First Published: 1979
A5 Booklet, 1979
28 pages
Weight: 55g approx
Printed in England by Vibixa Limited, Cheltenham
Line drawings by Roger Fisher
Foreword by Phil Drabble
I was brought up in the Black Country of South Staffordshire between the wars, when dog fighting with Staffordshire Bull Terriers was still fairly common. It had been illegal, in public, since the 1850's and under any circumstances since 1911, when the 1911 ,Cruelty to Animals Act had made it illegal to bait or cause any animals to fight. All that this had really done was to drive dog fighting underground, for, in those days, you "had to be a fighting man to keep a fighting dog".
It was an obscenely cruel sport, which still goes on in America, and the degree of aggression that was bred into the bull terriers of those days had to be seen to be believed. Owners saw nothing strange about having to muzzle both dog and bitch before they were introduced for mating, because they would literally rather fight than do anything else in the world.
I had a dog and a bitch that could never be left alone together, in spite of the fact that they had been reared together in the house and always been prevented from fighting. The slightest hitch, such as trying to go through a door at the same time, was all that was necessary to start them off, and when they did get stuck in, nothing short of literally choking them off would part them. The idea of training them to "loose it" would have been preposterous.
I never tried mine in the pit, for the simple reason that I am imaginative enough to be sickened at the idea. I used them for ratting, at which sport they had no equal, and both caught over a thousand in the year. The penalty they paid was that both contracted jaundice and died, although the modern injections that puppies have might have prevented it if they had been available then.
Since those days, Staffords have been bred for exhibition and judges have penalised dogs that were too "fast" in the ring, as it does not produce a good public image when ·the winners have to be choked apart ! If some of the aggression had not been bred out of them since my day, I have my doubts if Jill Airy's book would ever have been written, because the real fighting dogs were such dedicated killers that, however well trained they were, it needed little provocation for hereditary instinct to triumph over civilised habits.
Time and breeding for show have changed all that. Just after the war, a champion boxer was training on the downs above Brighton when his Stafford actually killed a donkey before his master - a tough guy by anyone's standards ! - could choke the dog off. Miss Airy was able to command her unseen dog to drop in thick cover until children had passed on their ponies.
The author is obviously in complete command of her dog and the hints she gives should help other Stafford owners to gaffer theirs. The good manners she instils into her dogs are an unnatural state which can only be produced by the unnatural discipline of careful training. I hope that everyone reading her work will take a leaf from her book, so that they can train their own dogs to a degree where they will get as much pleasure from their companionship as she so obviously does.
Phil Drabble.