Australian Bulldog Information & Dog Breed Facts

The Australian Bulldog is a newly developed breed coming from Australia. Although the modern Australian Bulldog was only developed in the early 1990s, the breed can trace its history back to the Bulldog">Old English Bulldog, a breed with a very long history in England.

When Australia was first settled by Europeans, they brought their domestic pigs with them. Many of these pigs escaped and went feral. Pigs have become a major pest in Australia, causing severe injuries and massive property damage. Feral pigs, unlike their domestic counterparts, are fast, highly intelligent, and extraordinarily fierce. One of the only ways to hunt pigs, often called razorbacks, is with the use of specially bred dogs. In order to hunt pigs, a dog must be very determined and tough enough to withstand several injuries. Australians preferred to use mixed-breed dogs for the job, most of them are the descendants of the Bulldog">Old English Bulldog, including the Boxer, Bull Terrier, and the Staffordshire Terrier. In the early 1990s, Queensland resident Pip Nobes owned a male English Bulldog. As an experiment, she crossed it with her husband’s dog, a female mixed-breed dog who was used for pig-hunting. The initial crossing was made out of curiosity. Nobes was an English Bulldog lover who had already owned two of these dogs. However, both were in extremely poor health, as was common in the breed at that time. As pig-hunting dogs are usually in extremely good health, she realized that the resulting offspring of such animals and English Bulldogs would likely be in considerably better health than other English Bulldogs. After reading about how the American Dave Leavitt had developed the Olde English Bulldogge, a recreation of the Bulldog">Old English Bulldog, she became determined to developed a new breed of Bulldog.

Moreover, about the same time, Pip Nobes was beginning to develop her Bulldog line, another Queensland couple embarked on the same process. In 1988, Noel and Tina Green acquired a male Boxer/Staffordshire Terrier Mix named Banjo and a female Boxer/Bullmastiff/Staffordshire Terrier Mix named Brindle. Both Banjo and Brindle were working pig catching dogs. However, in 1993, Nobes decided to begin breeding their pig-catching dogs for conformation and use them as companion animals rather than working dogs. In order to do so, Sally, one of Banjo and Brindle’s offspring, was crossed with a male English Bulldog/Boxer mix named Agro. These puppies did prove to be extremely suited for life as companion dogs, and from that generation on they were exclusively bred as companion animals.

Furthermore, Nobes and the Greens worked together and occasionally crossed their dogs. They shared the same goal as they both wanted to develop a unique breed of Australian Bulldog which exhibited the same excellent temperament, and conformation as the English Bulldog, but with considerably better health and greater physical and athletic abilities. They also wanted to create a Bulldog that better suited to the Australian climate. To deal with potentially extreme temperatures and diverse geographical landscapes, the perfect Aussie dog needed a few special characteristics for example; a large head, but not exaggeratedly so, a short snout, but not so short so that the breed suffers from brachycephalic airway syndrome, and taller, more even legs give this dog more agility and range. Basically, they created a dog that is the spitting image of the British Bulldog, if that Bulldog’s features were in proportion to the rest of their body. They achieved this with some help from larger Bulldog types, such as Mastiffs, Boxers, and English Staffordshire Bull Terriers. At the start, the Greens or Nobes weren’t seeking a path for fame or breed standardization, but others also became interested in the breed and some began trying to imitate the look. The Aussie has become quite a popular breed since its inception in 1997 and there are now a number of clubs where breeders are dedicated to continually work to improved and develop the breed, in hope that one day the breed would become recognized. The Aussie Bulldog Club of Australia (ABCA) was started in 2007, which runs a registration database to keep all records of breeding and membership in one place, to help promote the breed.