Before you ask, classifying rat terriers and feists is pretty difficult. Rat terriers are technically derived from feists.
Or they could be called feists. It’s really a debatable area.
These are the native terriers of America. They likely have fox terrier and Manchester terrier ancestry, but they also may have Native American dog ancestry and those of old German pinschers, which virtually every German farmer had.
And there are many different types of feist, which were once just an interbreeding landrace.
But they are the squirrel dog, and in my area, they are only rivaled by the Mountain cur and the Norwegian elkhound.
we dont have rat terriers over here in the uk (yet) they do look nice dogs though, very jack russelish. we do have another couple of dogs that are usually just working type terriers that you dont see much of outside the terrier community and that is the lucus and the plummer terriers i wander have you heard of them.
back to the rat terrier i have seen them in books and i didnt realise they were that tall, i thought they were similar to the jrt in size i also like the amer toy terrier they are sweet. pity they have there tails docked though, presumbly these dont go to ground as they are so tall so why dock, tradition i suppose, same with the amer toy, bred as a pet i think they have chihuahua in them so again why dock. nice dogs though.
(retrieverman i sent you some piccys of my white sheltie and cockers recently did you get them, i thought you’d like my sheltie as you do like odd and intresting coloured dogs, so do i )
tracey
A lot of feists and rat terriers are not docked. There is no real reason to do so. And they vary in size quite a bit. I knew one as a child that looked just like an English toy terrier, even with the candle flame ears. But they can be the size of a small border collie.
Some are actually natural bobtails, too.
These dogs are much softer natured that the British terriers. They have been bred to be biddable and range in, just like a spaniel or setter. They hunt squirrels the same way that a Finnish spitz hunts birds. The put it in the tree and bark like mad. But they don’t range out very far. Otherwise, they’ll tree the squirrel and it will take the hunter too long to get there, allowing the squirrel a chance to run across the tree tops to a better place or to go into hollow in the tree and hide.
They also use laikas. Actually… I got a post coming up next week on a hunting strain used in Finland, Northwestern Russia and Poland. It’s a carbon copy of the Finnish Spitz, but the reason why people prefer them differs.
“But they are the squirrel dog, and in my area, they are only rivaled by the Mountain cur and the Norwegian elkhound.”
And do they ever. My elkhound was a stray out in the mountains in your neck of the woods for quite some time before I got him and he routinely not just chases them up trees but catches them…even when walking along on a 6′, non-retractable leash.
I should add – what’s fascinating to watch is his decision making about which ones are worth lunging at/chasing after (he’s caught them when he’s on the leash, but knows that I’ll usually drop it and let him have a nice chase). He typically calculates not how close they are to him but how far they are from something they can climb up.