Posted by Dave
on 11/7/2009, 5:35 pm, in reply to "Re: GARY"
In the early 1990's the Sure Grip type hybrid exploded in popularity. This was due to several reasons. The American Bulldog becomming more well known outside small cliques of people. The movie "Homeward Bound" featuring the sure Grip bred dog Rattler as Chance. Within the AB community itself, Al Banuelos was having success at PP sportwork with a Sure Grip bred dog. Mark Landers was having some success with a Sure Grip bred dog. Casey Couterier owned a big Sure Grip bred dog named White Fang. Casey published the "American Bulldog Review" and ran the American Bulldog Alliance" registry, both very influential in the AB community. There was not much traffic on the internet in those days, especially about American bulldogs. The Modern Johnson/Painter cross was an initial success on that first hybrid generation because it masked all the underlying defects like hip dysplasia. Subsequent generations revealed this. What was then known as the Scott type AB community was riddled with infighting. The most prominient were the LeCler/Koura group who ran a registry called the NABA, and bred Painter/Bama Boy crosses. I am not going to get into the whole Bama Boy issue here and now. This is the situation I encountered when I first got involved in the AB "breed". I spoke with John D Johnson, Al Banuelos, John Tappe, Kyle Symmes, Steve LeCler. Of course then, just as now, they all bad mouthed each other and claimed to have the real American Bulldog. I noticed the picture of Tappe's Brutus looked nothing like the picture of Johnson's Incredible Mean Machine. I liked the Brutus look. He looked like an athletic healthy dog. The Johnson dog did not. I did like the look of the Sure Grip hybrids, but as I learned their true linage going back to Johnson blood I shied away from that blood. I had heard all the horror stories about bad hips and wanted no part of it. The first AB I ever got was heavy Bama Boy/Tates Dutchess Lady blood. I competed at weight pull with her when the IWPA was the most competive all-breed weight pull organization in the world and she was the 1995-96 Regional Gold Medalist, International Silver Medalist. Norma Jean was the first Standard type AB to win an IWPA International Silver Medal. After I had proved her out throughly at weight pull, I bred her to Martin's Chesty Puller named after the famous Marine General by the same name. Chesty was sired by Askum Nicely, who was out of Hines Country Boy and Sugar Lump, and Prathers Maggie Mae was the dam. Maggie was a hybrid off several generations of Sure Grip dogs. Chesty was approximatley 1/4 Modern Johnson. The breeding between Norma and Chesty would be approximately 1/8 Modern Johnson. Norma X Chesty is the breeding that produced Joshua's Sheba OFA Excellent and titled catchdog, Pearson's Chloe OFA Good, and Aho's Reno PH .5something .5something which was slightly better than average. But unfortunately it produced one dysplastic dog that I know of. That was too many for me. In retrospect I concluded that the calculated risk to breed a hybrid was unwarranted. The heavily linebred Bama/Dutchess blood did not have the genetic prepotency to override the deleterious influence of the 1/4 Johnson blood. So I would never repeat that mistake. Pure Standard type ABs were really hard to come by, then as now. I acquired a Bulldog from Mike Walz that was 1/4 Walz's Dixie (full sister to Vader Red) 1/8 Terminator from SE breeding, and a mix of SE Painter and Sure grip blood. I called him Jethro. I bred Jethro to Norma. The most well known dog that breeding produced was Pearson's Harley. Harley went on to produce several OFA Excellent dogs and Good PH scores, but I was just really not sold on that combination The Norma x Jethro breeding did not produce any bad hips that I know of, but the dogs were not as athletic as I wanted to produce. The reasons really had more to with Norma than Jethro. I never bred Norma again.
To be continued...
Dave
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