There are three major directions breeders are taking with American bulldogs

The Johnson Purests are usually identified by breeders that believe that John D. Johnson is the father of the breed, just for the mere fact that" he originally got the American Bulldog registered; he has been the only breeder to line breed these dogs since after World War II without ever stopping. His dogs are somewhere behind every true registered line of American Bulldog; he got Alan Scott started

with the breed when Alan was a young boy; he is 75 years old and has photos of his dogs dating back to the 1940s. The problem with Johnson Purests is that even the Johnson dogs need new bloods to survive.The current Johnson gene pool is not big enough. Even Mr. Johnson bred to different dogs throughout the years to add something new to his line. The art of breeding is to line breed until you get to an outstanding dog or dogs and then inbreed to set those great traits and then outcrossings for new blood and repeating the whole process. It is important to remember that not every pup in a litter is breedable. Mr. Johnson is a great man, but no one has ever produced a perfect line. Improving or maintaining a line means being choosy, quality gets quality. It is a foolish breeder that believes a dog's pedigree alone will produce greatness. Mother nature only allows the best suited with the best genes to carry on to reproduce and even then, their offspring is culled hard.



	The Bully Exaggeration Movement prides itself on how bully their dogs look, how short the muzzle is, how wide or thrown out the shoulders are, how big the head is, and how undershot they are. The only Johnson dogs that ever looked even slightly like that would have been in the first or second generation after the cross to the West Champs High Hopes in the 1970s, the early Machine and Sugardoll line

I can understand liking a bully type head or thick heavy bones, and thick heavy muscles, but an American bulldog is supposed to be a farm utility dog, or catch dog, and a protection dog. An exaggerated dog can not be any of these things for long.A dog with an extremely short muzzle can not cool his body sufficiently in hot weather. A dog with wide, thrown out shoulders moved like junk and a true working dog must move efficiently. Let me state to this group that this path has been taken before, about 150 years ago, it's what produced the AKC English Bulldog. Mother Nature has been trying to eliminate that breed by making them sterile and unable to mate or even whelp a litter of pups naturally. No other breed has has many health problems and this group is taking the American Bulldog down the same path. Every group is guilty of inbreeding an unproven and unsound dogs, but no one group is as bad as this group. Inbreeding should be done with caution and only to try and fix the exceptional traits of a proven, quality animal. There is always a risk of doubling up on the genes that carry bad traits. For this reason, an ethical and knowledgeable breeder will cull hard on an inbred litter, always looking for genetic defects. Inbreeding is a good way to fix good type and quality, but it is also the best way to increase genetic defects so to risk all of that on unsound traits like thrown out shoulders or extremely short noses or heavily wrinkled heads is not a wise move.

In conclusion, breeders should not breed for any extreme, except maybe extremely atheletic, sound, healthy, or intelligent. Breeding soley for cosmetic extreme will only produce physical wrecks.



	The Performance Cross Dog Cult group consists heavily of sport dog lovers. Many of the seasoned veterans started with Painter dogs largley because Joe Painter had a good line of bull. Then, when Painter got out, his #1 salesman, Steve Le Clerce took his place preaching Scott/Painter Super-performance dog with Myths. These first schutzhund

titled dogs were 5/8 and 3/4 Johnson blood.Later, these dogs were crossed with Johnson blood and produced the first Schutzhund titled dogs. This group possesses the most conscientious breeders of all three groups, evaluating hips and temperaments more than other groups. A problem with this group is that they tend to not breed for any certain type, although things have improved in the last few years. These dogs can vary greatly and many in this group defend their lack of type by saving this is a working dog, not a show dog, so who cares about producing exact clones of each other? I will agree that a working dog is not going to have pinpoint exact fix type, but the width of the variance in some of these dogs are the difference between a foxhound/whippet and a boxer/pitbull. A Belgian Malinois has a wide variance in its standard, but they all share a basic type.The same is true in Border Collies and many other working breeds. In conclusion, the future is now. Your next breeding is the future of this breed. We must be very selective in breeding a litter. The only chance we have is to use the best specimens of each group to expand the gene pool positively. We cannot take many more steps backward. We need to cure ourselves of Kennel blindness. If you have a dog that doesn't hold up to the highest standard of the breed, then spay it and sell it as a pet. The American Bulldog is in a ditch now and headed right down the sewer if we don't work hard to strive for greatness in every aspect: correct movement, sound structure, true bulldog temperament and proper type; ignoring any of these will only hurt the breed.