The Old English Bulldog was preserved by working class immigrants who brought their working dogs with them to the American South; these dogs are believed to have first appeared as early as the 17th century. Small farmers and ranchers used this all-around working dog for many tasks including farm guardians, stock dogs and catch dogs. These dogs were not an actual breed as considered by today's standards and neither were most other dogs: kennel clubs of any kind did not yet exist and would not until 1875, at least two centuries after the Old English Bulldog first migrated to America. In the 17th and 18th century, the Old English Bulldog had many different strains for cattle-droving, bull-baiting, farm dogs, and butcher's dogs. Bull-baiting was also a common blood sport of the era and though there is evidence of such migrating to America with the landrace bulldogs brought by working class Englishmen in colonial times, it is also certain that the strains that migrated to America were unaffected by the banning of the sport in 1835 in the U.K. and, therefore, there was no need for a decline in the population of the old-type bulldog.