Moxie is above. She's not going to get much bigger. In fact, I think she's done.
Misto is below. He too is not going to get much bigger. A very different dog in terms of overall shape, but about identical where it counts, which is chest size.
In The Working Jack Russell Terrier, Eddie Chapman writes:
"I am a small man and have reasonably small hands, but in more than 20 years in which I have handled well over 1000 foxes, I have never handled a full grown fox which came anywhere near the span of my hands. The biggest I can remember was a South Hereford fox that was one and a half inches smaller than my hand span, and that without my squeezing him. It therefore follows that if I can pick up a dog and just span him with a squeeze, then the dog cannot get to the fox in a tight place and a dog that cannot get to a fox cannot be considered a Jack Russell. Either you are breeding a terrier suitable to work fox or, if he is too big to get to a fox, you are just breeding for looks. This is, of course, what happened to the pedigree Fox Terrier and look where that has got him!"
1 comment:
Beautiful little dogs! Since reading your blog I've gone through various stages- now I can admit that my two monsters are a bit big for real terrier work- with 16 and 17 inch chests- but they have all I need for my purposes- tunnel running and ratting and fantasy squirrel hunting. It's their prey drive and obsession with hunting that makes them entertaining to me- regular dogs just seem well- blah! I will say though that reading your blog has made me want to get a small 14" chested dog some day and use it for terrier work- out here in California I couldn't use him properly but I do have relatives in Upstate New York...
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