Boston Terrier

Boston Terrier

Boston Terrier with brindle coat
Other names	Boston Bull Boston Bull Terrier Boxwood, American Gentlemen
Country of origin	United States
Traits
Classification and standards FCI Group 9 Section 11 #140 standard AKC Non-sporting standard ANKC Group 7 (Non-Sporting) standard CKC Group 6 - Non-Sporting standard KC (UK) Utility standard NZKC Non-sporting standard UKC Companion Breeds standard
Dog (Canis lupus familiaris)

The Boston Terrier is a breed of dog originating in the United States of America. This "American Gentleman" was accepted in 1893 by the American Kennel Club as a non-sporting breed. Color and markings are important when distinguishing this breed to the AKC standard. They should be either black, brindle or seal with white markings. Bostons are small and compact with a short tail and erect ears. The AKC says they are highly intelligent and very easily trained, they are friendly and can be stubborn at times. The average life span of a Boston is around 11 to 13 years, though some can live well into their teens.

History

A drawing of a Boston Terrier from 1915.

The Boston Terrier breed originated around 1870, when Robert C. Hooper of Boston purchased a dog known as Hooper's Judge, who was of a Bull and Terrier type lineage. Judge's specific lineage is unknown; however, Hooper's Judge is either directly related to the original Bull and Terrier breeds of the 18th and early 19th centuries, or Judge is the result of modern English Bulldogs being crossed into terriers created in the 1860s for show purposes, like the White English Terrier.

Judge weighed over 29.7 pounds (13.5 kilos). Their offspring interbred with one or more French Bulldogs, providing the foundation for the Boston Terrier. Bred down in size from pit-fighting dogs of the Bull and Terrier types, the Boston Terrier originally weighed up to 44 pounds (20 kg.) (Olde Boston Bulldogge). The breed was first shown in Boston in 1870. By 1889 the breed had become sufficiently popular in Boston that fanciers formed the American Bull Terrier Club, but this proposed name for the breed was not well received by the Bull Terrier Fanciers; the breed's nickname, "roundheads", was similarly inappropriate. Shortly after, at the suggestion of James Watson (a noted writer and authority), the club changed its name to the Boston Terrier Club and in 1893 it was admitted to membership in the American Kennel Club, thus making it the first US breed to be recognized. It is one of a small number of breeds to have originated in the United States. The Boston Terrier was the first non-sporting dog bred in the US.

In the early years, the color and markings were not very important, but by the 20th century the breed's distinctive markings and color were written into the standard, becoming an essential feature. Terrier only in name, the Boston Terrier has lost most of its ruthless desire for mayhem, preferring the company of humans, although some males will still challenge other dogs if they feel their territory is being invaded.

Boston Terriers were particularly popular during the 1920s in the US.

Boston University's mascot is Rhett the Boston Terrier. The Boston Terrier is also the mascot of Wofford College in Spartanburg, S.C.

Description

Investigation of potential copyright issue Do not restore or edit the blanked content on this page until the issue is resolved by an administrator, copyright clerk or OTRS agent.
If you have just labeled this page as a potential copyright issue, please follow the instructions for filing at the bottom of the box.
The previous content of this page has been identified as posing a potential copyright issue, as a copy or modification of the text from the source(s) below, and is now listed on Wikipedia:Copyright problems (listing): http://www.akc.org/breeds/boston_terrier/index.cfm (Duplication Detector report)   Unless the copyright status of the text on this page is clarified, it may be deleted one week after the time of its listing. Temporarily, the original posting is still accessible for viewing in the page history.
Can you help resolve this issue? For more details on this topic, see Wikipedia:CP#Responding to articles listed for copyright investigation.  If you hold the copyright to this text, you can license it in a manner that allows its use on Wikipedia. Click "Show" to see how. You must permit the use of your material under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA) and the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts). Explain your intent to license the content on this article's discussion page To confirm your permission, you can either display a notice to this effect at the site of original publication or send an e-mail from an address associated with the original publication to permissions-en at wikimedia dot org or a postal letter to the Wikimedia Foundation. These messages must explicitly permit use under CC-BY-SA and the GFDL. See Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials. Note that articles on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view and must be verifiable in published third-party sources; consider whether, copyright issues aside, your text is appropriate for inclusion in Wikipedia.  To demonstrate that this text is in the public domain, or is already under a license suitable for Wikipedia, click "Show". Explain this on this article's discussion page, with reference to evidence. Wikipedia:Public domain and Wikipedia:Compatibly licensed may assist in determining the status.  Otherwise, you may write a new article without copyright-infringing material. Click "Show" to read where and how. Your rewrite should be placed on this page, where it will be available for an administrator or clerk to review it at the end of the listing period. Follow this link to create the temporary subpage. Simply modifying copyrighted text is not sufficient to avoid copyright infringement—if the original copyright violation cannot be cleanly removed or the article reverted to a prior version, it is best to write the article from scratch. (See Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing.) For license compliance, any content used from the original article must be properly attributed; if you use content from the original, please leave a note at the top of your rewrite saying as much. You may duplicate non-infringing text that you had contributed yourself. It is always a good idea, if rewriting, to identify the point where the copyrighted content was imported to Wikipedia and to check to make sure that the contributor did not add content imported from other sources. When closing investigations, clerks and administrators may find other copyright problems than the one identified. If this material is in the proposed rewrite and cannot be easily removed, the rewrite may not be usable. State that you have created a rewrite on this article's discussion page.
About importing text to Wikipedia For more details on this topic, see Wikipedia:Copy-paste. Posting copyrighted material without the express permission of the copyright holder is unlawful and against Wikipedia policy. If you have express permission, this must be verified either by explicit release at the source or by e-mail or letter to the Wikimedia Foundation. See Wikipedia:Declaration of consent for all enquiries. Policy requires that we block those who repeatedly post copyrighted material without express permission.	Instructions for filing If you have tagged the article for investigation, please complete the following steps: Add the following to the bottom of Wikipedia:Copyright_problems/2012 March 2 * {{subst:article-cv|:Boston Terrier}} from http://www.akc.org/breeds/boston_terrier/index.cfm. ~~~~ Place this notice on the talk page of the contributor of the copyrighted material: {{subst:Nothanks-web|pg=Boston Terrier|url=http://www.akc.org/breeds/boston_terrier/index.cfm}} ~~~~ To blank a section instead of an entire article, add the template to the beginning of the section and </div> at the end of the portion you intend to blank.

References

Further reading

• Bulanda, Susan (1994). Boston Terriers. Barron's Educational Series, Inc. ISBN 0-8120-1696-3.

External links

• Boston Terrier Club of America, Inc.
• Boston Terrier Club of Canada
• The Boston Terrier and All About It at Project Gutenberg (First published 1910)