Football fans: ever noticed a dog that looks just like me on the sidelines of Cleveland Browns games? That’s my friend Swagger Junior, (or SJ for short)! SJ is the Ohio team’s live mascot – and he just happens to be a Bullmastiff. He gets the crowd pumped up and keeps players in a good mood, even when the scoreboard is looking a little ruff. Sometimes you can even catch SJ giving an interview after the game!

In late 19th-century England, aristocrats loved to hunt. Many English elites owned big plots of land with game preserves, places full of wild animals they could hunt for sport. But things took a turn for the worse when poachers started trespassing on these preserves. If caught, these poachers faced horrible punishment, so they went to great lengths not to get caught – even going so far as to murder the gamekeepers in charge of protecting the animals. But then we Bullmastiffs came along and put a stop to it!! Faced with new threats from poachers, gamekeepers across the country started breeding larger, more powerful, dogs. They created us by combining Bulldogs and Mastiffs! We were smart enough to follow commands, but not so bloodthirsty that we would kill the poachers instead of just stopping them. The gamekeepers were so proud of us that friendly competitions arose to see who had the most pawesome dog. These competitions grew popular, and eventually we entered the English show dog circ