your net //: Websites answer pet-related posers

By CHRIS BARTON

Most of us at one point or another have pets.

Research has shown we live longer and are happier in our lives as a result. But the care and maintenance of pets is a complex business - such as deciding whether to take medical insurance to cover the vet bills. What better place than the net to answer those pet-related posers that arise from time to time?

Take our dog Trick. He came into our lives by accident. Our eldest brought him home as a puppy - rescued, he said, from a Southland farmer about to put him down because there were too many in the litter.

He was terribly cute and we all fell in love with him. The only problem was his breed - bull terrier. Say those words to most people and they immediately think - as we did - "pit." Thanks to misinformation and general ignorance, the breed gets a lot of bad press.

I've noticed this when strangers come to the door. Trick loves meeting people. So when there's a knock he rushes to greet.

Some, when they see Trick coming, don't realise he's just being friendly. Like the nice elderly gentleman collecting for the Salvation Army who, with an agility that belied his years, turned and fled - impressively vaulting the gate in the process. Then there was the very polite Japanese boy who stood his ground, but sprang upwards with a very balletic scissor jump letting Trick pass under his legs.

With this last incident, I decided I needed more information. Why are people so afraid of bull terriers? Why do they think of them as pit bulls? What is a pit bull? So many questions.

The bull terrier is a British breed whose ancestors were developed for bull baiting and pit fighting in the mid-19th century. Betting on dogfights was big at the time.

Someone had the bright idea of mating the bull dog (tenacity, courage and high threshold of pain) with the now-extinct black and tan terrier (lightning speed, agility and unsurpassed killing instinct).

Called the Bull and Terrier, it quickly got the reputation of "canine gladiator" - a breed which would fight to the death for his master. It was also not bad at sheep herding, hunting and vermin control.

Trick, it seems can thank James Hinks, of Birmingham for much of his genetic make-up. It was he who decided to cross the now-extinct white English terrier into the gene pool creating an all white bull terrier, known as "The White Cavalier." At the same time a more working-class version - the Staffordshire terrier - also developed.

Pit bulls arrived in the United States just before the civil war and the breed there developed into the distinct American pit bull terrier and the American Staffordshire terrier.

Trick and I now have a much clearer understanding of his ancestry - which is definitely of the white English, not American, variety with a bit of something else, possibly Staffordshire, thrown in. I'm sure this will be a big help next time a stranger comes to the door and Trick runs to greet him or her.

Other dog info:

New Zealand Dog Web Sites

New Zealand Kennel Club

Dogsites (Australia)

100 top dog sites

Which dogs bite?

More on bull terriers:

Staffordshire Bull Terriers

The American Pit Bull Terrier

Bull Terrier History

History of the Pit Bull

Bull Terriers Top 100 List

Bull Terrier Web Ring

Mega List of Bull Terrier Websites