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Quick working a good Boar
Antebellum Bulldogs or The Altamaha Plantation Dog
My humble attempt to introduce the most honorable dog I have ever known is like describing devotion without question or blind devotion. They are companions willing to give up their lives at an instant, with out hesitation, for your protection or simply upon your asking.
During the peak of the rice industry in 1850’s local plantations along the Altamaha River valley branches and Cathead Creek west of Darien accounted for the bulk of the rice being exported from Georgia during the antebellum period.
The rice fields on these plantations averaged in size from 300-600 acres; in the peak decade of the 1850s Pierce Butler and P.M. Nightingale, the two biggest planters in terms of volume, sometimes had yields of more than one million pounds of rice per year. Butler, controlled the properties I now live on, which has been in my family since the early 1900’s. Feral hogs and wild cattle could devastate young rice crops overnight. To work the feral hogs and wild cattle Planters introduced dogs, bred with a strong catch drive and large feet for a sure sense of balance in the lowland marshes. Described as devotional and large headed, the dogs all but disappeared. Word is they were predominantly white in color.
Darien was devastated during the Civil War. Immediately after the war, the first thing revived in the town was the timber business. Sawmills were restored at Lower Bluff and at Cathead Creek. Timber began to be rafted down the Altamaha River from the upcountry as early as 1866, and ships began calling at Darien to load timber and sawn lumber. By 1868, the local timber brokers were reporting the shipment of 20 million board feet of pine timber and lumber a year from Darien bound for U.S. and overseas ports.
During the timber era, which lasted to about 1914, the sawmills at Darien, Doboy and Union Island, turned out huge volumes of sawn lumber from the timber rafts that poured down the Altamaha river from the interior State of Georgia. My Great Grandfather rafted Timber on the Altamaha and worked for the Saw Mills. He traveled with a large white bulldog. My Grandmother described the dog in many of the stories of her childhood. During the last quarter of the nine-tenth century timber drifting on the Altamaha was at its peak, thousands of rafts, each covering up to a quarter acre of river surface' were moored at the booms in Darien each year. The booms extended for miles along the Darien waterfront. So jammed at times were they that it was possible to walk from raft to raft for a mile or more. Bulldogs were often seen with rafters, white coats could easily be seen at night running along the banks and the dogs provided protection to the rafters in every capacity.
My sons and I have tried to capture the Memory of the Altamaha Plantation Dogs in our breeding efforts, a process described as “Clockwise Breeding”. The Kennel name is Altamaha Plantation Kennels, the dog breed is Altamaha Plantation Dog or Antebellum Bulldogs.
 Dogo Defending Chicken Coop
History
The history of Mastiff-type dogs in the British Isles dates back beyond the arrival of Ceasare, who reported of the ferocious dogs. With the arrival of the Normans in 1066 came Alaunts from the continent. The breeding of the indigenous mastiffs to the newly arrived ones produced the Mastiff and Bulldog of England. An interesting aside, is that all descriptions of the Alaunts (there were three types) mention an all white, or almost entirely white coat - something only the Antebellum Bulldog/Altamaha Plantation Dog, Dogo Argentino, and American Bulldog still have. The Antebellum Bulldog is a direct result of finding one “great” foundation hub sire and eight unrelated “great” foundation dames. The Process is never ending and takes constant care to prevent breed corruption. I am sure that the end results will impress all that experience this wonderful breed.
Maxwell's Odin Odious Day's Blue Fenris
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