English Mastiff Trivia
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48 free English Mastiff trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This English Mastiff trivia quiz covers the heaviest dog alive from its ancient roots to the show ring: Mesopotamian sculptures, Caesar's 55 BC encounter, Strabo's war dogs, the Alaunt of the Alans, the Book of Saint Albans, Bandogs and baiting, and the Agincourt Mastiff that founded the Lyme Hall line. The Victorian rebuild gets close attention: J. W. Thompson and Lukey, Governor and Lion, Crown Prince, the 1885 AKC recognition, the collapse to 24 dogs, meat rationing, Nydia of Frithend and the Dogue de Bordeaux in the gene pool. Questions also cover the standard and genetics: black masks, brindle dominance, 'Fluffies', body proportions and weight, plus Zorba's 343-pound Guinness record, temperament as praised by Sydenham Edwards, health advice on growth plates, meals and whelping, and famous Mastiffs from The Sandlot's Beast and Sherlock Holmes's Carlo to Henry and Mudge. Questions run from easy to expert with the difficulty shown on each one, and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its citation. If you enjoy it, try our Dogs and Great Dane quizzes next.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The English Mastiff holds what distinction among all living dogs?
It is the largest by mass
It is the largest by mass: a male can outweigh a grown man, yet the Kennel Club and AKC breed standards never mention weight, asking only for size combined with soundness.
Q 02What did the Romans reportedly ship Britain's big mastiff-type dogs back to Italy to do?
Fight in the arena
Fight in the arena: they were matched against bears, lions and even gladiators, and at home the same taste for blood sport long set Mastiffs on bulls, bears and lions.
Q 03Which colour feature must every English Mastiff display, whatever its coat colour?
A black mask
A black mask: the AKC standard wants the muzzle, ears and nose 'the blacker the better', and a dog whose mask lacks dark pigment is faulted in the show ring however fine its coat.
Q 04As of 2025, how does Britain's Kennel Club class the Mastiff?
Vulnerable native breed
Vulnerable native breed: the Kennel Club keeps that list for British and Irish breeds with fewer than 300 puppies registered a year, and the Mastiff managed just 104 in 2020.
Q 05Famous stone reliefs in the British Museum show the heavy mastiff-type hunting dogs of which ancient empire?
Assyria
Assyria: its kings used the dogs to hunt lions, but any family link to the English Mastiff is guesswork.
Q 06For all its bulk, an adult Mastiff needs comparatively little of what?
Exercise
Exercise: most adult Mastiffs are couch potatoes happy with a daily walk, yet the dozing giant is bolt upright the moment a threat appears.
Q 07The Greek historian Strabo reported that the Britons' exported hounds were used by the Celts for what?
War
War: Strabo knew the hounds as natural hunters, and the Roman poet Grattius thought British dogs plain to look at but better than the famed Molossians when bravery was called for.
Q 08Medieval forest law let commoners keep a Mastiff only if what was done to it?
Its front feet were maimed
Its front feet were maimed: the practice, known as lawing, cut away claws or toes so that a commoner's dog was too lame to run down the king's deer.
Q 09The word 'mastiff' probably comes, through Old French mastin, from a Latin word meaning what?
Tame
Tame: the Latin was mansuetus, so the name probably first marked a dog that stayed about the house, a watchdog, long before it came to mean a giant.
Q 10Which English poet wrote of mastiff-like 'alaunts' that were 'as great as any steer'?
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer: in The Knight's Tale more than twenty white alaunts, tightly muzzled and wearing gold collars, run beside the chariot of Lycurgus, king of Thrace, bred to hunt the lion.
Q 11What earned England's Mastiff-type guard dogs the old name Bandogs?
Being kept tied up
Being kept tied up: a 'band' was a chain or tether, and the dogs spent the day on it before being let loose at night to guard the estate.
Q 12Legend says Sir Piers Legh's Mastiff stood guard over its wounded master for hours at which battle?
Agincourt
Agincourt: the dog was carried home to Lyme Hall in Cheshire, and the kennel said to descend from it became one of the two old strains behind today's Mastiffs.
Q 13Mastiffs owe much to two strains: the Leghs' at Lyme and the Duke of Devonshire's where?
Chatsworth House
Q 21Why did virtually all Mastiff breeding in the British Isles stop during World War II?
Rationing of meat
Rationing of meat: owners barely had enough to feed themselves, and by the summer of 1939 leading breeders had already found new homes for most of their dogs, knowing a kennel of giants could not be fed.
Q 22Why should a Mastiff sleep on a soft bed, not a hard floor?
To spare its elbows
To spare its elbows: a heavy dog on hard floors grows calluses and fluid-filled swellings called hygromas over the bone, which the AKC tells owners not to let a vet drain.
Q 23A dog of which French breed was once registered as a Mastiff to add new blood?
Dogue de Bordeaux
Chatsworth House: an Edwardian breed history traced every Mastiff of its day to these two kennels, though breeders also bred in outside blood when the breed ran low.
Q 14Which 1835 Act of Parliament outlawed the baiting sports that had employed aggressive Mastiffs?
The Cruelty to Animals Act
The Cruelty to Animals Act banned bull- and bear-baiting and dog fights, so the Mastiff's job narrowed to guarding country estates and town businesses.
Q 15In which of the AKC's seven groups is the Mastiff shown?
Working
Working: the AKC says the Mastiff was bred to be a guardian of 'hearth and home', and Britain's Kennel Club lists it in its own Working group too.
Q 16By the British standard, a Mastiff's head seen from any angle should give what general shape?
Square
Square: the muzzle is cut off blunt at a right angle to the face, and the lips hang just far enough to square off the profile.
Q 17The Mastiff was crossed with the Bulldog to create a night dog for catching whom?
Poachers
Poachers: the cross became the Bullmastiff, still nicknamed the Gamekeeper's Night Dog, bred to pursue an intruder in the dark and hold him.
Q 18Breeders of the 1880s used the champion Mastiff Crown Prince so heavily that what soon became almost impossible?
Finding an unrelated dog
Finding an unrelated dog: he passed on his faults along with his fashionable short head, and both the breed's soundness and its popularity slumped in the years after him.
Q 19Written with a small 'm', what does the word 'mastiff' cover, as the AKC uses it?
A whole family of breeds
A whole family of breeds: giant guard dogs called mastiffs turn up from Tibet to Naples, while the capital M marks the one British breed, whose official name has resisted every attempt to add 'English'.
Q 20With few Mastiffs left in Britain after World War II, breeders rebuilt the breed with puppies from where?
North America
North America: breeders there had bought British stock in better times, so the dogs they sent back after 1945 returned the breed's own bloodlines to its homeland.
Dogue de Bordeaux: after two world wars left the Mastiff close to dying out, breeders at times reached for other giant breeds to widen a very small gene pool.
Q 24The English Mastiff is on average slightly heavier than which other giant breed?
The Saint Bernard
The Saint Bernard: the two giants overlap widely in weight and are old kin, since Saint Bernards are said to have been bred into the Mastiff to add new blood.
Q 25The AKC Mastiff standard says the dog's height should come from depth of body rather than what?
Length of leg
Length of leg: the same standard faults any male under 30 inches at the shoulder, so a Mastiff must stand high without being leggy, which a 1910 guide called 'very undesirable'.
Q 26What are long-haired Mastiffs, produced by a recessive gene, called?
Fluffies
Fluffies: the long coat is recessive, so two short-coated parents can produce one, and the AKC standard lists a long or wavy coat as a fault.
Q 27In Mastiff coat genetics, which pattern is dominant over solid colour?
Brindle
Brindle: one copy of the striping gene is enough to show, so as a rule two brindle Mastiffs can still have plain puppies, but two plain ones cannot have a brindle.
Q 28Which part of a Mastiff's skeleton do breed clubs ask owners to have X-rayed before breeding?
The hips
The hips: hip dysplasia, a badly fitting socket, is one of the breed's main problems, and when it first caused alarm the Old English Mastiff Club set up a fund to help members pay for X-rays.
Q 29Why do most Mastiff owners keep a cloth within reach around the house?
To wipe up drool
To wipe up drool: the AKC says owners call the flung ropes 'slingers' and mop them off the dog's face, their own clothes and their visitors'.
Q 30By the breed standard, what appears on a Mastiff's forehead when its attention is caught?
Marked wrinkles
Marked wrinkles: the British standard wants the forehead flat until 'attention is excited', and counts heavy wrinkle or loose skin at rest against a mature dog.