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Dog FightingDog fighting, although now illegal, has been around for thousands of years. History tells us it was a popular sport with the Romans, Spanish, French and Greeks in years gone by. Even then dogs were interbred specifically for the purpose of producing ferocious breeds for fighting against larger animals such as bears and lions. The British bred the Bulldog for tackling large bulls and boars and bull baiting became a common pastime. The American Pitbull Terrier has a reputation for being an aggressive and difficult breed, sometimes with complete justification but the connection with it's cousin the British Bulldog doesn't help. When dog fighting was at it's most popular, breeders began looking for ways to produce a smaller, more agile dog, while still retaining the aggression and killer instinct of the larger breeds. Terrier type dogs were crossed with bulldogs and the more this inter breeding continued, the more ferocious the dogs became. Dog fighting is now illegal in the USA and most of Europe, but it does still go on in secret. Small arenas can be errected and pulled down in minutes and the internet has become an ideal vehicle for informing dog fighting enthusiasts of times and of venues. Anyone who has witnessed the horrific injuries that fighting dogs can suffer will fully understand why this once popular "sport" is now condemned and is illegal in many parts of the world.
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