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!"
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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