Posts of Tony RSSSat, 24 Oct 2020 14:07:05 GMTFirst of all, the site looks great Gary. This is Tonedog from back in the day. I decided to just randomly see if molosserdogs was still around, fearing the worst, but wow, looks good.  Maybe some controversial debate will help liven the place up a bit? lol Over the last few years I've been continuing my recreational research into dogs and dog history (which has now spanned many decades), and I've stumbled onto a realization that "mastiffs" basically don't exist and never did.   Hear me out...  I believe the mastiff category is merely comprised of retired dogs from various other functional types. They have no real genetic foundation making them a group and no real ancestral function. If you name a mastiff I can tell you how it isn't one and never was, and what it really is.  English mastiff- Boarhound. Essentially a breed created at Lyme Hall by the descendants of Sir Piers Legh to pay homage to the legend of Sir Piers being saved by a mastiff in a battle with the french in 1415. The thing is, before the recreation, the dogs of lyme park were clearly boarhounds. As boars were depleted from the english countryside they continued to keep these boarhounds for a while as "chamber dogs" that would hang around inside and play with the kids.  But they were simply england's great danes, really. Retired boarhounds, which initially were created by crossing bulldogs with large sighthounds. Any image of a mastiff in england from before the 1800s looks like a long legged mongrel boar hound, and only rarely won't be referred to as such. I'm rather convinced that's all they were, while they were working functional animals. The modern english mastiff is a recreation based on the legend of these boarhounds, and they made them more bulky and sluggish, but not for any real functional reason.  Big for bigness' sake, with total amnesia about their boar hunting origins.  Neapolitan mastiff -  Bulldog. The neapolitan mastiff and cane corso were assuredly one in the same dog before... Read more

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