Hi Gun (Tonedog),

ahhh no, for me the part with "big problems" isn´t true. I think people can have big problems from time to time in real life, but me personally I cannot have big problems in internet-debates. In the end you agree or disagree, or maybe it´s inbetween both, but that´s no big deal at all. Yeah, I think I bring interesting discussion to boards and I am in general not interested in the shallow stuff that is discussed by many people. Stuff like who has the meanest fighting dog etc. It attracts mostly clueless people and such discussions are based on two things in most cases, namely nationalism & low education. Alaunt isn´t my "buzzword for the month", the dogs of "ancient alaunt type" (I am always a bit cautious with the word "ancient") always interested me and I also don´t have a new angle. This was always my point of view, it just wasn´t discussed on the old boards we have met, or in general on other boards.

I mostly agree with your text and the different development of both "branches", or groups of dogs. I guess this can already be seen in my first post here and to a smaller degree in my graphic too. (A graphic is always limited as you have much less words you can use.) I only question if the gripping dogs should be called Alaunts, or to be more precise, I would not call them Alaunts at all. To be honest, such dogs have existed in Europe before the Alans migrated to all the different places in Europe. I would say the group of "gripping dogs" in Europe were basically the Beissers and like I have mentioned, they have been around before the Alans went to all these places. Just take a look at the German Boxer. It isn´t an Alaunt-type at all. It goes back to old "Beisser-types" (Bärenbeisser etc.) and such dogs were brave hunters and for sure later also were modified or specialized to herd unruly cattle such as bulls. I consider the Alano Espanol to be basically a Boxer with a better muzzle. (In all - phenotype, function and historico-genetic.) So even though the Alano Espanol has the "Alano" in its name, I don´t consider it to be an Alaunt, but a Beisser in type. By the way I like a lot of Beissers too, but actually the ones that are smaller (Boxer size) and more leaning towards hunting. A sportive Boxer (swift & agile), apart from its muzzle, is more my type than a Bullmastiff.

Regards