Tenacity

The Sun, August 29, 1880

The Washington Times, August 12, 1905

The Minneapolis Journal, January 16, 1906

Safety before bull-dogs

There is super fine vintage muckraking over at Pit Bull Attacks and Dogfighting in Illinois. It's the kind of research that should be done by a "research council" rather than livestock fear mongering and the other sleight of hand tricks that KAREN DELISE has become so well known for.

Here's a taste. Be sure to check it out.

1. The bull-dog is essentially a dangerous animal, and when kept under present conditions it constitutes a perpetual menace to human life. Enough accidents have already happened to admonish all thinking men that women and children are entirely unsafe under present conditions.
2. These conditions will become even worse when these bull-dogs will have bred with the street curs, producing a generation of mongrels even more dangerous and under less restraint that the pure bred individuals.



If bull-dogs are unsafe and vicious, as they seem to have proven themselves within the last few weeks, let us get rid of them. Let us get some other kind of dog. Safety before bull-dogs.

Booze and the treacherous nature of Darwin's Dog

The Philadelphia Record - November 17, 1906

Darwin's Dog

The Clinging Death

WHITE FANG
Part IV: The Superior Gods
Chapter 4 The Clinging Death


Jack London

The following is an excerpt from Jack London's White Fang.

There was no escaping that grip. It was like Fate itself, and as inexorable. Slowly it shifted up along the jugular. All that saved White Fang from death was the loose skin of his neck and the thick fur that covered it. This served to form a large roll in Cherokee's mouth, the fur of which well-nigh defied his teeth. But bit by bit, whenever the chance offered, he was getting more of the loose skin and fur in his mouth. The result was that he was slowly throttling White Fang. The latter's breath was drawn with greater and greater difficulty as the moments went by.

It began to look as though the battle were over. The backers of Cherokee waxed jubilant and offered ridiculous odds. White Fang's backers were correspondingly depressed, and refused bets of ten to one and twenty to one, though one man was rash enough to close a wager of fifty to one. This man was Beauty Smith. He took a step into the ring and pointed his finger at White Fang. Then he began to laugh derisively and scornfully. This produced the desired effect. White Fang went wild with rage. He called up his reserves of strength and gained his feet. As he struggled around the ring, the fifty pounds of his foe ever dragging on his throat, his anger passed on into panic. The basic life of him dominated him again, and his intelligence fled before the will of his flesh to live. Round and round and back again, stumbling and falling and rising, even uprearing at times on his hind-legs and lifting his foe clear of the earth, he struggled vainly to shake off the clinging death.

At last he fell, toppling backward, exhausted; and the bulldog promptly shifted his grip, getting in closer, mangling more and more of the fur-folded flesh, throttling White Fang more severely than ever. Shouts of applause went up for the victor, and there were many cries of "Cherokee!" "Cherokee!" To this Cherokee responded by vigorous wagging of the stump of his tail. But the clamor of approval did not distract him. There was no sympathetic relation between his tail and his massive jaws. The one might wag, but the others held their terrible grip on White Fang's throat.


http://london.sonoma.edu/Writings/WhiteFang/4chapter4.html

The Utah Solution

Before Denver, before Miami, before Ohio, there was Utah.


The Salt Lake Herald, Salt Lake City, UT, August 5, 1906




The lesson of all this is that a bulldog is a dangerous brute and that not one of the animals should allowed to go unmuzzled.

The Evening Standard, Ogden, UT, May 19, 1911


Why so much attention given to the Beehive State?

Could it be a member of the PBTB Assoc lived in Ogden?

Could it be that pit breeder F.W. Matthews' curs made their way from the pit to the pram? Could it be they did not integrate well outside the of the box.


(notice the spelling of pit with two TTs)

See also
Hmmm...I thought pit bulls were the CURRENT bugaboo breed?

The Bulldog Menace

Early Equine Grippers

Vicious Bulldog Sinks Its Fangs In Woman's Arm

The San Francisco Call, August 10, 1906

Fictional Masterpiece featuring hero bull terrier

Perhaps Ms Freeman's fictional story of the devoted powerful brute caused some confusion among the simple minded pit bull advocates and it gave rise to the myth that they were once "america's dog". They do seem to struggle with discerning fact from fiction.

Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

The Minneapolis Journal, August 3, 1906