So I bought this mystery antique dog skull a while back and as I’ve been studying it I was trying to figure out what breed it could be. I figured it’d be some common breed/mixed breed since most mystery dogs are, but the more I looked at the shape of the cranium the more I saw that it couldn’t be something like a lab or shepherd. It didn’t have the right kind of shape of any common breed. That’s when I noticed the skull had a downward slope to it, and then it hit me.
The skull is around 100 years old, so the breed prolly looked different then it does now.
The skull has the look and feel of a thicker, sturdy dog.
The muzzle structure is facing downward.
It’s an antique bull terrier! The structure is nearly identical to the 1931 example.
I’ve wanted to get a bull terrier for a while now and it turned out I already had one lol.
Late night pic but here’s the profile. This is being held level to how the skull would sit in a normal position. The muzzle is angled downwards, though not as extreme as the current look of the breed. It’s the right size, density, and the size of the teeth also match what I’ve seen with bull terriers today, and I can’t really think of another breed with these same features. Doesn’t mean the animal was purebred, but still, it matches the 1915-1930s examples, which would also be around the time the skull was cleaned. It would also make sense for a breed like this to be cleaned as a study skull? This looks to be professionally cleaned, which wouldn’t be as common practice 100 years ago and would prolly be reserved for more interesting breeds at the time (speculation, but I’m just trying to reason things out).
Either way it’s really fun to guess and figure stuff like this out. It’s one of the many reasons I love collecting because you NEVER know what you may come accross, and that’s really exciting.