Pit Bull History & Heritage

Pit bull-type dogs trace back to 19th-century England, where the Old English Bulldog was bred for bull-baiting, a blood sport in which dogs were set on a tethered bull. When the UK's Cruelty to Animals Act outlawed bull- and bear-baiting in 1835, the crowds and gambling didn't disappear, they just went underground into dogfighting, which took more speed and agility than baiting a chained bull ever did.

Breeders crossed the Bulldog with terriers to build a faster, more athletic dog for the pit, creating what became known as the “bull-and-terrier.” That cross is the direct ancestor of today's American Pit Bull Terrier and American Staffordshire Terrier.

This is the part of the history that gets left out of most conversations about the breed: because handlers had to physically separate dogs mid-fight, and because dogs were routinely handled by strangers before and after matches, breeders selected hard against aggression toward people. Any dog that turned on a handler was culled from the breeding line.

The result was a breed built for confrontation with other animals, but just as deliberately bred to be safe and trustworthy around humans. The ASPCA's official position, backed by research on pit bull-type dogs involved in organized fighting, confirms this distinction still holds: dog-directed aggression and human-directed aggression are separate traits, and selecting for one does not select for the other.

For most of its history in the United States, the pit bull wasn't feared, it was beloved. The American Pit Bull Terrier was the very first breed registered by the United Kennel Club in 1898, after the American Kennel Club refused to register one. Pete the Pup, the dog from the Our Gang and Little Rascals film shorts, was a UKC-registered pit bull. Bud, who rode along on the first cross-country road trip across America in 1903, was too. His driving goggles are preserved at the Smithsonian today.

Through the early and mid-20th century, pit bull-type dogs were common family pets, celebrated for their loyalty and affection toward their people.

The shift happened later, and it wasn't driven by any change in the dogs. As pit bulls became common in underground dogfighting rings through the 1970s and '80s, media coverage sensationalized the breed. Sports Illustrated put a snarling pit bull on its July 1987 cover under the headline “Beware of This Dog.” Hollywood, Florida passed the country's first breed-specific ban in 1980, and more towns and cities followed through the '80s and '90s.

What changed was who was breeding and using these dogs, and how the press covered it, rarely distinguishing a responsibly raised family dog from one bred for fighting or raised by an irresponsible or abusive owner.

The physical traits are real and worth being honest about: these are strong, high-energy, tenacious dogs, and that means a poorly socialized or mismanaged one can do more damage than a smaller breed would. That's a legitimate reason a pit bull isn't the right fit for every home or every owner.

What the data doesn't support is the idea that the breed is inherently dangerous. Pit bull-type dogs consistently pass standardized temperament testing at rates comparable to or above most other breeds, according to the American Temperament Test Society. The CDC itself stopped tracking dog bites by breed in 1998, concluding that breed identification in bite reports was too unreliable to be meaningful. Temperament comes down to the individual dog, its upbringing, and its owner, not its breed.