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HONOURING THE HEAVY HOUND HERITAGE
By David Hancock

 "...in a pack there may be some individuals which have the special capacity to herd and round up animals for the kill, and others of more massive build who in the main do the attacking. We see the projection of these two types exemplified in our domestic dogs, especially in those of collie type which are pre-eminent as sheep and shepherd dogs, and in those of mastiff type - the massive dogs - which attack the larger animals in the hunt."

    From The Natural History of the Dog by Richard and Alice Fiennes, Weidenfeld                      

                                             and Nicolson, 1968.

  From the Americas across to South Africa and right across Europe to Asia, we can study the hunting mastiffs or heavy hounds and learn of their reckless courage and immense fortitude at the behest of man. They were the essential hunting dogs of the primitive hunting field, prized for their bravery, remarkable determination and astonishing stoicism. In forgetting their origins we have lost our way in breeding them ‘fit for function’; their function gave us their design and to be true mastiffs they simply must be bred as powerful but athletic canine hunters, willing to do what the scent-hounds were not designed for: closing with their dangerous prey, seizing it and holding it until the human hunters arrived. We may no longer require dogs to do this for us but, having produced dogs intended to do just that, we should acknowledge their past, respect their role and honour their heritage; they were not slothful yard dogs but revered hounds. 

   The strong-headed, broad-mouthed type of hunting mastiff was used all over medieval Europe in the pursuit of quarry such as elk, bison, boar, stag, bear and even aurochs. The surviving mastiff breeds range from those in England, France, Italy, Denmark and Germany to those developed in overseas possessions such as Brazil, Puerto Rico, the Canary Islands and South Africa. To be true to their heritage, these breeds need to be powerful but athletic, strongly-muscled yet still agile. Is our native breed, still not proudly claimed by the title - the English Mastiff, true to its heritage? It has a greater claim than the Bulldog to be a national emblem. Our canine heritage is part of our national culture and our native breeds represent the legacy of a considerable breeding achievement. In the world of dogs, our reputation as breeders is slipping and our reputation as exaggerators growing. I am all in favour of fanciers being able to import outstanding dogs from abroad; I am not in favour of our native breeds being not just neglected but bred carelessly to a 'new' design. One of our most famous native breeds now looks less and less like its distant ancestors but this breed, the Mastiff of England, should be treasured. 

  The lack of a modern function for this distinguished breed, allied to misguided show criteria and a closed gene pool, hasn't helped. Our Mastiff was once revered all over northern Europe as a hunting dog: the Englische Dogge. It was a powerful strong-headed active agile heavy hound, used to close with quarry and seize it for the accompanying hunters. It was not a giant sloth but a mighty canine athlete. In the nineteenth century, in a misplaced desire for great size and immense bulk, breeders blended Mastiff blood with that of imported dogs, such as Great Danes, Alpine Mastiffs and Tibetan Mastiffs, to create the giant breed we have with us today. As a direct result we are left with a very different Englische Dogge, more a fawn Alpine Mastiff, and shame on us for that.

 It is possible to detect three distinct forms of 'doggen', or mastiff-type dogs, in Northern Europe from the 14th to the 19th century. Once breeders either ignore their breed's origin or get misled by false research (or ignorant translators!), then essential breed-type is threatened. The Germans call the Great Dane a German Dogge or mastiff; the consequence must not be square-headed, lower-slung dogs with all their weight on the forehand. Many books on the surviving mastiff breeds tell us plenty about the Deutsche Dogge, or Great Dane, and the French mastiff, the Dogue de Bordeaux. But not many tell us the story of the Englische Dogge, most prized hunting mastiff in Central Europe in medieval times. Until the thirteenth century in England, a mastiff-type dog was called a 'docga', an Old English word, still retained on mainland Europe as dogge in Germany, dogue in France, dogg in Sweden and dogo in Spain. The master-engraver Ridinger portrayed the Englische Dogge at the end of the 17th century. No one claimed them as a breed, dogs then being bred for function not form, and never to a closed gene pool.

   In his The Cassell Dictionary of Word Histories of 1999, Adrian Room points out that the word ‘dog’ came from the Old English word ‘docga’ and was the name of a specific powerful breed of dog. The word 'dogge', (pronounced 'dogga' and meaning a mastiff-type - not just dog), is therefore used here to avoid confusion by using the word mastiff, nowadays used precisely as a breed name, to refer to a powerfully-built, short-haired, large-headed, drop-eared, strongly-muzzled heavy hound or hunting dog with immensely strong jaws and a willingness to close with then seize and hold its quarry, rather than just chase it and then bay it. These three forms can be listed as:    The 'grosse' bullenbeisser or heavy mastiff-type; the cross between the bullenbeisser group and the old type of huge strong-headed hound used against stag and boar and   the small bullenbeisser, the size of today's Boxer, a reduced form of the first.

   In Central Europe, hunting mastiffs or holding dogs were known variously as 'bufalbeissers', 'barenbeissers' or 'bullenbeissers' according to whether they seized or 'gripped' buffalo, bear or wild bulls. Fritz Bergmiller, according to Ferdinand Schmutz in his Mein Hund of 1954, considered that in the Middle Ages the hunting dogs in use in Germany were limited to eleven breed types, one of them being the 'grosse bullenbeisser' (literally 'big bull-biter' but better described as large gripping dogs used on bulls). These dogs, and smaller varieties, were later used in bull-baiting. It is not correct to think of bulldogs, in the sense of bull-baiting dogs, being restricted to Britain or indeed to think that night-dogs (like the breed of Bullmastiff) only occurred here. The French, for example, had both bouledogues and chiens de nuit/chiens du guet. In Belgium they had the Brabanter Bullenbijter, in Holland the Niederlandischer Bollbeisser and further north there was the Danzigger Bahrenbeisser, for use on bears.  In southern Europe were the 'presa' or 'fila' breeds, used by Spanish and Portuguese colonists in South America. These holding and seizing dogs are perpetuated today in the Perro de Presa Canario, the Fila Brasileiro and the Neapolitan Mastiff. The Cuban Bloodhound comes from such stock. It would be wrong to think of dogs in previous centuries being restricted in movement by such controls as our long era of quarantine and banning of breeds under the foolish Dangerous Dogs Act. The use of words in different languages to denote the seizing dogs: presa in Spain, fila in Portugal and beisser in Germany shows the widespread use of such dogs by medieval hunters.

   The great forests of central and Eastern Europe once provided endless opportunities for hunting large quarry with dogs and up to the end of the 19th century this pursuit was conducted on a vast scale. In France there were over 350 packs of hounds. In 1890 the Czar of Russia organised a grand fourteen-day hunt in which his party killed 42 European bison, 36 elk and 138 wild boar. In many of these hunts, scenthounds, sighthounds, running mastiffs or par force hounds (the true gazehounds) and hunting mastiffs (often held on the leash until needed at the kill and called 'bandogges' by the Saxons) were used in the same hunt. ‘Hunting cunning’ this was not!

   Who can say that we will never need such dogs to function once more, as domestic cattle succumb increasingly to epidemics, drought and changing crop requirements. Hunting big game for food may not please the morally vain, until their larders are empty, that is. Which meat would you prefer, that from sickly animals fed on steroids and hormones, or that of wild animals robust enough to survive without vets? Hunting mastiffs do not rip or tear flesh, but seize and hold, until the hunters arrive; in a way, an improvement on a chemical tranquilizer fired after a terrifying helicopter chase or prolonged cross-country vehicle pursuit. Big game quarry is hunted by wild animals every day of their lives, they expect this to happen and are designed to survive it. We live in times when it is entirely acceptable to sit watching on TV large packs of small wild dogs eating their quarry alive, whilst roundly condemning regulated hunting. In that paradoxical world the hunting mastiffs still live – with their long and distinguished heritage behind them and a more than uncertain future ahead of them. This is my attempt to promote greater understanding of where they came from and how they should be conserved. They thoroughly merit our understanding and our compassion. We really must honour their heritage - it's both a remarkable and a unique one.