Dog Dealers Hate German Engineering

American and British dog dealers love to toss around the word "span" when it comes to working terrier chest size.

It's a term descended from the world of horses, where “hand” height is defined as 4 inches.

But span?  It’s not defined as an actual measurement.  It refers to placing your hands around a dog's chest at its widest part, front feet off the ground, with thumbs touching and middle fingers at least touching. 

The problem is that "span" is so vague and undefined that it covers far too much sin when it comes to terrier size. 

Whose span? 

A small woman's? 

Wilt Chamberlin's??

When a dog cannot be spanned, the dog dealers always mumble that they have small hands!

The good news is that the Germans are not vague.  Known for precise engineering and quality construction, they define the proper chest size of their native working dog, the Teckel or working Dachshund, with considerable precision.

The Germans are precise about chest measurements because they understand that for a dog to be a "gebrauchshund" (i.e. a "useful" utility or hunting dog), it cannot be too big to fit into a tight den.

The FCI chest-size standard for Teckels (working Dachshunds) in Germany spans from just under 14 inches in circumference (35 cm. or 13.78 inches) to as much as 18.5 inches. 

The bigger chest size is fine for badger (dachshund means badger dog), while the smaller chest size is fine for a natural-dug fox den.

The chest size of a miniature Dachshund (often used to work fox) is set at 30-35 cm (11.81 inches to 13.78 inches).  

A third working Dachshund, for rabbiting, is even smaller in chest circumference.

The 35 cm chest size, where miniature and standard dachshunds chest sizes meet, was not invented whole-cloth; it is about the size of the average red fox chest found the world over and it is the same 14-inch chest measurement defined as ideal for working terriers by Barry Jones in the UK and by Ken James in the U.S.

Does that mean European Badgers cannot come a great deal larger than 14" in the chest?  They can! 

The picture below is of five well-trained German Teckels doing a down-stay next to two just-dug European badgers. Quite a shot!

And what is the chest size of these dachshunds, owned by Frank J. in Germany?  35 centimeters.

When digging, no one ever wishes for a larger dog.

Cracking Tired Chestnuts About Form and Function

Red fox taxidermy mannequins. There is no red fox taxidermy mannequin anywhere in the world that has a chest span of greater than 14 inches.


At the side of every show ring, there is always some well-dressed individual talking about "the standard" and how "form follows function."

It all sounds good, of course -- wonderful rhetorical chestnuts -- but it's pretty much nonsense.

I mean think about it. A working dachshund is a great little animal in the field and does the same work as a terrier, but it does not look like a terrier, does it?

By the same token, a Patterdale Terrier does not look too much like a Jack Russell, which does not look too much like a Border Terrier. Smooth coats and rough do equally well in the field, as do coats of black or white, red or brown, or any combination in between. A folded ear is the same as a prick ear, a black nose the same as a liver-colored nose. Every working earth dog breed has a different head shape, and many have different tails as well. A perfect scissors bite is not necessary for work.

So when people say "form follows function," what the hell are they talking about?

Let us hope they are not talking about movement. Movement is one of those words show people toss around with a wink and a nod as if they have the secret knowledge of a wine connoisseur.

It is pure bunk. "Movement" may be important to a greyhound, a pulling dog, or even a border collie, but it is not much of a concern as it relates to a working terrier. So long as a dog can walk well, and has decent muscle mass, it can work fine. Hocks in or out hardly matters a whit.

Which is not to say that movement is irrelevant to terrier work. In fact, it is critical. But the important movement is .... wait for it .... an owner that will move off the couch, and move out of the car, and move into a hedgerow, and move a lot of dirt while digging down to a dog that is in full voice with rising adrenaline. That's the only important part of movement that matters. After you have done that a few dozen times, you will know a little more about movement, and terriers in particular.

We hear a great deal of nodding nonsense from folks who talk a good game about "protecting" their breed. But protect it from what? And by what right or qualification do these people think they are particularly well chosen to protect the bred? And what do they intend to protect it with?

In almost every case they are people who do not dig, and who seek to "protect" the terrier with nothing but a scrap of paper proclaiming a show dog "up to the standard."

And who do these people hope to protect the breed from? Why, show ring breeders, of course!

It is all laughable nonsense. And it becomes nonsense on stilts when people begin to talk about "the standard" as if it were a sacred text delivered to Moses on the Mount.

In fact, is there anything standard about "the standard?" I defy you to find a single canine standard that is more than 20 years old that has not been changed at least once.

And then there is the little matter that the standard is not the same from one country to another, or one registry to another. So what is so "standard" about the standard?

Ironically, what is NOT part of any standard in the UK or the US, is a requirement that the dog actually be a proven worker in the field. That, apparently is not "the standard." That function is not required for the rosette. A black nose, is a "Yes," but working a dozen fox, raccoon, badger, or groundhog in the field, is a "No."

The one issue of any importance in "the standard" as it relates to "form follows function," is chest size. Yet on this point, "the standard" is awfully vague, isn't it?

We are told a chest span is a man's hands. Yes, but whose hands? We do not measure a house in cubits, so why are we measuring dogs in "hand spans"? Who but the puppy peddler profits by keeping chest measurements this vague?

The Germans are not so coy and facile about chest size. A standard working dachshund (a "Teckel" in German) has a chest of just under 14 inches. The measurement is precise -- 35 cm -- and it reflects the chest size of the average red fox. The Germans are not ones to shave dice when it comes to working dogs.

It is interesting that the same 14" chest size is named not only by fox biologists, but also by such terriermen as Barry Jones, Ken James, and Eddie Chapman. In fact, if any one thing separates the digger from the rosette chaser, it's clarity on chest size.

The rosette chaser is always a bit vague about what a "span" actually means. A digger knows it means his fingers better well overlap, and if he is working fox in a natural fox-dug earth, it is best if his fingers overlap by more than one joint!

And so we come back to the real meaning of "form follows function" as used by academics in the dog world.

For these folks the "form" being referred to seems to be a paper form showing the pedigree of the animal being displayed. And "the function" is either the rosette from a show judge, or the cash to be gotten from a prospective dog-buyer.

Form follows function, indeed!

Learning About Dogs by Watching Dogs

In the January issue of Earth dog-Running Dog magazine, Colin Didriksen has a nice article about picking a pup. Didriksen is raising Teckels these days -- working dachsunds -- and the piece starts out:

There was roughly one hundred years of doggy experience between the three men standing in the garden watching a litter of Teckels do what seven week old Teckel pups do.

Their mother was with them and now and again one of the pups would push her too far and receive first a growl and if that didn't convince it to stop then the nip that followed did. It's a pity that some human parents don't take note of the way other animals correct the wrongdoings of their young and act similarly; it would mean fewer badly behaved children and incidents of unsocial behavior would be diminished. Areas where some young people delight in causing aggravation to old people would disappear. A degree of respect is often brought about by a tiny tinge of fear.

Watch any non-human mother and its young. Cats, dogs, foxes, ferrets and the like, usually after a verbal warning in the guise of a growl or a hiss, will all discipline their young physically either with a nip, by swatting them with a paw, or both.

You will have to buy a copy to read the rest, and I encourage a subscription, as it's a good magazine with fine pieces from Didriksen, Richard Christian (the title of his piece this month is Civilization and Syphilisation and very amusing), David Harcombe and others.

I always find it amazing that the pet and show ring people are always quick to wax nostaligic and romantic about the history of dogs, but seem entirely blind to the fact that canine history is being written every day by men and women who actually work their dogs above and below ground.

And guess what?  Take my word on this: true working dog men and women have something to say and to teach.

The fox in his burrow and the sheep on the hill do not judge up the leash, do not care about some scrap of pedigree paper, nor are they concerned about coat color, nose color, or "expression."

But, of course, people are people, and how is it that we choose a pup from a litter at eight weeks of age?

Ah well, you will have to buy the magazine and read the piece.  But yes, it's very amusing.
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Dogs Made by the Hand of Man

A repost from August 2005.

The morphological variation within dogs is pretty extreme.

The picture, above, is of an English Bulldog, a breed with such an overlarge head that almost 100% of all dogs are born caesarian.

This is a breed that would be extinct in 10 years were it not for the regular intervention of veterinarians.

Most people do not realize that almost all dog species, as we know them today, are very recent creations.

In the last 1790s, a farmer by the name of Robert Bakewell realized that by separating males from females -- made easy by the rising number of enclosed fields -- a farmer could choose which stock was allowed to breed. By deliberately inbreeding livestock, and selecting for desirable traits, Bakewell rapidly created new and "improved" breeds of sheep and transformed modern agriculture forever. Bakewell's experiments with sheep quickly spilled over into other farm stock, such as cattle, pigs, and chickens, and eventually into pet stock such as dogs and pigeons.

In 1800, there were only 15 designated breeds of dogs, but by 1865 that number had grown to more than 50 and it exploded fantastically over the course of the next 60 years as Victorian-era dog breeders produced a dizzying array of dogs, most with invented histories and elaborate (and entirely fictional) rationales for their taxonomic differences. To see how rapidly the shape of the Bull Terrier was changed by the Kennel Club show ring >> click here.

Border Collie Skull (above)


Dachshund Skull (above)


Pug Skull (above)



Poodle Skull (above)



Saint Bernard Skull (above)



Schnauzer Skull

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Artificial Dens, Big Dogs and Fair Chase

Concrete liners wait to be assembled into an artificial fox earth in Germany. This is an "in and out" design where the barking dog comes down the right section of pipe and bolts the fox into the left section of the pipe. The two sections are connected at the notches seen in the foreground. The left section then feeds back into into the main pipe stem and the fox bolts out.

In an article entitled The Rabbit and the Go to Ground Tunnel, I detailed the 20th-Century rise of artificial fox earths in the UK.

These artificial fox dens have their origin in ancient rabbit "burries" created by the Romans who introduced the rabbit to the UK about 1,000 years ago.

The artificial fox earths of the UK served as the model for the over-large "Go to Ground" tunnels we see at American Kennel Club, Jack Russell Terrier Club of America, and American Working Terrier Association trials.

Go-to-ground trials are not close approximations of field work (a caged rat is the only "quarry," and it only has to be "worked" for a minute or two) but people who do not own a deben collar or a decent shovel often think a 9" by 9" square den liner is approximately the same size as a real fox den. This misperception helps fuel a common belief held by portly matrons at dogs shows that a red fox is as big as a coyote or small wolf. As I have noted:

A large dog is almost always a liability. While a small dog can enter and work a large den, a large dog cannot enter a small earth. If a large dog is able to squeeze itself into the den pipe at all, it will find it has little room to maneuver away from the slashing jaws of the fox, raccoon or groundhog, and that it is nearly impossible to get behind the quarry in order to bolt it out of the den.

Despite this liability, some large terriers in Britain continue to find success bolting fox due to the prevalence of artificial dens or "drains" created by the mounted hunts as a way to keep fox populations stable on hunt lands. These artificial fox dens are typically 9 inches square, brick-lined, and slate-topped with two or three possible entrances.

While the construction of artificial dens or “drains” was sufficiently common at the turn of the century that Sir Jocelyn Lucas provided tips on their construction in his 1931 book, Hunt and Working Terriers, they became even more prevalent after the introduction of the myxoma virus in Great Britain in the early 1950s.

Myxomatosis was purposefully imported from South America as a way of "controlling" the U.K.’s rabbit population, which was considered a major agricultural pest. The myxoma virus was a frightfully efficient killer, wiping out 98 percent of all rabbits in Great Britain within a decade of its introduction. One result of this unhappy turn of events was that the ancient rabbit warrens that had once served as natal dens -- and sources of food -- for breeding fox simply vanished.

In order to help out Mother Nature, and improve the chance that a fox would take up residence on hunt land, many hunts constructed new artificial dens out of bricks or 9-inch drainage pipes.

At about the time that the very first artificial fox dens were being constructed in the 1920s, Kennel Club dog shows began to grow in popularity. New terrier breeds were admitted to Kennel Club rosters with some frequency, and old breeds were regularly "improved" for coat color, the set of the ear, the length of the leg, the shape and size of the head, the set of the tail, and a dozen other characteristics that barely matter in the hunt field.

The rest, as they say, is history.

It is with some interest -- and alarm -- that I note that the use of artificial dens seems to be growing in Germany. Here we find concrete and PVC pipes used in the construction of artificial fox earths. These earths are hunted about once a month in season, with the dog being entered in the pipe, and the fox easily bolted out due to the design of the artificial den.

The bolted fox is then blasted with a shotgun.

This is pretty far from genuine terrier work in my opinion, and is only a little bit better than a canned hunt. Woodcraft does not have to be very high to find a fox in this manner -- just visit the artificial dens you have previously constructed (and perhaps stocked). The dog is then entered, and the fox bolts. The dog is unlikely to face much of a fight since the fox has an easy exit. Nor does the terrier owner have to dig to the dog. These are 5 minutes affairs, not three-hour digs. As for shooting a fox with a shotgun as it exits a pipe -- could there be anything easier?

I am at a loss to understand this permutation of terrier work which is so very different from what we do in the U.S.

If we set aside the ethics of this kind of hunting and ask only what might be happening to the dogs, more alarm bells sound.

Are the Germans turning to artificial dens because their dogs are too large to work tight and twisting natural earths?

That may, in fact, be part of the impetus behind the rise of artificial earths in Germany. While the German standard for a working dachshund (teckel) calls for a dog with a small chest, the Germans insisted on creating their own brand of terrier during the strange period leading up to the rise of Nazi Germany.

I have documented the true history of the German Hunt terrier (the Jagdterrier or Jagd terrier) in previous posts and noted that this "all rounder" is too small to easily retrieve bird, and often too big to easily go to ground on fox. It is a dog that, when bred to the middle of the standard, is "betwixt and between".

You know there are problems with Jagd Terrier size when the problem becomes institutionalized in the form of a cartoon Jagd Terrier struggling to exit an artificial earth. Cartoons require an audience to "get the joke" -- to say out loud that which is widely known, even if seldom stated.

The Germans have always been an engineering and industrious people, and so it is no surprise to find they have put a lot of effort into "improving" the old "three-brick-high with a slate roof" design that characterize so many artificial earths in the UK.

Modern German earths are often made of cast concrete or even plastic pipe assembled in sections and attached to special "bedding kettles". Though there are various designs for these earths, they all feature ready exits so that a barking dog can easily bolt the fox.

Carefully designed earths mean the dog may never come face-to-face with a fox at all -- a good way to keep a dog injury-free, but also a set-up that prevents a dog from ever being in a situation where it has to demonstrate locating abilities in a complicated sette, staying power while it is being dug to over several hours, or the drive and "bottle" needed to hold a fox in a stop-end.

In fact, these German earths are designed so well that I suspect a barking Tea-cup Poodle could bolt a fox!

Artificial dens are simply not used in the United States. One reason for this is that our mounted hunts are not in the business of killing foxes -- once a fox goes to earth, the hounds are praised and the field rides off until another fox is found, and then the chase is on again. This is not drag hunting, but it is not vermin control either. Perhaps it is game management. A fox caught by the hounds above ground is a very rare thing, and such a stupid, slow or sick fox is best weeded from the gene pool.

Another reason we do not have artificial earths in the U.S. is that in the Eastern U.S., where red fox are most common, there are so many groundhog holes that an artificial den is unlikely to be used by a fox, no matter how well it is located.

Perhaps the most important reason we do not have artificial dens in the U.S., however, has to do with our concept of "fair chase".

"Fair chase" is a modern idea and has been framed in response to a fixed amount of wildlife and a rising tide of people and technology.

In pre-historical time you took game any way you could, but with the development of modern weapons, mankind found it could shoot out all the game and "bleed the land white" in just a few years time.

As amazing as it sounds, for example, the people of the United States killed off almost every type of large wildlife in this country between 1850 and 1900 when ethics and common sense failed to keep pace with rapid improvements in gun technology and traps.

Bison, elk, wolf, white tail deer, pronghorn, moose, turkey, eagles, beaver, and many species of ducks, geese and crane were nearly wiped off the American landscape.

In response to this devastation, the U.S. developed the concept of "fair chase". Artificial bird-calling machines were banned, as were live decoys, and the commercial sale of wild game was prohibited. Hunting of most species was limited to clear seasons and defined bag limits, and some types of hunting (such as canons loaded with shrapnel designed to kill whole flocks of geese with a single shot) were banned outright.

Today, thanks to sane wildlife laws, ethical hunters, and the finest game management professionals in the world, most forms of American wildlife can now be found in record abundance.

Other countries have set in place their own laws, regulations and customs governing "fair chase". In the UK, for example, leghold traps are considered a horror, in no small part because the British have no experience with modern off-set-jaw traps, and in part because the mounted hunts have demonized traps and poison which proved to be so efficient during Victorian times that fox were often rare and many mounted hunts were reduced to chasing stag and rabbit.

In fact, the demonization of traps, poison and guns for fox control reached such a frothy state that a legal term was coined for the crime -- Vulpicide -- which means the killing of fox by any method other than horse, hound, and terrier.

Will Germany and other countries develop their own sense of fair chase, and will it include the rejection of artificial dens or -- perversely -- their embrace?

Time will tell, but so far artificial dens seem to be gaining ground in Germany. One "sales point" for these contraptions is that they are safe for the dog, which is unlikely to tangle with the fox in any serious way. In addition, the dog can always be easily located and cave-ins are an impossibility.

It should be noted, of course, that the real reason artificial dens may be finding favor in Germany is that they are a profit center on hunting-club and farm lands in much the same way that pen-raised pheasants are a profit center at other locations.

There is clearly a demand in Germany for simple and easy "sport" among those who want to "test" their dogs and show that their dogs still have what it takes. Never mind that the test is somewhat rigged and the dogs may be a bit too big to do the job in a natural fox earth.

A red fox running free in a concrete pipe, is certainly a better test than a white rat in a welded cage at the end of a wooden tunnel! Who are we -- Americans who invented the white rat "test" -- to disagree?

Of course there are still some of us who like the other option -- the slow slogging hunt for natural dens and the back-breaking labor of digging to the dogs through marl, root and rock. This is fair chase, and it is what terrier work is really all about.

For more pictures of German artificial fox den construction, see
>> http://www.jaeger-wesermarsch.de/sonstiges/kunstbau.html
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Coffee and Provocation

• Blind Dachshunds and AKC Inbreeding:
  Gene-testing of wire-haired dachshunds shows that nearly 10% of the dogs carry the gene mutation that causes day blindness (aka "cone-rod dystrophy”). Why would anyone buy a Kennel Club dog with this kind of genetic load? There is clearly a market here for someone to cross out a small scruffy-looking terrier and a regular dachshund in order to get a wire-haired dachshund that is truly healthy. I hope someone will do it quickly and advertise widely: "Wirehaired dachshunds for sale without the Kennel Club defect!"
  
  
• The American Taliban's Madrasha:
  Virginia's Liberty University -- America's very own madrasha -- has decided to shut down the campus Democratic Party Club because that club supports a woman's right to choose. Never mind that a woman's right to choose is the law of the land, and has been the law of the land for more than 35 years.
  
  
• The Mile-Long Que for a Tennessee Elk Tag:
  Back in October, 12,800 people paid a non-refundable $10 fee just to apply for four elk tags. This was the first Tennessee elk hunt in over 150 years. Kentucky already has a herd big enough to hunt.
  
  
• Armed Men On Powerful Drugs:
  MSNBC reports that: "In deploying an all-volunteer army to fight two ongoing wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon has increasingly relied on prescription drugs to keep its warriors on the front lines. In recent years, the number of military prescriptions for antidepressants, sleeping pills, and painkillers has risen as soldiers come home with battered bodies and troubled minds. And many of those service members are then sent back to war theaters in distant lands with bottles of medication to fortify them. According to data from a U. S. Army mental-health survey released last year, about 12 percent of soldiers in Iraq and 15 percent of those in Afghanistan reported taking antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications, or sleeping pills. Prescriptions for painkillers have also skyrocketed. Data from the Department of Defense last fall showed that as of September 2007, prescriptions for narcotics for active-duty troops had risen to almost 50,000 a month, compared with about 33,000 a month in October 2003, not long after the Iraq war began. In other words, thousands of American fighters armed with the latest killing technology are taking prescription drugs that the Federal Aviation Administration considers too dangerous for commercial pilots."
  ..

Canine Achondroplastic Dwarves

A "puddin'" Jack Russell is a dog that is an achondroplastic dwarf. The clear visual signs of this genetic condition are a large chest on short, benched or "Queen Anne" legs. These dogs are also referred to as "shorties" by some people, and as "Irish Jacks" by others.

An achondroplastic dwarf is an animal that cannot run as fast as a well built dog, and it's chest will often be too large for it to go to ground, no matter how much they have "the fire called desire."

Achondroplastic dwarfs are not smaller dogs -- they are almost always larger in the only way that really counts when hunting, which is chest size.

Though an achondroplastic dwarf terrier may be only 10 inches tall, it may be anywhere from 15 to 20 pounds in weight due to the huge chest, big bones, and large head.

Breeds commonly associated with achondroplastic dwarfism are basset hounds, dachshunds, shih-tzus, pekingese, sharpeis and English and French bulldogs. These dog always have limbs that are shorter than their body and often have over-large heads as well.

Achondroplastic dwarfism is a genetic defect and should not be perpetuated. This is not "just another type of small dog" -- this is a dog with non-proportional limbs and very clear symptoms caused by a genetic defect.. "Achondroplasia" literally means "an absence of good shape" and refers to a distortion of the legs (as in the Dachshund and Jack Russell) or head (as in the English Bulldog). Achonodroplasia is associated with back problems, weight problems, and patella problems, as the short legs make it more difficult for the dogs to run, while any added weight further compromises an already unsound skeletal system.

Some ill-informed breeders are intentionally breeding achondroplastic dwarf dogs because they think they are "cute." This is a very bad turn of events, as it simply increases the genetic load on all dogs. The UKC dogs being bred as "Russell Terriers" are often (though not always) achondroplastic dwarves.

A "puddin" Jack Russell terrier does NOT have a different nature or temperament than a regular Jack Russell terrier; they are just as likely to be a cat chaser, hamster killer, and back-yard garden digger, and will do just as poorly in a home where training, exercises, and physical activity is not provided. The defective gene that causes achondroplastic dwarfism is not tied to temperament or personality in any way, shape or form.

Puddin Jack Russell terriers are generally happy and active dogs that seem to enjoy life and they, in turn, should be enjoyed and loved. Please do not breed more achondroplastic dwarfs, however. There are more than enough Jack Russell Terriers in the world looking for pet homes right now. The world does not need more "cute" dogs and it does not need more dogs with genetic problems. Every day perfectly wonderful and cute dogs are being put down in shelters across the U.S., and their only crime is that they are not a puppies.

If you are looking for a pet Jack Russell terrier, the place to start is with Russell Rescue.
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A Rabbit Almost Slips the Hawk - But Not Quite

Teddy Moritz sends the three pictures at left of a strange day in the field (click on pictures to enlarge).

Apparently, Suli the dachshund flushed a rabbit from a brushpile and chased it up a lawn where it tried to dive into this plastic drain pipe -- a good escape route for a small bunny, perhaps, but this fellow had gotten quite a bit bigger since he last tried this escape strategy!

The result of this ill-fated escape attempt was that the rabbit got stuck head in, and feet out. It was only a second or two before Odessa, the Harris Hawk, slammed into the bolted bunny.

End result: one dead rabbit.

Afterwards, Suli checked the pipe hoping that a few more might come out. You never know!

Teddy uses a Teckel or working miniture dachsund to bolt rabbits to her Harris Hawks. Unlike rabbits in Europe, American rabbits den above ground, like hares, but will tuck into a hole or pipe if pursued by dog or hawk, or if the weather is really terrible out (i.e. freezing rain or really bitter cold).

The Harris Hawk is a native of the Southwest U.S. through Mexico, Central America and into the northern half of South America.

A pretty brown and black bird with long legs and a band of white on the end of it tail, it was named by John James Audubon (he called it a "buzzard") after one of his longtime friends and financial supporters, Ed Harris. Audubon also named a sparrow after Harris.

Unlike most birds of prey, Harris Hawks will hunt in groups in the wild, and this natural tendency may account for why they work so well with humans and dogs. Relatively easy to handle, and often quite affectionate, Harris Hawks are now captive-bred for falconry. I do not believe any birds come from the wild anymore. In fact, it would hardly matter if they did; Harris Hawks are very common, and no one has been a better steward to wild raptors than American falconers who have not only pioneered captive breeding techniques now used all over the world, but who have also been a consistent, powerful and well-educated voice for hawk, falcon and eagle conservation across the globe.

A mid-sized bird, the Harris Hawk is a good bird to use on cottontail rabbits (which are smaller than European rabbits), pigeons, other small birds such as quail, rodents, or even mid0sized birds such a pheasant.

A Harris Hawk will typically perch in the tree line as near as possible to where the human and the dog are flushing quarry, following up the field as the hunting team progresses. If a tree is not available, a hawker may provide a perch in the form of a plastic or bamboo T-topped perch pole.

As you can imagine with four animals in play (hawk, human, dog, and rabbit) there is a lot going on in the field when you are hawking!
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Will Not Work for Food

Back in 1946, Field and Stream's Horace Lytle wrote an article noting that Irish Setters were almost completely absent from the hunting field.

In fact, between 1874 and 1948, Irish Setters produced 760 conformation champions, but only five field champions -- a rather dismal state of affairs.

Lytle proposed that Irish Setters be rescued and returned to their working roots by implementing an outcross program.

Lytle noted that the Irish Setter once had quite a lot of white in its coat, and he thought it would not be too bad a thing for the few remaining working Irish Setters to be outcrossed to working English Setters. Yes, some white might show up in the coats, but So What? The dogs had always had that when they had actually been working dogs.

Sports Afield endorsed the call to rescue the Irish Setter from the show ring, and Ned LaGrange of Pennsylvania took up the challenge of creating a systematic outcrossing program based on breeding the few remaining working Irish Setters that were left, with the best field champion English setters.

The result was the "Red Setter" which was blessed and maintained as a working setter by the Field Dog Stud Book (FDSB), with reciprocal registration with the American Kennel Club (AKC).

The problem, of course, was that nonworking AKC Irish setters found it nearly impossible to compete in AKC field trials against Red Setters.

What to do? Well, eliminate the competition, of course!

In 1975 the Irish Setter Club of America petitioned the AKC to deny reciprocal registration to Field Dog Stud Book-registered dogs, and the AKC obliged.

As a result, the AKC Irish Setter remains, to this day, the "least likely to succeed" bird-hunting dog to be found in America, while the Red Setter is a dog that is at least sometimes found under a shotgun.

Now rumor has it that the Irish Setter Club of America has indicated it may reverse itself and grant reciprocal registrations to any Field Dog Stud Book or North American Versatile Hunting Dog Association-registered Irish red setter that has a three-generation pedigree and DNA verification for the same. Final approval awaits a vote of the Irish Setter Club of America Field Trial Committee (the same folks who voted to toss them out 27 years ago).

Of course, what the Irish Setter Club of America has to say on the matter may not matter a whit. You see, no breed club in the AKC actually controls its own registry. The American Kennel Club issues the papers and holds the trials. AKC breed clubs are not allowed to exclude pet shop or puppy mill dogs, and they cannot greenlight registerable outcrosses without the AKC’s expressed permission, nor can they agree to have an open registry or allow dual registration, nor can they require field work as a condition of winning a championship, or require OFA or CERF-testing for registration, etc.

In short, the AKC is not a democracy; it is a business and the larger business model always overrides any breed club carping about genetics, work, or canine health.

As to the business side of the Irish Setter vs. Red Setter controversy, there is a new Joker in the card deck, and that is the fact that the AKC has added the "Irish Red and White Setter" to its Foundation Stock Service roles in expectation of bringing this "new" breed into the fold.

Of course, the "Irish Red and White Setter" is not a new breed; it is simply the old generic working Setter that used to exist before the Kennel Club split the Setters into red "Irish" setters and white "English" setters, and black and tan "Gordon" setters.

Never mind: the Kennel Club split the setters into three breeds of dogs, and now they are hell-bent on splitting them into four. Extending a reciprocal registration to the working "Red Setter" (which frequently presents with white markings adding confusion and diluting the "brand" of the Irish Red and White Setter) may upset the apple cart a little too much.

Or maybe not.

After all, the AKC has not only added the "Parson Russell Terrier" to the AKC roles, but also the the "Russell Terrier" to its Foundation Stock Service. Can the "Irish Jack" be far behind? No doubt it is being penciled in for next year, or the year after that. The 10-year plan for terriers no doubt includes adding the Patterdale Terrrier, the Plummer Terrier, and the Fell Terrier to the mix. Business demands a diversified product, after all, and the business is not canine health or work (things the AKC affirmatively hurts through a closed registry system) but registration money to underwrite the money-loser called dog shows. (For more on that see >> HERE).

One does not need to be a weatherman to guess which way the wind will eventually blow with some breeds. I think it's only a matter of time before the AKC splits the Labrador Retriever into the Black Lab, the Yellow Lab, and the Chocolate Lab, and the various dachshunds into coat types, as well as size. The Parson Russell and Russell Terriers may get split based on coat type as well. Look at what has already been done with bull terriers, collies, and fox terriers, to name just three examples.

Ah well, there's nothing to be done about it. Sleep with dogs, expect fleas. And the Kennel Club is the kind of flea-bitten dog that just keeps giving, and giving and giving in that regard. I expect more breeds to be carved out of old breeds, and working breeds to be continually gobbed up and ruined by the Kennel Club. Some things never change, even if the dogs do.

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- Working Terriers -

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A Quick History of American Terrier Work

A repost from this blog circa August 20, 2005.

For all practical purposes, the story of American terrier work begins in 1971 with Patricia Adams Lent, who founded the American Working Terrier Association to promote working terriers and dachshunds.

The American Working Terrier Association (AWTA) was, and is, a modest organization with fewer than 100 members. It has no headquarters or paid staff, and produces a simple Xeroxed newsletter four times a year. Its web site (as of 2005) has no information about actual hunting or wildlife, and is focused almost entirely on go-to-ground trials.

That said, AWTA is a very important organization in the history of American working terriers, not only because it was the first "club" devoted to the sport, but also because Ms. Lent invented go-to-ground trials, and the basic set of rules governing them.

Since 1971, go-to-ground trials have served as a kind of "on ramp" for actual field work. The basic AWTA format has been widely copied, first by the Jack Russell Terrier Club of America (1976) and then by the American Kennel Club (1994).

The origin of the American go-to-ground tunnel can be found in the artificial fox earths first constructed in the UK in the 1920s, but which came into their own in the 1950s and 60s with the collapse of so many ancient rabbit warrens under the onslaught of myxomatosis.

Artificial earths are generally constructed of two parallel rows of brick stacked three bricks high and topped by overlapping slates, or out of 9-inch clay or concrete drainage pipe laid end-to-end. The result is a very spacious and dry fox earth. If sited within 200 feet of a water source (it does not have to be large), far from residences, and on the edge of fields and small woods, the chance of a fox taking up residence is excellent.

The first artificial fox earths were constructed in order to guarantee that a fox could be found on hunt day, and to encourage fox to run along known courses away from roadways. That said, they also found favor because they proved easy locations for a terrier to bolt a fox from. Even an overlarge dog could negotiate the straight or gently curving unobstructed nine-inch pipes of an artificial earth.

The go-to-ground tunnels devised by Patricia Adams Lent were constructed of wood instead of stone, brick or clay pipe, but were equally commodious, measuring 9 inches on each side with a bare dirt floor for drainage and traction.

From the beginning AWTA's goal was to be inclusive. Scottish Terriers with enormous chests were encouraged to join AWTA, as were owners of West Highland Whites, Cairns, Norfolks, Norwiches, Border Terriers, Fox Terriers, Lakelands, Welsh Terriers and Bedlingtons. All were welcome, with the simple goal of having a little fun with the dogs, and perhaps giving American Kennel Club terrier owners some small idea of what actual terrier work was about.

In AWTA trials, wooden den "liners" are sunk into a trench in the ground. The tunnels are up to 35 feet long with a series of right-angle turns, false dens and exits. The “quarry” at the end of the tunnel is a pair of "feeder" lab rats safely protected behind wooden bars and wire mesh. The rats are not only not harmed, but after 100 years of breeding for docility, some lab rats have been know to go to sleep!

Without a doubt, go-to-ground trials have been a huge hit with American terrier owners. The interior dimensions of the den liners -- 81 inches square -- means even over-large terriers are able to negotiate them with ease. With nothing but a caged rat to face as "quarry," the safety of dogs is guaranteed, and since the dogs only have to bay or dig at the quarry for 90-seconds, most dogs end up qualifying for at least an entry-level certificate or ribbon.

Though the die-hard hunter may sneer, the increasing popularity of go-to-ground terrier trials is a welcome thing, for it has brought more people a little closer to real terrier work.

Owners of dogs that do well in go-to-ground trials should take pride in their dog’s achievements. Like all sports that emulate real work (lumber jack contests, bird dog trials, and sheep dog trials, to name a few), a go-to-ground trial is both harder and easier than its real-world cousin.

A dog that will exit a 30-foot tunnel backwards in just 90 seconds and on a single command (a requirement for earning an AKC Senior Earthdog certificate) is a dog that has been trained to a fairly high degree of proficiency.

Having said that, it should be stressed that a go-to-ground trial has little relationship to true hunting. In the field dogs are not rewarded for speed. In fact, if a hunt terrier were to charge down a real earth like it were a go-to-ground tunnel it would quickly run into quarry capable of inflicting real damage.

In addition, in a real hunting situation a dog must do a great deal more than “work” the quarry for 90 seconds. A good working dog will stick to the task for as long as it can hear people moving about overhead – whether that is 15 minutes or three hours.

The real division street between go-to-ground and earthwork, however, is size. And the real problem with a go-to-ground trial is not that it teaches a dog to go too fast down a tunnel (dogs understand the difference between fake liners and real earth), but that it suggests to terrier owners that any dog that can go down a cavernous go-to-ground tunnel is a dog “suitable for work.”

To its credit, the American Working Terrier Association recognizes the difference between a go-to-ground tunnel and real earth work, and implicitly underscores this difference in its rules for earning a Working Certificate.

AWTA rules note that a terrier or dachshund can earn a working certificate on woodchuck, fox, raccoon, badger, or an “aggressive possum” found in a natural earth, but that “this does not include work in a drain or otherwise man-made earth.”

In short, a drain is not a close proxy for a natural earth, and terriers that are too large to work a natural earth do not meet the requirements of a working terrier.

The American Working Terrier Association issues Certificates of Gameness to dogs qualifying at their artificial den trials. Working Certificates are awarded to dogs that work groundhog, fox, raccoon, possum, or badger in a natural den provided that at least one AWTA member is there as a witness. AWTA also issues a Hunting Certificate to a dog that hunts regularly over a period of a year.

Six years after the American Working Terrier Association was created, Mrs. Alisia Crawford, one of the first Jack Russell Terrier breeders in the U.S., founded the Jack Russell Terrier Club of America (JRTCA)

Ms. Crawford and the early founders of the Jack Russell Terrier Club put a lot of thought into structuring the JRTCA so that work remained front and center. Towards that end, the club decided that its highest award -- the "bronze medallion" -- would not go to show dogs, but to working dogs that had demonstrated their ability in the field by working at least three of six types of American quarry -- red fox, Gray fox, raccoon, groundhog, possum, and badger -- in front of a JRTCA-certified field judge.

In the show ring the JRTCA decided to ban professional handlers as it was thought this would keep the shows fun and less important than the essential element of work.

Instead of mandating the kind of narrow conformation ranges demanded by the Kennel Club for their terrier breeds, the JRTCA divided the diverse world of the Jack Russell Terrier into three coat types (smooth, broken and rough), and two sizes (10 inches tall to 12.5 inches tall, and 12.5 inches tall to 15 inches tall).

"Different horses for different courses" became a watch word, with overt recognition that the world of working terriers required dogs able to work different quarry in different earths, and in different climates.

Unlike the Kennel Club the JRTCA also decided to keep their registry an "open" registry so that new blood might be infused at times. At the same time, the Club discouraged inbreeding and eventually restricted line breeding to a set percentage.

To balance off an open-registry with the desire to keep Jack Russell-type dogs looking like Jack Russells, the JRTCA decided not to allow dogs to be registered at birth or to register entire litters. Instead, each dog would be photographed from each side and the front, and admitted to the registry on their own merit, and as an adult. In addition, each dog had to be measured for height and chest span.

What this meant is that at the time of registration, the height and chest measurement of an adult dog could be recorded. Over time, both height and chest size could be tracked through pedigrees -- an essential element of breeding correctly-sized working terriers.

The JRTCA was not shy about their rationale for these rules: they openly and emphatically opposed Kennel Club registration, maintaining that time had show that dogs brought into the Kennel Club quickly grew too big and often lost other essential working attributes such as nose, voice, and prey drive.

Today the Jack Russell Terrier Club of America is the largest Jack Russell Terrier club and registry in the world, and its Annual National Trial attracts approximately 1,200 Jack Russell terriers from all over the U.S. and Canada.

The JRTCA's small professional staff cranks out a solid bi-monthly magazine that is 80-100 pages long, holds a regular schedule of dog shows, and sells deben locator collars, fox nets, and a host of other items ranging from hats and jackets to coffee cups.

The web site of the Jack Russell Terrier Club of America ( http://www.terrier.com/ is one of the very best dog sites in the United States, packed with well-presented information, high-quality graphics and a user-friendly layout.

Perhaps the most important service work of the JRTCA are the ads that the Club routinely runs in all-breed publications warning people that Jack Russell Terriers are not a dog for everyone, are primarily a hunting dog, and are not like the cute dogs seen on TV.

Sometime in the last 1990s, following the appearance of Jack Russell Terriers in a host of TV and Hollywood productions ranging from "Wishbone" and "Frasier" to "My Dog Skip" and "The Mask," the American Kennel Club decided to add the Jack Russell Terrier to its roles.

As they had previously done with the Border Collie, the AKC ignored the strong opposition of the large existing breed club, and quietly assembled a new club of show-ring breeders to serve as their stalking horse.

The "Jack Russell Terrier Breeders Association" (later called the Jack Russell Terrier Association of America, and now called the "Parson Russell Terrier Association of America") petitioned for the admission of the Jack Russell Terrier into the Kennel Club and, despite the objections of the JRTCA, the breed was admitted in January of 2001.

The admission of the Jack Russell Terrier into the American Kennel Club was a contentious affair, with the JRTCA standing firm on its long-held rule that no dog could be dual-registered.

What this meant is that breeders had to chose whether to remain in the JRTCA or to "get in early" with the AKC before they closed their registry.

Some of the breeders that chose the AKC did so because they thought they could then sell their puppies for more money, others were eager to be the "big fish in a small pond" at the beginning of a new AKC breed registry. Still others were anxious to attend more dog shows,.

Whatever the reason, the Kennel Club required that the Jack Russell Terrier breed description be narrower than that of the JRTCA. The goal of a Kennel Club breed description is to craft a narrow "standard" -- the wide variance in size, coat and look allowed and encouraged in the world of working terriers would not do.

The American Kennel Club breed standard stipulated that an AKC Jack Russell terrier could not be under 12 inches in height nor over 15 inches in height, and further stipulated that "ideal" dog was 14 inches tall and the ideal bitch was 13" tall.

Ironically, this breed description effectively eliminated about 40% of all the American dogs that had actually worked red fox in the U.S.

More importantly, this narrow standard eliminated the small dogs necessary to "size down" a breed -- something absolutely necessary in order to keep working terriers small enough to work.

Of course the American Kennel Club has never been interested in working terriers and the breed club they created has shown no interest in work either.

Under continuing pressure from the working Jack Russell Terrier community in England and the U.S., the British and American Kennel Clubs decided to jettison the "Jack Russell Terrier" name to more easily identify the non-working show ring dog they favored.

Now called the "Parson Russell Terrier," the AKC dog is quickly getting too big in the chest to work -- though not many dogs are actually taken out into the field to try.

After just three years in the Kennel Club, the "Parson Russell Terrier Club" tried to modify the show ring standard so that the dog no longer had to be spanned. In fact, many Kennel Club judges do not know how to span a terrier and many do not do it as a consequence.

In 2001, the United Kennel Club started an "earth work" program modeled after that of the Jack Russell Terrier Club of America. The UKC working terrier program remains small, with relatively few judges, and it does not appear to be growing very rapidly.

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Working Dachshunds: Very Useful in the Field

Suli with a Spring groundhog.


Teddy Moritz writes that: "Digging season on the farms has just commenced up here. I'm starting an eighteen month old mini longhair dachshund named Suli. This is the fourth chuck she's seen in the last three days. She's making progress and the farmer is happy. Suli worked rabbits under the hawk all winter but these varmints that bite back are a different quarry."

If you have never seen a working dachshund in the field, you are missing something. They have good noses, loud voices, and chests small enough to get down the hole with ease. Another advantage they have is that they are a little less likely than a terrier to try to wrestle the quarry into submission, which means a dachshund is a little less likely than a terrier to get injured and have to sit out a week or two while things knit up. Since we can dig year round in the U.S., this is no small thing.

It should be noted that working dachshunds are not the ponderous heavy-bodied standard dachshunds most people are familiar with. In fact, to differentiate working dachshunds from their heavy-chested pet- and show-dog cousins, the German word "Teckel" is generally used.

Working Teckels come in three sizes:

• Standard Teckels are supposed to have a chest measurement of 35 cm, or 13.78 inches. This is about the same size chest size as that of the average red fox.
  
  
• Miniature Teckels are dogs that have a chest circumference of 30 to 35 cm measured when at least 15 months old. This smaller chest allows the dog to follow even a very small vixen to ground in a very tight earth.
  
  
• Rabbit Teckels have a chest circumference of up to 30 cm measured when at least 15 months old. As the name suggests, these dogs are sometimes used for rabbiting, and many have chests that are as small around as 10 inches.
  

For those interested in working dachshunds in North America, see >> http://www.teckelclub.org/hunting-with-dachs.htm

For those interested in the German or FCI standard for the working Teckel or hunting Dachshund, see >> http://www.fci.be/uploaded_files/148GB99_en.doc (WORD document)

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Small World Department

Steve Bodio gives a "big water bowl" boost to Lilly the dacshund.

The world is a small southern town. A while back, I discovered that Teddy Moritz's Harris Hawk was sired by Matt Mullenix's retired bird Charlie. Now it turns out that Steve Bodio's long-haired dachshund, Lilly, is related to Teddy's line of long-haired min-dachshunds, while his two lurchers, Pearlie and Plum (short for Plummer), are Hancock-bred animals as was Keeper, Teddy's old shattered-eye lurcher which was, I think, one of the spookiest-looking dogs I ever looked in the face.


Pearlie the lurcher looking guilty for having found a soft seat.



Bear the stag hound (left) and Plum the lurcher (right).

Since I've got a couple of lurcher pictures up, and I mentioned Col. David Hancock, I will quote from a Hancock article that first appeared in the The Countryman's Weekly back on July 14, 2000:

"Dog breeders have a huge moral responsibility, magnified by the increasing loss of role for breeds which once worked. Function once decided design. Now the whim of man all too often distorts a design originally drawn up by knowledgeable people who worked their dogs.

"Pastoral breeds were never intended to possess coats, which would hamper them at work. Working Bloodhounds do not display the degree of wrinkle seen in the breed in the show rings of today. Working Bassets, or English Bassets as they have now become known, do not display the over-long backs and under-length legs found in their show ring counterparts.

"The pursuit of undesirable and harmful exaggerations in breeds of dog tells you more about the moral shortcomings of man than about the faults in individual dogs."

8 To read the full article

Hazards in the Hedge

Teddy Moritz with Harris hawk, dachshund and rabbits. Teddy has worked dogs for 40 years, starting with a bull terrier and then moving to Russells before finding true happiness with working dachshunds.



The post about "glass middens" a couple of days ago got Teddy Moritz to reminiscing about some of the odd things she has dug into over the years.

"Living and mouching about for varmints in northern NJ has shown me many 'middens', aka trash heaps. One county where I lived was the bottom of an ancient lake therefore much of it is wetlands. However, before legislation to stop development many sites were filled with debris of great variety. An archeological dig in many parts of this county would probably yield trash further back than the early 1900's. Maybe Jimmy Hoffa is out there too. I did find a set of false teeth once...

"Groundhogs being the resourceful prey species they are, my dachshunds once cornered one in a damaged glass cider jug. The neck of the bottle had been broken and the chuck was harboring in the main part of the bottle. Pretty efficient for awhile. Another time a chuck was backed up under the roots of our favorite dump-site tree, a young Ailanthus. The dogs would go in, bay, then back out. I would jab my small trowel in and the chuck would bite it. I would send the dogs in and they acted as if they were blocked off. When I eventually opened the den I found an old license plate. The chuck had been pushing it up in front of the dogs when they went in. Clever rodent. The dachshunds often found chucks harboring inside old buried cars. Tough to get them out when they are in the drive shaft. One chuck was up inside a car door. When I tried to pry the door apart with my shovel the shovel handle broke, hit me on the eyebrow and knocked me out briefly. When I got the bleeding stopped I continued and we got the rascal. Half-buried old truck beds are also good places to find varmint. I once lost a red fox because he was tight up inside a bulldozed mound of old cars. Just could not get to him. Most of our groundhogs use plastic as bedding and it's not uncommon to find many yards of plastic sheeting jammed into dens. And on and on. Old farm dumps are great places to find varmints, as you've found. The broken glass can be a problem...I've got scars on my fingers where I've tried to pull dirt out and found shards of glass. The dogs often yank at old mattresses, balls of twine, old clothing, etc. when trying to get to a chuck. Good times in skanky places. Cops asked me to leave one of my best spots after it was declared a Super Fund site. There was every kind of ground game imaginable on that old landfill. Kind of spooky working a place where the ground was burning, especially in winter when the warm places were devoid of snow. The access to this spot was over an old bridge. Had to 'walk the plank' to get to the good area. The dump was an island in an old river bed, ah the memories. My big male bull terrier couldn't swim and he chased a coon into that water. About half way across the chocolate-colored water his body reminded him he had no floatation and he started to go under. I swam out to him to rescue him, grabbing sixty pounds of hard muscle and light brains. The dachshunds of course thought the bull and I had something, so they swam out too, trying to ride my shoulders. The coon got away across the river. Another swim occurred while ratting in a big landfill. The rats would run across the debris floating in the water but the dogs would have to swim. Again the bull had to be rescued. Sometimes I am amazed I had normal children, after those drenchings."

Should Crufts Be Banned?

Should Crufts Be Banned? That's the title of this piece (appended below) by Beverley Cuddy from The Daily Telegraph .

As I have noted in previous posts, Crufts was created by a man who never owned a dog himself and who put on the show as a money-making proposition. Nothing has changed as far as I can tell: It is still not about the dogs, and it's still all about human ego and money.

Editor: Dirty tricks and eccentric topiary are one thing. But on the eve of Britain's biggest dog show, Beverley Cuddy asks whether we are endangering man's best friend
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We're all suckers for puppy dog eyes. Maybe that's why the BBC has, for the second year running, allowed Ben Fogle to present its Crufts coverage, which begins again tomorrow. It obviously doesn't matter that he can't tell his Affenpinschers from his Estrelas; most of his audience will drool in any case.

Unfortunately, for the excessively jowled breeds like the St Bernard, Newfoundland and Bloodhound, the drooling will continue long after the credits stop rolling.

I'm far from immune to canine charms, but increasingly I find myself wondering whether it would not be better if Crufts were banned. After all, what good does it do? For me, showing dogs must have some higher purpose than simply accumulating rosettes. I'm no killjoy - the exhibitors can all have their bit of fun with the silly walks and eccentric topiary - but surely someone has to look after our best friend's best interests.

We've all had a snigger over the past few years at the bizarre goings-on in the show world: the poison pen letters that led to the Best in Show judge resigning in 2004; the drugging of rivals' dogs; even the case of the terrier that had three testicles -the owner had implanted a fake one (just one of the dog's testicles had descended into the scrotum and the judges require two on display), only to have the retained testicle drop during the show. As a result, the owner was banned from showing dogs for several years.

But behind the outward eccentricities of the owners and trainers, real dogs' lives are being increasingly affected by this seemingly mad and ferociously competitive world.

Sadly, health concerns seem to be close to the bottom of the show dog agenda for the canine governing bodies in Britain and America. There are just over 200 pedigree breeds in Britain and, shockingly, more than 150 of them have significant hereditary diseases.

At the moment in the UK, testing dogs for health issues is purely a matter of personal conscience. Most people believe all the beautiful dogs at Crufts are perfectly healthy. I'm afraid many are anything but.

Let's put Crufts into a historical context. Dog and man have been best friends for 100,000 years or so. Dogs helped us catch our dinner; they protected us while we slept. In return they shared our food and homes. Over time, the genetically elastic dog was changed into different shapes to help us more. Thankfully, our dabbling with eugenics didn't harm the dog, as we selected for function not fashion.

With industrialisation, the dog's employment opportunities started to dry up. It was around this time that Britain invented the dog show and Kennel Clubs. The face of British dogs was to change as the concept of human beauty became the reason to breed. In an era where bearded ladies were considered interesting, many oddities were prized when they should have been avoided. Physical traits such as hairlessness and squashed faces were encouraged.

When the first Kennel Club was formed in 1873, the gene pools for hundreds of pedigree dogs were soon to be sealed. It wouldn't have taken a genius to predict that there would be trouble ahead as relatively small numbers of dogs were then mated together for the next 150 years.

There are now more than 30,000 genetic defects identified in pedigree dogs, with a new one being discovered every month. As well as the inevitable in-breeding caused by the cult of pedigree, dogs' health has been further challenged by the peculiar fashions and foibles of the show world, which has kept "improving" the appearance of breeds.

The Bulldog is the obvious example of a breed changed almost beyond recognition. Show judges began to favour a massive head, so it grew ever larger, unchecked. However, the pelvis remained the same size, meaning Caesarean births became the norm. Almost every breed has been changed to a degree - the Chow used to have fairly normal eyes, but the judges took to favouring tiny eyes, with devastating results.

Many Chows now have to have their painful in-growing eyelashes removed. The judges liked the Dachshund to have a longer back and shorter legs - unsurprisingly, spinal problems resulted. It has not taken long for 100,000 years of breeding for function to be undone.

If you wanted to breed from a dog that's deaf, blind, crippled with hip dysplasia or suffering from a heart condition, you'd probably expect the Kennel Club to refuse to take your money. Sadly, you'd be wrong. At the moment - I think shamefully - KC registration is no mark of quality. It'll proudly compare itself to Debrett's. It'll say it is paid to record lineage, not intelligence or health. But it doesn't have to be this way.

Twenty or more years ago the Swedish Kennel Club decided to reform its practices and made health tests mandatory. It also ensured that breeders took notice of the results by simplifying the complex systems of testing for hereditary diseases, so people had clear guidelines on what to breed with what.

It even came up with ways of ensuring the breadth of the gene pool was preserved by establishing quotas so that no stud dog could be overused - unlike in Britain and America, where a top winning stud dog can sire an unlimited number of litters, meaning that almost every dog in the breed can end up a half brother or sister.

The Kennel Club (as the British KC likes to be known), however, has left it to the breeders to police themselves. It has softened a few words in the breed standards that constitute the blueprint which the judges are meant to aim for - but hasn't disciplined any judges for continuing to favour the unhealthy exaggerations that make even breathing hard work for many breeds.

Over the past 50 years, our pedigree breeds have been growing increasingly unhealthy, life expectancies have fallen drastically and some breed characteristics have become exaggerated almost beyond recognition. For example, the Bernese Mountain Dog, a breed that increasingly suffers from cancer, is now lucky to reach the age of seven. The Irish wolfhound, selectively bred for its massive size, has been left susceptible to bone cancer and has a similar life expectancy. Your average mongrel will live two or three times as long.

Those who sport the hallowed KC members' badge at dog shows radiate pride. But while everyone wants to wear the badge, few seem to want to reform the system. Maybe history has taught them to keep their heads down. About 20 years ago, the Kennel Club decided to expel one of its members for publicly saying it should do more to prevent health problems in dogs.

That member was Dr Malcolm Willis, probably the world's leading expert on hip dysplasia in dogs. The club has taken him back now, but sadly no one listens to his demands for mandatory health testing in dogs that will be bred from and are disposed to hip dysplasia.

Similarly, no one at the KC seems interested in the British government ratifying the European Convention for the Protection of Pet Animals. To date, 21 countries have signed this, including Turkey.

As well as laying down minimum requirements for good animal welfare, the convention highlights a list of breed characteristics that need to be modified for the dogs' best interests. The KC argues that we don't need Europe telling us what to do - the breeds are safe in its hands, it says; it has got it all under control.

The KC's expensive Clarges Street offices in London are hung with beautiful canine art from an era before the show world distorted the shape of so many of our wonderful breeds. The dogs in those pictures left the destiny of their pups to the KC - and it has let them down very badly.

I'll still watch Crufts. After all, I'm an optimist. I'm just hoping someone will soon stand up and start making Crufts not just the biggest dog show in the world, but the best.
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Beverley Cuddy is editor of Dogs Today magazine

Whippet Good

Matt Mullenix and Rina the Whippet, with Rina's first brace of rabbits. The title to this post was stolen from an email from Matt -- a reference to an old Devo song.

One of the unplanned benefits of this blog is that I have met, online, some pretty cool people who, though they may hunt differently than I do, share the same three- and four-species trials, tribulations and thrills of making it all work in the field while hunting.

Along with the folks that hunt with ferrets are the long-doggers and, perhaps most interesting of all, the hawkers and falconers. This last group is, without a doubt, the most literate group of complex-primitive hunters.

The picture, above, is of Matthew Mullenix and his young whippet Rina. There was a hawk in this hunt, of course, but as Matt explains it (quoting Gregg Barrow, another online friend), "The first season belongs to the dog," and these rabbits are purely Rina's.

The first season, of course, refers to the dog's first season -- not the hawk's or the human's. Matt's well-written and insightful journal this season is more about Rina the whippet (at least so far) than his veteran hawk Smash.

It was on Matt's blog that I learned that his old bird, Charlie, is now in stud at the Coulson's down in Louisiana (Tom and Jennifer Coulson are Harris Hawk breeders, fliers and mentors par excellence) and that Charlie had sired the new Harris Hawk that digger and hawker Teddy Moritz is now flying in New Jersey. A small universe, eh? Teddy's new hawk nailed its first bunny back in mid-October -- a development I learned on Matt's blog.

Matt took a long hawking swing around America recently. To read a little about his visit at Steve Bodio's, see the Querencia blog where he and Reid Farmer also blog with Steve.

Steve Bodio and Reid Farmer are another pair of interesting writers I stumbled upon due to this blog -- the kind of people who write about Turkish pigeons (No Dear, not Turkish prisons, Turkish pigeons), and the commonalities found among petroglyphs across the world. Three voices and three interests make for a rich gumbo at Querencia -- with occassional dashes of good stuff from other bloggers, naturalists, hawkers and doggers to spice it all up.

OK, back to dogs -- specifically hawking dogs.

I observe that a very rich and diverse variety of canines are found in the hawking world, and that the choice of dog may have less to do with the hawk than with the countryside being hawked and the collateral game than can be had in non-hawking seasons.

Teddy Mortiz, for example, hawks under a small pack of long-coated miniature dachshunds -- dogs that are useful for busting rabbits out of the tight thick stands of multiflora rose that are found in the East, but which also do double dirt dog duty on groundhog, fox, raccoon and possum.

Steven Bodio, who lives on one of the high flat stretches of upland New Mexico, has a love affair with the type of Turkish long-dog know as a Tazi -- a function of the jack rabbits, coyotes, and vast open spaces he has in his neck of the woods.

Hawker Rebecca O'Connor recently acquired a nice red Brittany. Her first Brittany was so well acclimated it licked the Falcon on the face and the bird actually tolerated it. A small all-pupose bird dog, Brittany's do well in a wide variety of cover -- a good all-rounder for California.

In other parts of the country, Jack Russells and beagles are popular for busting bunnies out of brush, while down in Louisiana, Matt has a fondness for whippets which are good warm-weather dogs for swamp rabbits and cotton rats as well as for busting birds out of tall tropical grasses.

For more on the subject, see >> Rabbit Hawker's Dogs.




A young male Harris Hawk and a longhaired dachshund named Fitz (as in Fitz-in-dens) which has an 11 inch inch chest, both owned and hunted by Teddy Moritz. The young tiercel Harris has been doing the business on eastern cotton tails.

A Brief History of AWTA

For all practical purposes, the story of American terrier work begins in 1971 with Patricia Adams Lent who founded the American Working Terrier Association (AWTA) to promote working terriers and dachshunds. Ms. Lent owned a 120-acre farm in New York State and raised Lakeland Terriers and Cairn Terriers as well as Border Terriers. She worried that “since there is no longer a need for terriers to actively take part in vermin control” that small Kennel Club terriers would loose their prey-drive and devolve to mere companion animals.

The American Working Terrier Association was, and is, a modest organization with about 100 members. It has no headquarters or paid staff, and produces a simple Xeroxed newsletter four times a year. Its web site (as of the end of 2005) has no information about actual hunting or wildlife, and is focused almost entirely on go-to-ground trial notices.

That said, AWTA is an important organization in the history of American working terriers, not only because it was the first “club” devoted to the sport, but also because Ms. Lent invented go-to-ground trials and the basic set of rules governing them.

Since 1971, go-to-ground trials have served as a kind of “on ramp” for actual field work in the U.S. The basic AWTA format has been widely copied, first by the Jack Russell Terrier Club of America (1976) and then by the American Kennel Club (1994).

The origin of the American go-to-ground tunnel can be found in the artificial fox earths first constructed in the U.K. in the 1920s, but which came into their own in the 1950s and 60s with the collapse of rabbit populations and warrens under the onslaught of myxomatosis.

In the U.K., artificial earths are generally constructed of two parallel rows of brick stacked three bricks high and topped by overlapping slates, or out of 9-inch clay or concrete drainage pipe laid end-to-end. The result is a very spacious and dry fox earth. If sited within 200 feet of a water source (it does not have to be large), far from houses, and on the edge of fields and small woods, the chance of a fox taking up residence is excellent.

The first artificial fox earths were constructed in order to guarantee that a fox could be found on hunt day, and to encourage fox to run along known courses away from roadways. That said, they also found favor because they proved easy locations for a terrier to bolt a fox from. Even an overlarge dog could negotiate the straight or gently curving unobstructed nine-inch pipes of an artificial earth.

The go-to-ground tunnels devised by Patricia Adams Lent were constructed of wood instead of stone, brick or clay pipe, but were equally commodious, measuring 9 inches on each side, with a bare dirt floor for drainage and traction.

From the beginning, AWTA’s goal was to be inclusive. Scottish Terriers with enormous chests were encouraged to join AWTA, as were owners of West Highland Whites, Cairns, Norfolks, Norwitches, Border Terriers, Fox Terriers, Lakelands, Welsh Terriers and Bedlingtons. All were welcome. The goal was not to replicate actual hunting, but to give people an opportunity to have a little fun with the dogs, and perhaps give Kennel Club terrier owners some small idea of what a terrier’s “prey drive” was supposed to be about.

In AWTA trials, wooden den “liners” are sunk into a trench in the ground. The tunnels are up to 35 feet long with a series of right-angle turns, false dens and exits. The “quarry” at the end of the tunnel is a pair of “feeder” lab rats safely protected behind wooden bars and wire mesh. The rats are not only not harmed, but after 100 years of breeding for docility, some lab rats have been know to go to sleep in the middle of a trial!

Without a doubt, go-to-ground trials have been a huge hit with American terrier owners. The interior dimensions of the den liners — 81 inches square — allow even over-large terriers enough room to negotiate the turns, and with nothing but a caged rat as “quarry,” the safety of a dog is guaranteed. In addition, since dogs only have to bay or dig at the quarry for 90-seconds, most dogs end up qualifying for at least an entry-level certificate or ribbon — an award for the owner, and a bit of encouragement to join AWTA and perhaps even take a dog out into the field for real hunting.

Though the die-hard hunter may discount large wooden “earths” and caged rats as quarry, the increasing popularity of go-to-ground trials should be seen as a welcome thing, as it has been a door to genuine field work for many people.

Owners of dogs that do well in go-to-ground trials should take pride in their dog’s achievements. Like all sports that emulate real work (lumber jack contests, bird dog trials, sheep dog trials), a go-to-ground trial is both harder and easier than its real-world cousin.

A dog that will exit a 30-foot tunnel backwards in just 90 seconds and on a single command (a requirement for earning an AKC Senior Earthdog certificate) is a dog that has been trained to a fairly high degree of proficiency.

Having said that, it should be stressed that a go-to-ground trial has little relationship to true hunting. In the field, dogs are not rewarded for speed. In fact, if a hunt terrier were to charge down a real earth like it were a go-to-ground tunnel, it would quickly run into quarry capable of inflicting real damage.

In addition, in a real hunting situation a dog must do a great deal more than “work” the quarry for 90 seconds. A good working dog will stick to the task for as long as it can hear people moving about overhead – whether that is 15 minutes or three hours.

The real division street between go-to-ground and earthwork, however, is size. And the real problem with a go-to-ground trial is not that it teaches a dog to go too fast down a tunnel (dogs understand the difference between fake liners and real earth), but that it suggests to Kennel Club terrier owners that any dog that can go down a cavernous go-to-ground tunnel is a dog “suitable for work.”

To its credit, the American Working Terrier Association recognizes the difference between a go-to-ground tunnel and real earth work, and implicitly underscores this difference in its rules for earning a Working Certificate.

AWTA rules note that a terrier or dachshund can earn a working certificate on groundhog, fox, raccoon, badger, or an “aggressive possum” found in a natural earth, but that “this does not include work in a drain or otherwise man-made earth.”

In short, a drain is not a close proxy for a natural earth, and terriers that are too large to work a natural earth do not meet the requirements of a working terrier.

The American Working Terrier Association issues Certificates of Gameness to dogs qualifying at their artificial den trials. Working Certificates are awarded to dogs that work groundhog, fox, raccoon, possum, or badger in a natural den provided that at least one AWTA member is there as a witness. AWTA also issues a Hunting Certificate to a dog that hunts regularly over a period of a year.