The immense agility and ferocity
of the wild beast, the terrible snap of his long-toothed jaws, and the
admirable training in which he always is, give him a great advantage
over fat, small-toothed, smooth-skinned dogs, even though they are
nominally supposed to belong to the fighting classes. In the way that
bench competitions are arranged nowadays this is but natural, as there
is no temptation to produce a worthy class of fighting dog when the
rewards are given upon technical points wholly unconnected with the
dog's usefulness. A prize-winning mastiff or bulldog may be almost
useless for the only purposes for which his kind is ever useful at all.
A mastiff, if properly trained and of sufficient size, might possibly be
able to meet a young or undersized Texas wolf; but I have never seen a
dog of this variety which I would esteem a match single-handed for one
of the huge timber wolves of western Montana. Even if the dog was the
heavier of the two, his teeth and claws would be very much smaller and
weaker and his hide less tough.
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