I have a great admiration for American Pit Bull Terriers, they're athletic, powerful, they have arguably one of the strongest will powers of any dog out there. (Goes back to the fighting heritage) I've spent a lot of time researching them, learning about different lines, pretty much any thing and everything I could learn about them.
I do own a shelter girl, she came into the shelter as a stray while I was working there so I don't know her heritage, but visually she looks pure. So I just call her a APBT mix. She's a very nice girl, dog reactive, absolutely loves every human she meets, very handler soft (does NOT like to make me mad, but it seems more like her previous home was harsh due to associations with certain things),very athletic and smart/eager to learn, very strong prey drive.
Her flaws would be that she doesn't think well when very excited. Which isn't particularly unusual, but can make sports hard. It's part of the reason I'm drawn to German Shepherds more, they work very well when excited or under pressure.
One of the biggest issues with Pit Bulls is the mixing and closely related breeds. There are American Staffordshire Terriers, American Bullies, and Dogue De Bordeaux mixes being registered with the ADBA and UKC as American Pit Bull Terriers to this day. Which really blurs the lines, and the APBT gets the brunt of the anti-pit bull focus since all those breeds are labeled under a nickname that used to only pertain to them.
I'll give you an example...
This is one of the top winning UKC dogs of 09, and her pedigree
http://www.apbt.online-pedigrees.com/mo ... _id=147259Notice on the top end and some closer gens you see "AKC" in the dog's names, and see a lot of "Gaff" and "Sierra", those dogs are American Staffordshire Terriers. You click on that dog's dam's name and you get her ped, which is also full of Sierra and Gaff. So pretty much you have a Amstaff, winning the the UKC as a APBT.
And you also have lines like Greyline are crosses between Amstaffs and APBTs (pitterstaffs) bred to be overly large.
Here's an actual APBT, one of the top winning ADBA dogs. In APBTs you're going to see fighting dogs in the background. That is fact, as the first registry to allow APBTs was back in the dog fighting glory days and the dogs had to be 3x winners to be registered. So every registered pure APBT can be traced back to one of those dogs.
http://www.apbt.online-pedigrees.com/mo ... _id=371765APBT Bloodlines are stuff like Sorrells, Garner, Boudreaux, Colby, Carver, Eli, Hemphill, Crenshaw, and a lot more based around specific dogs.
And then there's the other issue with judging the purity of registered dogs.
http://www.apbt.online-pedigrees.com/mo ... g_id=35886^That dog is a Dogue De Bordeaux/American Bulldog cross, and is still in the pedigrees of many UKC/ADBA dogs to this day. The issue was that he was originally told he could have the dog on a single registry so it could compete in weight pull. The agreements were the dog was not to be bred. But he did it anyway, and they still allowed the offspring to be registered.
Whopper, Chevy, Eddington, Camelot, Dagger and a few more are lines that have mastiff mixed into their heritage.
Aaaand then you have the most common dogs you see, bred willy nilly by backyard breeders, the American Bullies and variants of. They're bred down from selectively bred Amstaff/APBT crosses and if you Google search "Pit Bull" they are mostly what comes up.
The lines are Razor's Edge, Gottiline, and Remyline, though there are some other but they're not sustained yet.
Here's one example, he was a national winner for the ABKC (American Bully Kennel Club)
Hopefully I didn't bore or go too far off topic... that's my mind turd for the day