The Olde English Bulldogge is a re-creation, not a survival. The original English Bulldog of the 1700s - the working dog that fought bulls, bears, and badgers in pits across England - went extinct as a working type within decades of bull-baiting being banned in 1835. What replaced it was the show-bred English Bulldog the world knows now: shorter, wider, structurally compromised, often unable to breathe, breed, or give birth without surgical help.
David Leavitt of Pennsylvania began the project of bringing the old type back in 1971. The dog you know today as an OEB is the result.
Honest note. The history of any breed has politics. The Olde English Bulldogge has more politics than most because there are multiple registries, multiple breed names, and multiple opinions about what a "real" OEB is. We've tried to write this fairly. We register all OEB pedigrees we can verify.
The original English Bulldog (1500s-1830s)
The bulldog of the 16th through early 19th centuries was not the dog of the modern show ring. It was a working catch dog, used in bull-baiting and bear-baiting - a legal sport in England for centuries. The dog needed to be heavy enough to grip and hold a much larger animal, athletic enough to dodge horns and hooves, and stubborn enough to keep working through pain.
This bulldog stood 16-20 inches at the withers, weighed 50-90 pounds, had a longer muzzle than today's English Bulldog, longer legs, a deeper chest, and a more functional temperament. It wasn't a pet. It was a piece of working equipment.
The 1835 ban and the show-ring transformation
The Cruelty to Animals Act of 1835 made bull-baiting illegal in England. Within a generation, the working bulldog was unemployed. The breed survived only because fanciers kept it alive in the conformation ring.
Show breeding selected for shorter muzzles, wider chests, more pronounced underbites, and ever-more-exaggerated head shapes. Breeders working between roughly 1860 and 1990 transformed the bulldog into the dog you see in calendars today. By the late 20th century the breed could no longer free-whelp, struggled to breathe, and regularly died young from heat or cardiac issues.
The original working bulldog wasn't a separate breed that survived alongside the show bulldog. It just stopped existing.
Leavitt's project (1971)
David Leavitt was a longtime bulldog enthusiast who decided in 1971 to recreate the working bulldog of the 1700s. He used a careful breeding program based on population genetics work by Wright and Lush, mixing:
- English Bulldog (12.5%) - for type and head
- American Bulldog (37.5%) - for athleticism and structure
- Bullmastiff (25%) - for size and temperament
- American Pit Bull Terrier (25%) - for nerve and working drive
By the late 1970s the program had produced consistent first-generation Olde English Bulldogges. Through the 1980s and 1990s, Leavitt and other breeders refined the type across many crosses. By 2000 the OEB was an established breed reproducing true to type.
The registry split (early 2000s)
As the breed grew, breeders disagreed on direction. Some wanted strict adherence to Leavitt's foundation lines. Others wanted to register dogs from outside that foundation, including English-bulldog-heavy lines and dogs descended from other working bulldog projects of the same era.
The result was a series of registries with overlapping but not identical populations:
- OEBKC (2001) - Leavitt-foundation only.
- IOEBA (1995, expanded scope in 2000s) - open to a broader population.
- OBBA (2008) - open to all verifiable OEB pedigrees, the registry behind this site.
- Leavitt Bulldog Association (2005) - David Leavitt's response to broadening; renamed his line "Leavitt Bulldog" rather than "OEB."
UKC recognized the OEB in 2014, accepting dogs from OEBKC, the Olde Bulldogge Club Europe, and the LBA. Most modern OBBA-registered OEBs can dual-register with at least one of those.Full registry comparison.
The modern era (2010-present)
The Olde English Bulldogge is now an established breed reproducing true to type across thousands of dogs. Modern OEBs:
- Free-whelp the great majority of litters
- Breathe normally at rest and during exercise
- Tolerate moderate heat
- Live 11-14 years on average
- Have a defined breed standard accepted across multiple registries
- Are recognized by the UKC and several smaller registries
The breed isn't perfect. Hip dysplasia, allergies, and cherry eye still appear at rates that would qualify as "common" in any breed. But compared to the modern English Bulldog, the OEB project worked.