Mastiff Everyday Anti Barking Soft Muzzle decorated with studs

To start reading this article from the beginning please click here What did you know about the history of English Mastiffs?
Their origin is full of incredible details and is hidden in the mists of centuries. Mastiff was too "majestic" to be unnoticed by one of the authors of the ancient chronicles. The abundance of references, often conflicting, and sometimes quite fantastic, deserves its own book and still it is able to mislead any researcher. A classic example of attempts to systematize the facts is "The History of a Mastiff" by Wynn. From present editions, that differ with more precise description of the topic, the greatest interest represent "The history and management of English Mastiff" by Elizabeth Baxter and "Mastiff and Bullmastiff Handbook" by Douglas Oliff. Other publications mostly refer to samples of Victorian literature and are rather the fruits of imagination than a serious study of this issue.
For a long time the most "fashionable" and common was a theory of bringing in Mastiff ancestors by Phoenicians. However, this practice in the former state of water transport, which was used by Phoenician merchants that reached Cornwall, seems almost impossible. Phoenicians’ ships were  little primitive catamarans, and their trade routes were "tied" to the meandering coastline, so the trip to Britain had been the hardest months-long ordeal. It is doubtful that merchants brought Mastiffs, requiring huge amounts of food, in their ships. No less difficult to imagine a dog that could survive in conditions of the kind. Finally, it is known only about one Phoenician named Himilk, who reached the coast of England. It is unlikely that such a heavy trip to the wild world was performed by his fellow tribesmen to import breeding nucleus of future Mastiffs.
The most likely assumption we can assume that the ancestors of the Mastiff came to England with the tribes of Celts. The ancient Indo-European people went to Europe from east to west between the 4th and 3rd centuries BC. In the era of greatest prosperity, warlike Celtic tribes inhabited Britain, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Southern Germany, Northern Italy, Northwest Spain, Czech Republic, Hungary and Bulgaria and part of modern Poland. In the middle of 1st century BC they were conquered by Rome. In the 5th-3rd century BC there existed a country of Celts in Asia Minor, from where the descendants of the ancient Asian fighting dogs could spread with nomadic tribes. Hordes of nomads constantly moved from place to place, but some of them switched to a settled way of life. This caused the emergence of local groups and types of combat and guard dogs. Britain, due to insularity, promoted isolation of the dog population, that led to appearance of the unique type of fighting dogs.
Celtic mythology is poor in references to fighting dogs, but this is compensated by the rave reviews of Roman military historians of Gallic war period, when the fighting dogs of British Celts – Britons were seen for the first time. Faliskus in his memoirs called these dogs "Briton" and wrote the following: "One should undergo a hard trip to distant shores of Britain in order to see the local breed of dogs, which strength and ferocity overcome all other dogs, known to us".... to continue reading this article please click here...