In the 2001 film Kevin of the North, one of Kevin Manley’s sled dogs is an American Bulldog named Snowflake. In Return to Me , David Duchovny’s character’s dog, Mel, is played by an American Bulldog named Peetey.
By World War II, the breed was near extinction until John D. Johnson scoured the back roads of the South looking for the best specimens to revive the breed. During this time, a young Alan Scott grew an interest in Johnson’s dogs and began to work with him on the revitalization process. At some point, Scott began infusing non-Johnson catch bulldogs from working Southern farms with Johnson’s lines, creating what is now known as the Standard type American Bulldog, also called the Scott type. At another point, Johnson began crossing his original lines with an atavistic English bulldog from the North that had maintained its genetic athletic vigor, creating the Bully type American Bulldog, also known as the Johnson type or the Classic type. In America, there are no records but rather acknowledged landrace strains that initially depended on where a dog’s master originated in England, the majority of which were bred to work as evidenced by accounts of the age in local newspapers and written inventories upon death.
An American Bulldog does not trust anyone at first sight and must learn from its master what is a threat and what is not, and a dog of this breed must learn when to be territorial and when everything is okay. In this facet its temperament is similar to other longer established and better-known utility breeds used for livestock guarding, like the Rottweiler, itself a German type of “bulldog”; another name for the breed being “Rottweiler Metzgerhund,” or “butcher’s dog from Rottweil”. They are descended from the Old English Bulldog, which is thought to have arrived in America as early as the 17th century, brought over by working-class immigrants from England. During WWI and WWII, the breed was on the verge of extinction, with the only surviving dogs being kept primarily on farms in the southeast. John D. Johnson and Alan Scott are widely regarded as the forefathers of rescuing the breed from extinction.
American Bulldogs are now safe from extinction and their popularity has increased in their homeland, either as a working/protector dog, as a family pet, or both. All over the world, they are used variously as “hog dogs” , as cattle drovers, and as working or sport K-9s. American Bulldogs also successfully compete in several dog sports such as dog obedience, Schutzhund, French Ring, Mondioring, Iron Dog competition and weight pulling. They are also exhibited in conformation shows in the UKC, ABA, ABRA, ORKC, EKC. The AKC added the American Bulldog to the FSS on November 11, 2019. Perhaps the most important role of the American Bulldog and the reason for its survival, and in fact why it thrived throughout the South, was because of the presence of feral pigs, introduced to the New World and without predators. The bulldogs were the settlers’ only means of sufficiently dealing with the vermin.