My Working Dog classification

[s]

Dog of Prey:

Definition: Large dog, robust body, wide and strong head, thick and short neck, obtuse snout and short coat of generally light brown or black color; It is fast and is used as a guard, hunting or defense dog.

The definition of attack dogs does not refer to a breed, but to a group of dogs with strong jaws and powerful muscles, with the ability to persistently bite other animals, to handle or immobilize them. These dogs were formerly used to handle cattle (cows and bulls), and many of them were cattle dogs or butcher dogs, which made the work of their owners much easier, in times before the mechanization of livestock farms.

This ability is based on the so-called "prey instinct", present in almost all dogs, but in some breeds or groups to a much greater extent. It is a mechanism that is activated to chase and grab an animal that moves, following its ancient hunting instinct. The dog senses the movement, runs to catch it, bites and keeps its jaw immobilized, once it has caught what it was chasing.

Subtypes:

Bulldog: Examples include Staffordshire bull terrier (the British version is also the smallest Dog of Prey), Pitbull and Bull Arab 

Boarhound: Examples include Dogo Argentino, Alano Español and Fila Brasileiro

Working Mastiff: Examples include English Mastiff, Great Sane and Cane Corso

Terrier:

Definition: Any of various usually small energetic dogs originally used by hunters to dig for small game and engage the quarry underground or drive it out. They usually weight less than 10kg

Examples: Jagdterrier, Fox Terrier, Jack Russell Terrier

Molosser:

Definition: Compared to the more multirole Dog-of-Prey type, they are usually heavier and slower, with worse stamina, thus separating the Molossers from the faster and more agile Dogs of Prey, in the case of German Sheperds they are separated due to being less muscular and robust than Dogs of Prey 

Sub-types:

Dogo-Mastiff: Examples include Kangal, German Sheperd, Caucasian Ovcharka and Alabai

Heavy-Bulldogue: Examples include Rottweiler and Bully Kuta, compared to their closely related Bulldogs they are slower, less agile, usually heavier and with less stamina, thus being in a separate category

[Hardcastle]

Though I appreciate the thought and effort of trying to sort out dog classification (it is yet to be done properly, and needs to be done), there are some issues here.

And TBH there are issues when I try and do it too, its like a puzzle that is hard to solve where one piece fits in somewhere but in doing that it dislodges another piece and makes it not fit and etc etc. The lines are so blurry and dogs can fit in multiple categories or categories can be divided almost infinitely. It can all be somewhat maddening.

Immediate issues I see with this-
The bull arab is a boarhound, the alano and cane corso are bulldogs. English mastiffs and great danes are also boarhounds, just long retired and (as a result) ruined Their origins are similar to the dogo argentino and the bull arab. The further you go back in history the more their ancestors resemble the bull arab and dogo argentino. The boarhound concept was originally concieved by crossing rustic bulldogs from iranian cattle herders with large celtic sighthounds, and still today when you want to make a boarhound you typically cross bullbreed (most often the best these days are bull terriers) with sighthound (whether greyhound, deerhound, staghound or wolfhound). This is "recreating the wheel" that made boarhounds in the first place (great danes and ems and filas), but is necessary because descendants of the original boarhounds are ruined. Conversely instead of crossing bull terrier with sighthound some people get decent results crossing ruined ex-boarhound/bulldogs together. Like bullmastiff x great dane for example, can recreate working boarhounds surprisingly faithfully.
The bull arab followed the classic "bullbreed x sighthound with a little sprinkle of scenting dog" formula, and the dogo argentino did the same, just went the long way around with a larger more diverse concoction of breeds, many of which themselves were already concoctions, but you can distil that concoction down to the blending of bulldog, sighthound and scenting dog at its essence. Boarhound is characterised by a bulldog foundation admixed out to running hunting types to add versatility and create an "all in one" package.

Bulldogs come in a few different forms, from very small baiting bulldogs (that have likely always been admixed with terriers, and terriers originally were likely developed with the help of chinese toy breed infusion), up to butcher's and farm bulldogs which would be dogs like the alano espanol and cane corso, and then petering out into rustic proto-bulldog-herders like rottweilers. You then also have upsized bulldogs, aka bullmastiffs, which are big farm bulldogs made bigger for the purpose of intimidating people and being guard dogs/man-hunting dogs.
You have some bulldogs, big and small, more specialised just for combat, whether it is for frivolous bloodsports for entertainment purposes, OR as "lead in catch dogs" who have a specialised combat role in a team of various types of hunting dog. Either way the result is specialisation JUST for combat with sacrifices to running ability and other generalist traits.

And then other bulldogs are in more rustic forms where they also were tasked with droving and moving the cattle herds and basically working and covering a lot of ground during the day. These were the original earliest bulldogs, and the earliest of all might be the rottweiler. Of course not necessarily best represented by modern pet rottweilers, but the rottweiler may have a direct line back to the earliest cattle droving dogs, who were KIND OF herding dogs but also had broad mouths for the purpose of seizing and subjugating and taming unruly cattle that protested their management. That seems to be the embryo from which the whole "gripping dog" lineage was born, later diversifying into bulldogs and boarhounds and etc. The rottweiler has barely begun to tread down a combat path. Compared to a generalist spitz/pariah/herder type dog it is JUST a little more durable and robust to endure some kicks and gores and rough treatment, and has JUST a little more gripping capacity. Still a fairly healthy self-preservation instinct and it is quite willing to give up if it is getting hurt or having too hard of a time. This little embryo would be nurtured however as that gripping tendency would be exploited more and more to subjugate livestock and also wild beasts like boars and used to live-capture wild horses and hunt bears and etc, and this exploitation of the gripping tendency would further dogs down a path towards combat specialisation and that is basically where the alano and cane corso originated. Also "the molosser" of greece. It has been misrepresented as a livestock guardian by some, if you actually read the source material it is quite clear the molossi and other groups from that same epirus region of greece were all intentionally breeding hard combat specialised gripping dogs for the purpose of subjugating bulls and boars but also subjugating their enemies in battle, and they favoured extreme bravery, extreme pain tolerance, diminished self preservation and extreme determination and tunnel vision to see out their gripping subjugation to the bitter end no matter what. This dog type was not limited to the molossians or the other Greeks of Epirus, the romans simply noted that is where they originally found them and sourced them, but when they went to Brittania and Hispania they found other fully hard gripping dogs there as well and documented it quite unambiguously that dogs like molossian gripping dogs were found in briton and were just as mean.
It seems they were spread around earlier by Iranian nomadic pastoralists, likely with the earliest migrations of the domestic horse, and probably originally in the form of "rottweiler-esque" dogs but many people had the same idea to "lean in" to that gripping tendency and enhance it down a heavily combat oriented path, for the purposes of big game subjugation, war, and bloodsports. Early on, certainly in ancient rome, the benefits of crossing different types was discovered and they started mixing bulldogs with deerhound/wolfhound types to make boarhounds. This process has been done over and over again, is written about in ancient greece, ancient rome, throughout medieval europe and colonial times and etc and is still done unconsciously by hillbillies today who definitely are not studied up on this history.

So what you have is the "alani" foundation of "butcher's gripping dog", at the base, and then modifications. Hence the "alaunt triangle" of "alaunt boucheries" (butcher's bulldog), "alaunt gentil" (refined bull lurcher boarhound) and "alaunt Veatres" (a heavier type of boarhound with perhaps more scenthound going by available indications, like pendulous ears and lips being mentioned). Historically by sportsmen the Gentil was held above the others as like the ultimate dog, because it could actually run down and catch wild animals and not just lug them if they didn't run away. In more recent times work was done to the "boucheries" to make it more elite for bloodsports, and it seems terrier influence had a lot to do with that, when it was just a farmer's bulldog like the alano it didn't get people as excited, it was just a rustic utilitarian animal.

So given all this, perhaps "dogs of prey" means the group of dogs radiating out from this "alani" foundation, which includes the original rustic butcher's/farmer's bulldog, the bull lurcher boarhound, the heavy hanger boarhound and the baiting bulldog/bull terrier.

Kangals, german shepherds, caucasian ovcharkas and alabais all really have nothing to do with this history, they pre-date it and split off much earlier from neolithic pastoral dogs. The bully kutta would be an example of a boarhound of the veatres type, made bigger and bigger and probably was used to intimidate and subjugate people as a "warhound", before retiring when the colonials left south asia, and then finding work as fighting dogs. Most of the "breeds" from this family are retired and sloppy pets and show dogs. There are plenty of real working dogs of this lineage but they are often re-invented by hybridising the less ruined breeds or breeds complimentary to one another. Working alano espanols, proper apbts, dogo argentinos and bull arabs are examples of dogs from this family that are still operational representatives of the original working dogs.