What I Know About Staffies

Alice Bonasio
12 min readNov 2, 2017

Staffordshire Bull Terriers are a wonderful breed, but as I learned the hard way, they are definitely not for everyone.

It’s hard to overstate just how big a dog geek I am. I will literally bore non-doggy people to death talking to you about dogs. They’re definitely my thing, as a cursory glance of my social media feeds or phone gallery will attest to.

Yet this piece is not just an exercise in talking about Staffies. It is intended as background to my article about Fudge, the puppy which I sold to a person who still makes a living as a dog trainer, advertising the fact that whatever beharioural issues you might be having with your dog. She can help. Let the irony of that sink in…

In her own blog post justifying her decision to put puppy Fudge down at five months of age, she questioned my knowledge and expertise, so this post clarifies some of the misconceptions she put forward there.

I always loved dogs and had them all my life, apart from the years where I lived in a small flat, which I felt would have been unfair to it. Eventually, however, my husband and I moved city just so we could get a house with a garden and finally remedy that situation.

By then we had our hearts set on a Staffordshire Bull Terrier. My in-laws always had Staffies so we’d had plenty of interaction with this loving and…

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Alice Bonasio

Technology writer for FastCo, Quartz, The Next Web, Ars Technica, Wired + more. Consultant specializing in VR #MixedReality and Strategic Communications