Hello CBT, there has been a lot of history regarding these dogs lost in the mist of time..(sadly) ..but against general consensance ..there are some who can trace their dogs back to willie delaney...and back even further to bobby watts...and there aint no english bull or pit in my dogs m8....but i understand the main point of ur post .

Tusker you are exactly right in what you have posted about the lines of dogs and the IKC in this case means Irish Kennel Club unlike the storm and psycho lines where IKC means Intercontinental Kennel Club run by ed reid . A lot of these dogs i have seen and know as i have been involved with staffords all my life through my father who had them most of his life.
But it is the latter lines that most people associate with Irish staffs because they have been overhyped and overbred and the dogs names used to sell a lot of utter trash and badly bred dogs as irish staffs

So where do we differ...? The term Irish Pit Bull Terrier used for a LOT of Iffy dogs and Iffy breeders... Think its a fair starting point for a name?

No axe to grind, from a personal point of view, I much prefer the DRS type, and am chuffed it is still about but I would argue the DRS x Flynn in colouring and headshape looks more like a APBT than Stafford.

thanks tusker for an honest answer , and i hope it dosent come across that i dont like the dogs cause i do really like em ,i suppose im just tyrin to understand there origins and how they came about, like you say with only word of mouth and no real hard evidence its proving to be hard to get to that truth.

the pied dog at the top of this page is very bulldoggy and APBT looking to me too runstock, I like the head on it, personally I prefer the APBT shape of head to the stafford so I like the look of it, however, im not keen on the bulldoggy coach back and the elbows which turn out.

The blue pied bitch has a very similar look, with her back end looking higher than her front (very bulldoggy) and the elbows turning out considerably, are the two pied dogs related?

The DRS red pictured most definately looks stafford to me. It has a typical stafford head and ear carriage, compared to the ear carriage of the two pied dogs there is a significant difference. Im not saying they have APBT blood, I dont know their breeding, but APBT bred dogs often tend to have heavier drop ears compared to staffords.

Guys i bred this dog, i own the mother and a very good friend owns the father ....who is also the father to the dublin red dog shown..i know the dogs on all sides of the father's ped and the mother's and there are no pits in them..this is the type of dog u get when u breed for health and soundness over looks...u dont get any of the exagerated features normally associated with dogs bred to a specific standard ... TUSKER

I hear what your saying tusker, I didnt mean that there was any pit in them, but what I was trying to say is that they look a lot more like pits than your average stafford thats all
to me that isnt a bad thing at all as the APBT is my favorite breed of dog, I dont think theres a better dog out there in the whole world, so my comments werent meant as a critisism Im not keen on the elbows, but I do like the heads on those dogs, very powerful looking

Tusker really like that red dog reminds me of the reds i grew up with have brindles now ,that dog looks like what it is proper bred woking style stafford especially round the head nice tight clean lips good strong underjaw he would be able to grip and worry with no probs if he had to ...not like the majority that are so lippy they will fang their lips on their cutters
great dog

Do you still get alot of KC breeders breeding more towards the old working standards? I much prefer the look of the genuine irish lines like the DRS and Flynn, and am slightly worried about the stories of some staffies being bred to such an extreme that they have breathing troubles.

yes tom there is a lot of breeders keep to the older dogs just remember only about 20% of kc staffords are actually shown ...also as to breathing difficultys it is overexaggerated if any dog is unfit it will have a hard time breathing just like people if you are not a fitness person try running a mile to see how out of breath you get