breeders. If you mate two grand champions, you will be lucky if just one or two of the pups is of the same quality as the parents. Traditonally, the job of breeders was to identify these offspring and use only them to continue the breeding program. Sometimes it's the case that two great dogs will not produce any offspring who are their equals....to read the other interesting article please click on here...
