BULLDOG HISTORY - The Philo-Kuon

Breeders of the 1800’s:
When debates were first heard at the turn of the 18th century on whether to make bull baiting illegal or not in England’s parliament, a group of visionary dog breeders began an effort to save the legendary symbol of British courage, the primordial English Bulldog. This group would eventually be called the Philo-Kuon breeders. Parliamentary debates continued for three and a half decades, during that time the British newspapers crucified the Bulldog, painting a caricature “monster dog”, image similar to the current media campaign against the Pit Bull.

The 19th century English newspapers were correct in only one area: the working Bulldog was too hard a dog to be a family pet without an out cross. Philo-Kuon breeders crossed Pug into Bulldogs to create a new breed that was to carry on the name and the valor of the original canine warrior but be more manageable. The Pug out cross was needed to tone down the extremely hard and aggressive personalities of the bull baiting dogs.

The original Bulldog resembled an American Staffordshire Terrier or a Performance AB and weighed about 50 pounds. Pug/Bulldog crosses often weighed only 20 pounds and resembled Boston Terriers with rose ears. The Pug/Bulls were tested in rat pits for gameness and functional structure. These weren’t show breeders trying to save the English Bulldog, they were people who use to bait bulls as a breed test.

The 20 pound miniature Bulldogs that survived the rat pits were bred to large 100% Bulldogs with short muzzles or small Mastiffs, both had to have mellow temperaments to be considered worthy breed candidates by Philo-Kuon breeders. The result was a 40 to 60 pound dog that resembled a Boxer.

In 1835 bull baiting was made illegal.

By the 1860’s the new breed had solidified and was gaining popularity as a home guardian. A breed standard was drawn up and dogs shows were held. A painting of Rosa and Crib, the foundation pair that most bloodlines sprang from, was incorporated into the English show standard. Rosa and Crib were the Adam and Eve of Philo-Kuon English Bulldogs The standard was written under the pen name Philo-Kuon, Latin for dog lover.

Philo-Kuon not only insisted that the newly created Bulldog Pug Bull breed must resemble Rosa and Crib, or in effect resemble Boxers, the dogs had to be courageous and resolute. The new version of the English Bulldog must be able to attack on command any threatening person or any wild animal and still be easy to control. The English breeders throughout the 19th century who followed the dictates of Philo-Kuon bred a courageous Boxer like Bulldog that was a family protector par excellence.

They tested their dogs extensively in various athletic activities such as throwing wooden planks into a churning ocean from 15 foot cliffs. The Philo-Kuon Bulldogs would plunge off the cliffs, into white caps and drag the planks to shore, barking joyfully for their masters to throw the plank out again.

The English Philo-Kuon Bulldog was used to create many fine Bull breeds around the world. English breeders sold top dogs to the Germans. The modern Boxer is at least 50% descended from Philo-Kuon bloodlines. Many Philo-Kuon Bulldogs were also exported to America and the AB is partially descended from this source. Champion Crib was a typical Philo-Kuon English Bulldog.

The reason so many of these magnificent Philo-Kuon Bulldogs were shipped out of England has to do with a schism within the 19th century English Bulldog community. Towards the second half of the 19th century Boxer like Bulldogs stopped winning dog shows. A third type had been created through in breeding that looked nothing like a Boxer or a small Johnson AB. The new type was dubbed the sour mug.

It looked like nothing that had ever come before it. The sour mug had a muzzle so short it could not be measured. Its elbows were bowed out like a piano’s legs. Its chest was so wide it couldn’t move in a normal fashion. The Philo-Kuon breeders examined the third type, the sour mug, and declared it an abomination against nature and didn’t take the sour mug breeder’s threats seriously, threats to take over the English Bulldog national club and change the standard to favor the freakish sour mug.

Sour Mug breeders scorned the drawings of Rosa and Crib in the Philo-Kuon standard and the performance testing required to keep the English Bulldog athletic. They created a squatty non athletic toad like dog, the modern AKC English Bulldog and called for the athletic Philo-Kuon breeders to abandon the lithe Bulldog form.

Unfortunately, the Philo-Kuon breeders were distracted from the game of political football within the English Bulldog national breed club. Because of their negligence Judges were convinced that the squatty sour mug type was correct and the Boxer type was incorrect. Sour Mug breeders won more and more dog shows as the century advanced. The Philo-Kuon breeders were distracted because they were busy importing the finest Spanish Bulldogs that had confirmations similar to athletic English Bulldogs but were larger. From a functional and working point of view the Philo-Kuon breeders were doing excellent work. Spanish Bulldogs were imported that weighed 90 pounds and had thoroughly tested dispositions. The Spanish Bulldog was descended entirely from English Bulldog stock, so this was not an other breed out cross. The Philo-Kuon breeders were actually reducing the amount of Pug in their new toned down house Bulldogs. They sought Spanish Bulldogs with exceptionally short noses, roughly 2 or 2 1/2 inches long. They were doing superb work if the goal was to produce a typey but still functional Bulldog. Belcher was a Philo-Kuon Bulldog that won over 100 Pit contests As the last decade of the 19th century loomed the Philo-Kuon breeders discovered that their dogs were being shunned by the public in favor of the sour mug. The Sour Mug breeders had publicly exposed the crossing of Spanish Bulldog into their competitor’s lines. A hue and cry was raised that the Philo-Kuon breeders were being unpatriotic when they crossed foreign blood into English Bulldogs. There were other reasons for the new type’s popularity, sour mugs were physically chained or hobbled by their stumpy short legs and smashed in faces. Sour mugs would chase cats but not catch them. Some Philo-Kuon Bulldogs would kill all the neighborhood cats and whip all the local dogs. Others were mellower and with proper training were great guard dogs that could exercise restraint. Over time the Philo-Kuon Bulldog was given a more sedate personality but they would always be rambunctious dogs. Philo-Kuon breeders did not go down without a fight. They challenged the sour mug breeders to walking races over twelve mile courses. The sour mug breeders were loathe to accept the challenge but would have lost face if they forfeited. Sour mugs did indeed race Philo-Kuon Bulldogs. The sour mugs would collapse after two miles of walking and were exposed as being grossly non-functional. The Philo-Kuon Bulldogs could zip around the 12 mile course for hours and wear out several different handlers. Sour Mug breeders shot back that maybe the new sour mug type wasn’t a ball of fire but at least it wasn’t polluted with Spanish blood. A second media campaign was directed at the Philo-Kuon breeders. The phony patriotic argument carried the day, never mind that the original out cross a century earlier was made to a breed that originated in Asia. The drawings of Rosa and Crib were torn from the standard and ground under a boot heel as the sneering sour mug breeders had their final revenge for being humiliated in the walking races. At the turn of the 19th century there were essentially no Philo-Kuon Bulldogs left in England.

Philo-Kuon Bulldogge Standard
The head should be large and high, that is, with elevation about the temples, and deeply sunken between the eyes, which indentation is termed The Stop. This Stop should extend some distance up the head. The skin of the head should be wrinkled, and the cheeks should extend outwards well beyond the eyes. The forehead of the dog should not be prominent, as in the King Charles Spaniel, and not too round or it would be Apple Headed.  The head of a fine dog fifty pounds of weight, should measure round the thickest part about twenty inches. The eyes should be wide apart, almost black, of moderate size, rather full than otherwise, round, and not deeply set. The line of the eyes should be at right angles with the line of the face, and the eyes placed quite in front of the head, as far from the ear and as near the nose as possible. The ears should be small, thin, and wide apart. They should be either Rose, Button, or Tulip. The Rose ear falls backwards, while the ends lap over outwards exposing part of the inside. The Button ear differs from the Rose only in falling over forwards, which hides the interior. The Tulip ear is nearly erect. These are the only distinct sorts of ear, but there are various grades between them, and sometimes one almost merges into the other, for the dog does not always carry them in the same manner as, for instance, the ear which is naturally a Rose ear may become almost a Tulip ear when the dog is excited. The nostrils should be wide and the nose large and almost between the eyes, and black, and deep-thus, taking the depth of the nose and the length from the eye to the end of the nose, the distance ought to be about the same. There should be a well defined line straight up between the nostrils. The best bred dogs will be liable to flesh or spotted noses; this is a blemish, but no sign of bad breeding; true bred bulldogs will sometimes have flesh colored noses. The muzzle should be broad, deep, and short, with the skin deeply wrinkled and underhung, but not showing the teeth; for if the mouth be even they are termed Shark-headed, which is considered a very bad point. This is an important point, because it denotes width and squareness of under jaw. The neck should be moderate in length, thick and arched at the back, with plenty of loose, wrinkled skin about the throat. The ribs should be well rounded and the chest wide, deep, and rounded. The tail should be inserted rather low down; thick where it joins the body, long and thin, and turned round at the end, in which case it is termed a Ring or Tiger tail, similar to that of the Greyhound but shorter. The perfect tail is shown in the print of Mr. Lovell’s Ball, and the tail nearest approaching that is the nearest to perfection. The tail thin and taper, curling over the back or hanging down, termed tiger tailed; rarely erected except when the passions of the animal are aroused -vide cynographia Brittanica a.d. 1800.The back should be short and arched in the loins, termed Roach-backed, wide across the shoulders and narrow across the loins. The Roach-back is shown in perfection in the print of Crib and Rosa. Rosa’s shape is perfect. The legs: The forelegs should be stout, with well marked calves, bowed outwards, short, and very wide apart. The hind legs should be slightly longer in proportion than the forelegs, so as to elevate the loins. The hocks should approach each other, which involves the stifles being turned outwards, and well rounded, which seems to obstruct the dogs speed in running, but is admirably adapted to progressive motion when combatting on his belly. The feet should be moderately round; not so round as a cat’s nor so long as a Hare’s feet, and should be well split up between the toes. The forefeet should be straight, and should show the knuckles well. The pasterns should be strong, that dog may walk well on his toes. The coat should be fine, short, and close. The bulldog has a very peculiar carriage, heavy and rather slow. He rolls very much in his gait, and generally runs rather sideways; his hind legs are seldom lifted very high, so that his hind feet(which like the stifles are turned outwards)appear to skim the ground. The Colour should be salmon, fallow, red, brindled, or white, with those colours variously pied. The salmon and fallow with black muzzles, called Smuts, are choice colours. Some greatly admire the whites, but a bright Salmon with black muzzle would be the choicest of all colours. Black was formerly considered a good colour, but black and tan, and blue, are very bad colours. There is a strong resemblance between a brindled Bulldog and a striped Hyena. Weight: A Bulldog seldom weighs more than 60 lbs. If larger, he may be suspected of the Mastiff cross. On the other hand, he ought not be less than 20 lbs in weight, or he may be suspected of being crossed with the Terrier. The larger Bulldogs are grander and more striking in their proportions than the small ones.