Chimera Kennels

is there any breeding program at the moment with the goal to select mastiffs with "sharper temperament" (good guarding ability, stable nerves and very good instivts) and to improve their health and athleticism by adding greyhound blood :?:

in other words, is there a program for producing Old School Mastiffs without adding modern breeds like pit bull terriers :?:

the only "mastiff breeding program" i have seen so far, without using modern blood of modern bull & terr breeds is the Australian Mastiff.

he hasn't used Greyhound which was my request, but still it is an interesting breeding program.

http://www.australiasbestbodyguards.com.au/

he has produced some nice looking dogs. for my taste they could be more consitent in phenotype, but maybe his following generations will be like that.

Producing a better mastiff is my goal as a breeder.  I want to give the mastiff the strength it used to have, before show breeding did its damage. My dogs do have greyhound blood through the Great Dane, but while greyhounds have plenty of prey drive I've never seen one with any courage, and the physical traits it would introduce would be very counter productive for man work. That's where the pitbull comes in.  It adds useful physical traits and prey drive, without losing courage, commitment, and toughness. One thing the greyhound would add to the mastiff that the mastiffs in general need a lot of is good hips. If the greyhound were from coursing or stalking stock that might be better than race or show dogs - I've never met a greyhound used for what it was bred for. You can still find good agressive great danes but there aren't alot of those since they've become the king of the show ring.

For me I love the mastiff and want to give it the health, athleticism, and drive it needs to do its job. Its job IMO is protecting its family and property from human intruders. The old style mastiffs needed more hair and skin for fighting animals, but most moden mastiffs will never fight a bear or wolf, so all the extra just makes a mess. That's another thing I'm working to change, and the tight skin and mouth of the pit bull terrier go along way to making mastiffs easier to live with in the house.

I have no problems using a "modern" breed.  I think the modern breeds, especially the very new breeds, will soon greatly surpass the old breeds in all types of work, because for the first time in history it's possable for every breeder to select from  the best dogs in the world not just in the local area. Add to that our greatly improved understanding of genetics and veterinary medicine, and with careful selection and proper testing health problems can now be adressed in a very serious way.  With standardized testing we can compare the health of a stud in Alaska to a stud in Japan. There are also so many breeds available that either didn't exist or were unknown to most breeders, that really expand the breeders' ability to introduce just the combination of traits they want in their program. This really is the best time to produce great dogs for every job.

In the end, what it comes down to is selecting for TRAITS. I believe there are better choices than greyhound out there (such as the APBT). IMO, a good APBT brings everything to the table the greyhound brings and then some. If one insisted on adding the traits you can find in the greyhound, I would use a good APBT x Great Dane instead, which has many of the traits a greyhound has...but better substance and power. I have seen some APBT x Great Danes that could run ALL DAY, probably 100 miles or so in a day and they loved to move and did it very efficiently. OK, so they were not 42 mph like a greyhound, but some certainly were 35 mph dogs and had considerable more power and substance. And, the traits are so strong that even some such dogs bred back to mastiffs (50% EM, 25% Great Dane, and 25% APBT), which you would think would slow it down as a result of adding mass, were still very racey, prey driven dogs with lots of power...and still had endurance for days with no recovery from work appearing to be needed. Instant recovery. The only problem I had with such dogs was nerves. I wanted to see more courage. Although these dogs had drives and when stimulated would "blow through" any concerns, when they were not stimulated many were "spooked" from environmental things. Stimulate those dogs drives though and BAM...they were ready to go. Drive overload cancelled out their concerns. I have some photos and videos of these dogs somewhere. If you want, I will see if I can find them.

David Ishee at 01:00AM on Dec 10, 2009

Producing a better mastiff is my goal as a breeder.  I want to give the mastiff the strength it used to have, before show breeding did its damage. My dogs do have greyhound blood through the Great Dane, but while greyhounds have plenty of prey drive I've never seen one with any courage, and the physical traits it would introduce would be very counter productive for man work. That's where the pitbull comes in.  It adds useful physical traits and prey drive, without losing courage, commitment, and toughness. One thing the greyhound would add to the mastiff that the mastiffs in general need a lot of is good hips. If the greyhound were from coursing or stalking stock that might be better than race or show dogs - I've never met a greyhound used for what it was bred for. You can still find good agressive great danes but there aren't alot of those since they've become the king of the show ring.

For me I love the mastiff and want to give it the health, athleticism, and drive it needs to do its job. Its job IMO is protecting its family and property from human intruders. The old style mastiffs needed more hair and skin for fighting animals, but most moden mastiffs will never fight a bear or wolf, so all the extra just makes a mess. That's another thing I'm working to change, and the tight skin and mouth of the pit bull terrier go along way to making mastiffs easier to live with in the house.

I have no problems using a "modern" breed.  I think the modern breeds, especially the very new breeds, will soon greatly surpass the old breeds in all types of work, because for the first time in history it's possable for every breeder to select from  the best dogs in the world not just in the local area. Add to that our greatly improved understanding of genetics and veterinary medicine, and with careful selection and proper testing health problems can now be adressed in a very serious way.  With standardized testing we can compare the health of a stud in Alaska to a stud in Japan. There are also so many breeds available that either didn't exist or were unknown to most breeders, that really expand the breeders' ability to introduce just the combination of traits they want in their program. This really is the best time to produce great dogs for every job.

Producing a better mastiff is my goal as a breeder. I want to give the mastiff the strength it used to have, before show breeding did its damage. My dogs do have greyhound blood through the Great Dane, but while greyhounds have plenty of prey drive I've never seen one with any courage, and the physical traits it would introduce would be very counter productive for man work.

that´s pretty interesting mate and yeah i began reading your post and read about that you are using German Mastiff aka Great Dane, so immediately the follwoing thing came to my mind "you are using sighthound blood" lol

but then you said it yourself.

by the way to all the americans here, you have some great breeds and i like your efforts! just a little advice. Great Dane is a "misnomer" it was mainly used in english speaking countries after world war two, due to the bad connotation of the word german.

the Great Dane is not from dennmark. it is a german breed with mainly english influence! the true Great Dane is the Broholmer which indeed is the big dog from dennmark, while the other dogs should be called Deutsche Dogge or German Mastiff!

so with the German Mastiff you get definitely sighthound bloos into your breeding program, as it mainly developed from English Mastiff x Sighthound crosses including the Irish/Celtic Wolfhounds.

bothe the EM and IWH before the breeds had to be recreated! 

I have no problems using a "modern" breed. I think the modern breeds, especially the very new breeds, will soon greatly surpass the old breeds in all types of work, because for the first time in history it's possable for every breeder to select from the best dogs in the world not just in the local area.

while most breeds of nowadays are getting ruined due to show breeders. a fact that also has to be mentioned.

chimerakennels at 07:20AM on Dec 10, 2009

In the end, what it comes down to is selecting for TRAITS. I believe there are better choices than greyhound out there (such as the APBT). IMO, a good APBT brings everything to the table the greyhound brings and then some. If one insisted on adding the traits you can find in the greyhound, I would use a good APBT x Great Dane instead, which has many of the traits a greyhound has...but better substance and power. I have seen some APBT x Great Danes that could run ALL DAY, probably 100 miles or so in a day and they loved to move and did it very efficiently. OK, so they were not 42 mph like a greyhound, but some certainly were 35 mph dogs and had considerable more power and substance. And, the traits are so strong that even some such dogs bred back to mastiffs (50% EM, 25% Great Dane, and 25% APBT), which you would think would slow it down as a result of adding mass, were still very racey, prey driven dogs with lots of power...and still had endurance for days with no recovery from work appearing to be needed. Instant recovery. The only problem I had with such dogs was nerves. I wanted to see more courage. Although these dogs had drives and when stimulated would "blow through" any concerns, when they were not stimulated many were "spooked" from environmental things. Stimulate those dogs drives though and BAM...they were ready to go. Drive overload cancelled out their concerns. I have some photos and videos of these dogs somewhere. If you want, I will see if I can find them.

In the end, what it comes down to is selecting for TRAITS. I believe there are better choices than greyhound out there (such as the APBT). IMO, a good APBT brings everything to the table the greyhound brings and then some.

apbt has great drive no doubt, if it is a well bred one. one thing it doesn´t bring to the table and these are streched proportions and size!

a lot of bandogs i have seen, i am not talking about any breeder here!!!!!

but in general, a lot i have seen, did not have a nice build. they were way too stocky and lacked reach in body! that´s something i dislike.

if you want to call a dog a mastiff, it should never be a short legged dog with a short body, as an old school mastiff never looked that way!

i guess you know what i mean and i guess you also don´t like these stocky dogs.

when i was speaking about greyhounds, i should not have limited my post only to greyhounds, i must admit that. i mean sighthound blood in general, as many mastiffs have been Mastiff x Sighthound mongrels in past centuries!

how about the American Staghounds. i have heard from some people that there are many American Staghounds out teher with a lot of courage. the rough coat will be bred out easily as the dog should still be a mastiff and with that said, should have much more mastiff blood!

I have to disagree about the proportion part, a "true" APBT shouldn't be a big dog but shouldn't look squatty. Look at Leri's site she has some great examples of what I think of when I hear APBT. They aren't squatty in proportion at all. There are a lot of "american bullies" that look more like english bulldogs, and they are usually what you see crossed to neos to make the squatty driveless bandogs. Look also at Lee's tate, damon, and linebaugh, levi, and draco, they were created using real APBT stock and they are by no means short squatty dogs.

I've never met an american staghound in person so I don't know much about them, but it would take generations to get the head back to a useful shape. Even getting the mastiff head back after using dane is hard enough.

If I was going to cross outside mastiff or bulldog, I would cross to an american akita it would have a lot of the problems of the sighthounds. I would have to fix the coat, the over independance, etc. But they have a lot of prey drive and are very territorial, but at least with the akita it already has a great build, a ton of strength, low bite inhibition, and size which the sighthounds would need added. Other than an akita maybe a giant schnauzer

IMO when it's all said and done a PP mastiff, is a huge man focused catch dog, so it only makes sence to use catch dogs and man aggressive mastiffs.

i would really love to see someone use that giant schnauzer in there prgram.... i actually had a young but very dominant male a year or so ago. i did obedience with him and used no treats and only used his drives. this fella had one heck of a bite.. much more than i had expected from the giant. it would be nothing to catch me out in the yard swinging a 80lb puppy around in the air. never the less he was extremely hard to deal with as he would settle in the house inevitably it was as if he was never even trained once he got exited. a guy who was really familiar with them said that that is just to be expected. but even 10 months he would fight enlessly with the adult rott and honestly gave him about as much as he wanted to handle. the Rott was bigger stronger and much more experienced but i have no doubt that a few months would have proved serious trouble. the giant puppy seemed to fight harder on his back... it was crazy.. this would definately be an interesting dog to consider in a breeding program.... although im sure the rank drive would be an issue.. its why i dont have him now

"I have some photos and videos of these dogs somewhere. If you want, I will see if I can find them."

I would love to see them

I will dig them up when I have more time. If I forget, feel free to remind me.

I must agree with david most modern mastiffs won't take on a bear or boar. But i will say  my line of CANE CORSO'S will take on what ever u want it to. they have been used for bear and wild boar hunting, and also wolves.  im going to post some pics of 2 of my july 06 litter. already guarding a 300 acre farm and tracking deer. 2 blue-blonde brindle males. almost 7 mo old. I  just got some pics of them.

There are some "mastiff" types that can and will do it. Caesar and Eclipse certainly would have the drives for it...although they would lack the speed most serious hunters would want. I wouldn't use them for "pursuit" but if they could catch it they certainly would be willing to hold it .

We have a few Swinfords (which are much faster/quicker than a pure mastiff) that are now in TX and also in CA that are used as catch dogs for hunting wild hogs/boar.

Have read that on here. Plus dave was telling me about them! i have not sold any dogs for that sole purpose. My pups grandma came from alaska and her dad was used for bear! And in my earlier post it is 09 litter, same litter as dave's misty, are working the farm already

Are any of you familiar with the british breeding programs trying to recreate the alaunt-I think bullmastiff ,apbt ,greyhound and english bull terrier were the breeds used- "Bull hound lurchers " are very popular with hunters in the U.K and ireland (for hunting fox and deer (illegal now)).They are usually produced by breeding an english bull terrier or american pitbull with a greyhound- the best examples are from many generations of apbt/greyhound  x apbt /greyhound crosses-CANINE GYMNASTS .

Speaking of coursing greyhounds-There is a 115 lb one running in this years coursing derby competition (basically a straight line sprint after a live hare,first to turn it wins).They are much,much faster than track dogs,but only in a straight line.

http://www.thebritishalauntsociety.moonfruit.com/

john tierney at September 28, 2011 at 8:46 PM

Are any of you familiar with the british breeding programs trying to recreate the alaunt-I think bullmastiff ,apbt ,greyhound and english bull terrier were the breeds used- "Bull hound lurchers " are very popular with hunters in the U.K and ireland (for hunting fox and deer (illegal now)).They are usually produced by breeding an english bull terrier or american pitbull with a greyhound- the best examples are from many generations of apbt/greyhound  x apbt /greyhound crosses-CANINE GYMNASTS .

Speaking of coursing greyhounds-There is a 115 lb one running in this years coursing derby competition (basically a straight line sprint after a live hare,first to turn it wins).They are much,much faster than track dogs,but only in a straight line.

http://www.thebritishalauntsociety.moonfruit.com/

This is a rare picture of the ancient Alaunt.

Notice that it looks a lot like a Great Pyrenees which to my surprise is the top LGD by the USDA. I always thought they were just show dogs, but these dogs are protecting whole herds from predators, especially when they are in labor and feral hogs will attack the newborn. I really think that the Great Pyrenees is the best Mastiff for a Bandog. Alaunts were known to be white but that does not mean that they were involved in the development of the Bull Terrier which got it's white color from the English White Terrier, which could be true for the SBT and hence the APBT. The only other all white dog developed from the ancient bulldog is the Boxer.

So I think the best bet at recreating the Alaunt would be a Great Pyrenees/German Boxer cross. I think the English Bulldog has deviated from it's roots so far like the American Bullys are that they should not be included. I do also think that since the SBT and BM were developed from crossing 1 breed with the ancient Bulldog, that crossing them together and diluting the terrier and mastiff genes would bring out the ancient bulldog as well. My Staffy looks like a mini BM so I think that is the proper head shape for a Bulldog but I think the Boxer has the muzzle.

Bigshrimp at January 15, 2010 at 9:34 PM

"I have some photos and videos of these dogs somewhere. If you want, I will see if I can find them."

 

I would love to see them

Here is one...a female named Georgia.

Now that is a dog I wouldn't mind having. She looks perfect.

why not use a doberman rather than a greyhound for the same reasons? it would add leg, agility, etc. and the dog would also have the protection instincts to offer where as the greyhound does not. what do you guys think?