Is There An Irish Stafford Breed?

There's alot of confusion, what is an Irish Stafford and does such a dog exist

To clear up statements as to believers and the non believers of Irish staffords, it's really plain and very simple, if your born in the UK, your from the united kingdom and if your born in Ireland, your simply Irish and that goes very much in to the many debates on the internet as to whether there is an Irish stafford.... and the answer would be absolutley yes, but in saying that, if the question asked was, is the stafford breed itself from Ireland and the answer would be no, ALL the staffordshire bull terriers, in show, hunt and field, including the gamebred lines all of them either came down from staffords brought into Ireland from the UK or dogs bred down from the imports.. but there is no mistaken that the breed is 100% UK, I just feel that the Irish lads used them a little bit more to proove to themselves that what they were feeding and had on the other end of the lead was the real macoy, they could do what they were bred for and at the time the badger was the test.

There are so many different stories out there over the internet on the Irish dogs but only the folk that were there when all of this took place can verify what I am saying is the truth, I've been around and seen some of the best show, field and game Stafford's in the world, as a young boy I would be sitting in the back of my uncles car, which was an Austin A30, he also had a Mini Estate and I would be in the back seat of the car holding onto many of the great Stafford's of that time while we were taking them out to exercise, I would be in the middle of them all being bumped around.

Many great Stafford's were bred in Ireland and many great terrier men tested them on the badger....there were a very few that dabbled in the fighting end of things but a majority of the terrier men ran the dogs on the badger, well in those days, and at that point in time Ireland was plagued with the Badger and was in the Irish eyes a major concern for the disease TB... so the IKC (Irish Kennel Club) came up with the game cert, for terriers that could pull of hold a badger and was rewarded points on how good they did.... many of the terriermen saw this a great opportunity to make their dogs up, (Title Champion) so they traveled the length of the country for badger digs which were sponsored by the IKC, appointed noted IKC terrier men to judge the events, so came terriermen from all over Ireland to test their dogs, one of those men was my uncle William Delaney who produced so many great dogs, these same dogs were out badgering bright and early on the Saturday morning and trying to make it to the dog shows by the afternoon or they would look for shows held on the Sunday giving them enough time on the Saturday to go badgering, one has to remember that the badgers were many at this point in time and gave life to a network of terriermen all over Ireland looked forward in palying the game on the weekends... that was it... great dogs and great terriermen.

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Article by
Ray Delaney

Terrier Network
www.terriernetwork.com