Tom Wood
The man who claims to have invented the XL Bully says that his creation is misunderstood, and that the dogs were originally bred to be docile creatures.
The American XL Bully is set to be banned by the government after a spate of attacks, including a recent incident in Houghton-le-Spring for which a man has been arrested for murder.
Protestors who want to stop the dog being added to the banned list were recently seen outside the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester, bearing placards asking for the government to reconsider.
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Sunak has decided to add the XL Bully to the list on the Dangerous Dogs Act, which already has four breeds on it.
The breed is a relatively new one, created during the 1990s by a man called Dave Wilson from Virginia in the United States.
He crossed an American Staffordshire terrier with an American bulldog and other breeds to create the XL Bully, and the breed can be bred in sizes from XXL to a miniature, which is similar in size to a French bulldog.
Wilson originally bred pitbulls, but said that the United Kennel Club (UKC) changed the standards at one point in the 1990s, so he decided – along with others – to create something different.
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He told The Telegraph: “They didn’t fit what I had any more.
“We decided that it’s time to create something new with a different name, purpose and identity,
“We wanted a dog that was like a bodybuilder . . . a heavy-muscled, shorter dog.
“We also wanted to make sure that demeanour didn’t represent what the stereotype would be. So we started to create a dog with a very docile temperament.
“The ultimate companion breed.”
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In 2004, the American bully was created, and Wilson started the American Bully Kennel Club, which showed dogs of the breed.
Any aggressive ones were disqualified.
In about 2014, the dogs started appearing in the UK, with many people then buying the breed during the pandemic, which saw a huge increase in dog ownership.
According to a campaign group called Bully Watch UK, XL Bullys are responsible for the most dog attacks in the UK – 43 percent.
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However, those statistics use data that isn’t necessarily correct and requires much more verification.
However, Wilson believes that the proposed ban isn’t right, and is campaigning against it, despite living in the United States.
He says: “The true nature of the breed really isn’t what is being portrayed.”
Wilson says that there are no safety concerns around the breed in the USA, and argues that the UK ‘needs to stop pointing the fingers at dogs and start putting the fingers at the people that are actually doing wrong’.