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The animal on the cover of AppleScript: The Definitive Guide is a Boston terrier. The youngest breed in the American Kennel Club (AKC), the Boston is a cross between various types of bulldogs and bull terriers. Originally bred in England, the breed stabilized in the United States, where it was initially favored as a fighter in the underworld rat pits of the seedier areas of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Boston. By the late nineteenth century, however, people started to admire the beauty of the breed’s compact, elegant build-the “American Gentleman,” as the Boston terrier is now known, had been discovered.

In 1889, the AKC rejected the Stud Book applications put forth by the “American bull terrier” owners only to accept the breed in 1893 under its new name, Boston terrier. Today, its gentle yet playful and protective nature combined with its willingness to be trained make it a popular family pet-especially, of course, in Boston, the metropolitan area in which O’Reilly maintains a large editorial and production staff. Though the Boston terrier’s fighting days are in its past, the sportsmen and -women at Boston University evoke the breed’s heritage each time they take the field or ice.

Genevieve d’Entremont was the production ...

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