Another guess the breeds game..

This is my old dog Gus, who died of 14+ of prostate cancer. We never knew what he was exactly, except mom appeared to be a nice looking APBT, so this is just for grins. Under that Golden Retrieverish coat was a darker brindle undercoat. The color of the coat you see was actually almost the same color was the Lab's was, a pale wheat color, and was amazingly soft.








You can't really see how large the mouth and head was in these pics. He appeared to be about a 50-55 pound dog, but was actually 75 amazingly dense pounds instead. The cat in the last pics is around 20 pounds and is much larger than a normal cat. The loose skin Gus had was an oddity too. He was amazingly strong, and had the Pit high pain tolerance of a Pit. The jaw power was impressive, even to people who were pit owners.

How did you go about measuring his pain tolerance and jaw strength? Lol.

Believe it or not, I see Lab and Bloodhound.

Well, if you knew mom was a Pit Bull...I'd have to say Pittie/Bloodhound mix (or Basset, if he was a short dog - can't really tell from the pictures). I'd also throw some Lab in there for good measure, due to his coloring/coat.

Well, the vet said he had very high pain tolerance, and he had several minor surgeries and a couple of dozen stitches without any anesthetic. The first time, the vet was kind of curious and he took a scalpel and made a small cut where he would be removing the ingrown hairs or whatever it was that he had to have removed every 18 months or so. He barely blinked, and the vet kept going. He just laid on the table, looking over his shoulder once in a while. All I did was distract him and he was fine. He also would do things to himself that any of my other dogs would have been screaming about, and he would grunt at worst. I don't know how many times he ripped off dewclaws, fell down the stairs, smashed his eyes into furniture, my thumbs, etc. He barely reacted at all. Some of these times, I was the one he crashed into, and I know I was hurting. Sometimes, I would yell because his eye crashing into my thumb would leave me rolling around on the floor in pain, while he would just blink and move onto the next hunk of rawhide, or find someone else to play tug with. He was a real handful in a tug. Scary strong.

His jaw power was proven by the Kongs he destroyed, and he didn't really like Kongs all that much. The tied rawhide stuff that would last 5 minutes and he would literally crush with his molars into pieces making some very odd noises, partly from the rawhide crushing and partly from his jaw muscles which made an odd humming noise when he was really working on something. It felt like a cellphone vibrating when you touched the top of his head. Some people would feel his head and pull their hand away and say, "Wow, that's spooky!" King and Molly still have the last Kong he had 13+ years after he had half torn it up. He liked the flat pieces of rawhide that he could saw off hunks and swallow. More than one vet said, "My god, look at that head!", and more than one said something after seeing him eat a 3/8" thick slab of rawhide (kept him occupied as he wasn't crazy about going to the vet), like, "You know, there are some dogs that you really have to respect, the ones that can amputate fingers, like Gus!" When he got attacked a couple of times and finally got angry enough to retaliate (He was very slow to get angry), most of the time, one bite was enough to convince the attacker that he had screwed up, and maybe he should just leave.

He was one of 4 pups who, along with their mom, who was abandoned at the vet's while being treated for a skin infection. She had been adopted by the time I saw Gus and his sister the first time, but the vet, his son, and the assistant all said she appeared to be a Pit, and a really nice looking one.

He was about 2" shorter than the lab was, who wasn't really all that tall. He grew one direction at a time. When we got him when he was 3 months old, he was really short, and long, and very skinny, except for a barrel chest. He pretty quickly grew to be almost as long as the lab, with a lot bigger head and heavier boned and muscled legs. Then he suddenly got a lot taller, weighing about 40 pounds at 8 months or so, and then muscling up to 75 pounds like he was on 'roids.

This is all for grins anyway, but thanks for guessing. I will put his "baby pic" up tomorrow, it's interesting mostly because he looked so different than he did later on. The one vet's son didn't see him for over a year, and when he saw him, he said, "Is that the pup you got next door (dad's pet supply and mostly bird store)?". He shook his head and said, "Where did he get those muscles?".

This was my first reaction as well!

I couldn't get his baby pic, taken the day after we got him to upload for some reason. All of a sudden it worked tonight. He sure was strangely built when he was little. He was about 20 pounds at 4 months. The thick legs were there, but a lot shorter, and the head hadn't taken off yet, it was still bigger than it looks in the pics, but wasn't the "Magnificent head"(Our vet's words) it would become.