On this page you will see a video from TikTok in which Dave Wilson, a co-founder of the American XL bully breed, makes it clear that he intended this breed to be docile. He selectively bred with other breeders a variety of dog breeds to create the American XL bully with a docile temperament. He says that this is the essence of the breed.
Clearly, across the pond, in the UK, breeders have gone against that objective as I’ve read that they give them steroids and have trained them to become aggressive.
The second point that Wilson makes is that there are 100,000 registered American XL bully dogs in the UK. And he says that bites from these dogs can be counted in the teens. And even then, witnesses were not sure whether they were true XL bully dogs which did the biting.
There have been many crossbreeds created and it is very difficult to genuinely identify an American XL bully. Some of these reports of this breed attacking people might not be true American XL bully dogs. That’s what Wilson is arguing.
Wilson is pretty much saying that it’s unscrupulous breeders in the UK causing this problem. And he makes it clear that the problem is about people meaning dog owners and dog breeders in the UK. It is not about the breed per se. This is why a ban on the breed is incorrect.
Wilson is very clear on this: he says that no ban on a dog breed has worked. Interestingly, Nathan Winograd, a high-profile animal advocate in America would agree with him. Nathan Winograd is an ex-lawyer so he comes from a different background to Wilson but they have the same thoughts on banning dog breeds. It doesn’t work.
The Sunday Times has a big article on the XL bully and how it was created to be a docile ‘bodybuilder dog’ and the ultimate dog companion for families. In the UK it’s gone terribly wrong.
During the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, there have been protests in the street outside the conference hall by supporters of the XL bully who want the decision to ban the breed overturned.
That said, a journalist writing about the XL bully says that “People hate these dogs”.
The argument there would be, yes, they do but do they hate XL bullies or do they hate a breed created by unscrupulous breeders that are not true XL bullies?
Wilson created the XL bully in the US in the 1990s. It was created through selective breeding in crossing American Staffordshire Terriers, American pit bull terriers and other bulldog breeds. They can be bred to be very large or very small. At the small-end of the spectrum they are no bigger than the French Bulldog.
Dave Wilson created with other breeders the Bully Kennel Club, their own dog association to govern the breed standard for the XL bully. It was a breakaway from the United Kennel Club in America.
And on the website of this club the breed standard states that “aggressive behaviour towards humans is uncharacteristic and highly undesirable”. The breed standard states that the dog should be docile.
It took about 10 years to selectively breed this dog. And if XL bullies are being shown at a Bully Kennel Club dog show and they show aggression they will be disqualified.
In the US they have a devoted following and there are no issues of aggression against people or no more than any other dog breed.
In the UK, these dogs started to appear in about 2014. Their popularity boomed during the Covid pandemic. In the UK there is no accurate register of numbers of these dogs but as mentioned above Wilson believes that there are a hundred thousand animals.
In the UK there is a campaign group called Bully Watch UK. It monitors illegal breeders with criminal ties. They are anonymous because the debate about the XL bully is so heated. They claim that this breed is responsible for the most dog attacks in the country at 43%. I believe that the UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has used their information and this figure as part of his campaign to ban the breed.
Although there are concerns about the accuracy of the statistics. Apparently, the information to build the statistics come from social media sites such as Facebook and the app Nextdoor.
On these sites people post their experiences of being attacked but are they identifying the breed accurately? That’s the big issue with identifying a breed by their appearance. You can’t really do it. The same applies to cat breeds. It is not a good idea to identify a cat breed or dog breed by their appearance alone. They need to be registered and there needs to be a pedigree lodged with the dog or cat Association.
And in the UK, as bullies have become more popular, they’ve been crossbred with a wide pool of breeds including Rottweilers and the banned American pit bull terriers. This obviously creates more complications in identifying the breed.
This by the way will make it is impossible for the police to enforce the amended Dangerous Dogs Act which is going to extend the number of ban breed to include the XL bully. I am sure that the police will be reluctant to enforce this law which by the way includes putting down seized dogs.
There is a lot of money in breeding XL bully dogs which accounts for unscrupulous people operating in the dog breeding business.
There is a class war aspect to this issue. Breeders tend to be working class and owners also tend to be working class people. Breeders sometimes sell to friends and neighbourhood families. You can get half a street owning XL bully dogs.
Once again, the critics argue that a ban on the breed is not going to work for the reasons stated above and also because once the breed is banned the breeders will create something slightly different which will then circumvent the law. Many people believe that the Dangerous Dogs Act is a poor piece of legislation which hasn’t worked in any case.
Dave Wilson in Virginia, USA is campaigning, as you can see in the video, to overturn the ban. He concludes by saying that “The true nature of the breed really isn’t what is being portrayed. [The UK] needs to stop pointing the finger at dogs and start pointing fingers at the people that are actually doing wrong.”
