Working Terrier Year Book: A Box Full of Jewels

The compilation volume entitled The Working Terrier Year Book, 1987-1991 is a box of small jewels, and a good read for the dedicated working terrier enthusiast.

The book is eclectic and full of short pieces on a wide variety of themes related to working terriers, but if there is a central thread that holds these pearls together, it is that the sand is always slipping steadily through the glass. Some of what what has gone before will never come back, and some of what what exists now may soon be lost forever.

The passage of time is not entirely unexpected as a theme in a Year Book, least of all one on working terriers in the U.K.

It was during during this five-year period, after all, when the political pressures to ban fox hunting really began their ascendency, and when the last vestiges of legal badger work had only recently gone the way of the buggy whip.

At the same time, the push was on to pull the Jack Russell Terrier into the Kennel Club, while some of the legendary greats of the terrier world from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, were getting long in the tooth and passing on to the Great Hunting Ground in the sky.

Add to this mix one of the constant beats in the terrier world: the loss of great dogs before their time, coupled with the rise of young know-nothings and fools who continue to give the sport a bad name.

So is the book grim, then?

Suprisingly, not at all, for the central voice is that of the diggers that have endured and will always endure, not the least of whom is editor David Harcombe himself.

A short section bemoaning "Which way for the Jack Russell Terrier?" is also somewhat bemused that otherwise intelligent people are going down the road to Kennel Club oblivion thinking this old road must now lead to somewhere else.

A piece entitled "The Spirit is Willing," is a celebration of an old dog who nearly loses his life due to the mistake of his owner.

A piece entitled "Respect for the Quarry" reminds us all that we safeguard our own self-respect when we treat dogs and wildlife with some reverance.

Again and again in this book we get quick profiles of notable characters, famous names, and unique voices in the world of digging. We also get a regular peppering of concern and amazement about about how terrier work is presented in the press.

I have to say I do not wonder why terrier work is often misrepresented: the world seems to be full of young fools only too happy to do it all wrong and present the ugly side up. This last week, for example, I was rather alarmed to read one person on a semi-public forum who suggested that a ban on fighting dogs was a threat to terrier work (it is not, and to equate the two is pure nonsense and an insult), while on another semi-public board a young digger posted pictures of the ugliest kind of fox culling. Did we need to see that?

Of coure the young who have done very little have to show all they have ever done, no matter how pathetic. And if some people waited for knowledge before they spoke, we would still not know they existed.

As an antidote to the poseurs, this Working Terrier Year Book gives us the varied voices of experience -- of those who observe that a mute dog was never valued in the old days, and who note that a really hard dog cannot stick with it over the several hours (or more) that it may take to dig deep.

My favorite line, is stolen from Napoleon Bonaparte, and is used to describe why show rings are incapable of judging the invisible but not emphemeral, qualities of a true working terrier: "The spirit is to the material as three is to one." Excellent!

Some book reviews are also included: a very nice (and well deserved) review of David MacDonald's Running With the Foxes, and an excoriating (and equally well-deserved) review of the awful novel Trog by D. Brian Plummer.

And, of course, there are stories of digs and dogs and men. The murky pedigrees of some famous terriers are debated as if they are important, while a well-thought out piece on Jocelyn Lucas wonders whether his dogs were really any good and whether Lucas himself was more of a writer than a digger (good question, good question!) Short profiles are given of such "names" in the world of working terriers as Bert Gripton, Arthur Nixon, John Park, Ken Smith, and Ken Gould.

All in all, this book was an easy and quite enjoyable read, as it presents a varied set of topics in easy-to-digest bits and pieces that are perfect for consumption between coffee and work, dinner and bed. A very worthy addition to any working terrier book collection.


4Hard cover, 425 pages, edited (and often written) by David Harcombe

4Available from: Fieldfare, P.O. Box 2, Llandro SA19 6EW at cost of £25 pounds including postage and shipping within the U.K. and £27 pounds to Europe and Ireland, and £29 pounds to the U.S.A.

4To order via credit card (PayPal), >> CLICK HERE

.

"Strong Dog" Trials: Where Fancy Leads to Fantasy

I received a note this week from a noted dog magazine asking if I would be interested in writing an article about the "Strong Dog" go-to-ground trials that have recently been set up by some of the show ring set here in the U.S.

My short answer was "no." The story here is that these "strong dog" trials were created by a Glen of Imaal terrier owner here in America who was trying to find some fake sport (not true field hunting or even barn hunting) that over-large terriers could do that was parallel to American "earth dog" trials.

It seems that agility, obedience, tracking, etc. were not exclusive enough -- any and every breed of dog could be found in these competitions.

What the large-terrier owners wanted was some type of fake field sport which they could claim was a mimic of some useful thing their breed once did.

Unfortunately, the Glen of Imaal and the other large Irish terrier breeds (such as the Kerry Blue) were never used for hunting. They were farm dogs, fighting dogs, cart dogs or types of turnspit dogs. Some of the Irish breeds, like the Irish Terrier, were cobbled up solely for the show ring.

Today in Ireland badger are still dug, but they are dug with the same dogs used all over -- working Jack Russell Terriers, working Patterdale Terriers, working Border Terriers, and various types of not too-large cross-bred dogs. In Germany and a few other countries, working Dachshunds (teckels) are also used.

The idea behind a "Strong Dog" trial is that a dog is needed to pull a large dead badger down a long length of pipe. Never mind that the goal of digging to a dog is to come down on top of the critter, not 30 feet away. Never mind that if you shot a badger any distance down a pipe you would probably have to shoot through your own dog first. Never mind that you cannot shoot a bullet around corners.

Remember, this "strong dog" stuff is a fanciers fantasty, not a digger's reality. Fanciers have never heard of badger tongs, snares, or locator collars and do not understand that when an animal is killed underground, it is generally an arm's length away.

What follows is a post I wrote in March 19, 2005 for this blog which sets out the origins of the fake work now being called a "strong dog" trial.

n n n n n n n n n n n

.

No terrier breed is very old.

Depite the fact that all but one or two terrier breeds originated in the last 150 years, most breed histories are so riddled with myth, lies, confusions, disortions, exagerations and fantasies that they are nearly unfathomable.

Part of this has to do with the mythology of show ring aficionados. A coat color variation will pop up in a litter and someone will admire it and attempt to breed more like it. To butter the bread a bit, a short story is invented to explain why the attribute has some imagined import in the world of working terriers ("White dogs are less likely to be mistaken for the fox"). A dog's legs are low to the ground and another attribute is given meaning ("The dachsunds short legs enable it to get to ground with ease"). A dog's nose is lengthened, solely for looks, and we are told this is necessary for work ("The fox terriers long snout keeps its eyes well back from the fox").

In fact, most terrier breeds were never seriously or commonly worked, and even a few of the breeds which many believed were commonly worked never did much outside of one or two owners. The Sealyham terrier -- a great favorite of Sir Jocelyn Lucas -- was such a smash favorite that it was repeatedly said that Lucas "had the only pack of working Sealyhams" in the U.K., and he himself attempted to abandon the breed by crossing it with a Norfolk terrier which, in turn, resulted in such an unimpressive dog that it too passed into the realm of footnotes and fantasy until it was recreated and shoved into the show ring in recent years.

So it is with breed after breed in the terrier world, from Cairn to Norfolk, from Scottie to Irish, from Manchester to Skye, from Yorkie to Kerry Blue. None of these dogs ever saw serious work underground, at least not in anything like their current recognizeable form.

The short and simple truth is that the world of working terriers has changed very little in the last 200 years. The same dogs are being dug to today that were being dug to 100 years ago -- no more and no less. The shovels are the same and the bar is the same. Only the Deben locator is different.

This is not to say that a lot of trumped up histories have not been invented -- from fake paintings of Trump (Jack Russell's dog) to fanciful descriptions of shepherds protecting their flocks from marauding fox the size of wolves, to the creation of mysterious "extinct" breeds of terriers which, a close reading of history reveals, never even existed at all (or still exist, but under a different name).

As noted in previous posts, most terriers breeds evolved (or devolved as the case may be) from cross-bred farm terriers with little or no particular function. Most of these dogs were all-purpose pets and chore companions who, it was hoped, would score an occassional rat, bush a rabbit, and perhaps discourage a fox from entering the farm yard and stealing a chicken. In truth, their chief "job" then -- as now -- was to sleep, clean off kitchen plates, trot at their owner's side, and greet guests and family members with enthusiasm.

Some of these all-purpose terriers found honest work as cart dogs, riding high on the cart and protecting the horse-drawn "trucks" of the 19th Century from petty thieves. Every bread man had a cart dog, and so too did most fishmongers, butcher boys, and fruit merchants.

A few terriers found work as "turnspit" dogs. The job of the turnspit dog was to walk around an endless wooden "rat race" wheel turning meats that were being roasted -- or else churning butter, pumping water or even washing clothes.

Turnpsit dogs had to be short since they had to fit within half a turning wheel housed inside a small kitchen or out building, but they also had to be very strong, as their jobs frequently lasted many hours without rest.

What ever happened to these "turnspit" dogs? Most simply vanished, but one Irish type -- the Glen of Imaal Terrier -- was declared a "breed," though in truth it never much caught on with the public.

The Glen of Imaal Terrier stands about 14 inches tall, but it has a massive head and chest and weighs in at around 35 pounds -- more than twice the weight of the average vixen. These dogs were never designed to go down a fox den -- they are simply too big. This is a short strong dog designed to turn a spit. They also found some use in another arena -- badger baiting and dog fighting.

Small strong dogs were often used in the cruel-practice of badger-baiting which, it should be said, has nothing to do with badger hunting despite the rather obvious effort to confuse the two by animal rights lunatics.

Badger baiting is a betting game in which captive badgers are loaded into barrels, pipes or artificial earths so that humans can bet on dogs that are timed as they draw them out. A baited badger may face several dogs over an extended period of time and there is no larger point to it than to win sums of money or bragging rights, while considerable stress (and sometimes injury) is inflicted on the badger and the dog.

Badger hunting, on the other hand, is a legitimate form of pest control in which the badger is terminated as quickly and painlessly as possible, or else sacked to be moved to another earth. There is no betting, and the badger is not likely to suffer damage from the dog, though the converse cannot always be said.

The Glen of Imaal Terrier, which started out as a turnspit dog, found some popularity with Irish badger baiters and dog fighters. This was a dog that was large enough to pull a large badger out of a barrel -- something beyond the abilities of most 15-pound fox-working dogs.

The use of Glen of Imaal Terrier by badger baiters led some to believe this dog was often used for badger hunting. In fact, this was not so. Arthur Heinemann's Badger Digging Club, which later became the Jack Russell Terrier Club of Great Britain, used Jack Russell Terriers to do the job. Sir Jocelyn Lucas used a pack of very small Sealyham terriers. Bert Gripton used very small cross-bred Jack Russells, etc.

When badger baiting was banned, a small group of Glen of Imaal Terrier owners invented a "test" in an attempt to give their breed continued purpose in a changing world. Thus was born the "Teastas Beg" and the "Teastas Mor" -- gaelic words meaning "Little Test" and "Big Test"

The Teastas Beg was a pretty modest affair and was really nothing more that artificial ratting and rabbit bushing.

"A Teastas Beag consisted of flinging rats into a large pond and allowing the dogs competing to swim and hunt one at a time. The inexperienced handlers of the rats created much merriment and a large proportion of the rats survived to tell the tale. In the case of the rabbits, each one was released from a marked spot on the fresh ground. As soon as it had taken cover the dog was released at the spot where the rabbit had been set free. He was required to run the trail accurately and to hunt well through briars and undergrowth. The actual catching and killing of the rabbit was immaterial as any untrained dog will often do that. Often to save time, the judges would call up a dog once he had satisfied them as to his capabilities."

The Teastas Mor was simply an attempt to bring back badger baiting, albeit under the cover of a "club" activity. Only a handful of Teastas Mor events were ever held, as the authorities quickly ruled them illegal and in violation of the badger baiting laws. As one observor noted of a 1926 Teastas Mor event:

"On the first and second occasions the badger chute was defined as, (rule A4) 'A natural shore at least fifteen feet long, not more than sixteen inches wide with a bed ten feet from the mouth. A well about twelve inches square to contain the badger must be at least eight inches below the level of the shore and at right angles to it.' It is obvious that such an exact arrangement could not have been natural. It was artificial, the sides and top being of timber. This rule cause the Committee's undoing at the subsequent State Prosecutions. The Court held that the baiting of a captive animal had been proved which is contrary to the law and the defendant members of the Committee were fined."

Later the "earth," while still artificial, was constructed of earth and stones and sodded over with grass. The end effect was a bit like a cross between an AKC earthdog set up and an artificial earth for fox.

Unfortunately, a twising den earth in real earth proved too difficult for over-large Glen of Imaal Terriers to negotiate!

"Natural badger work still appeared unwieldy to the Committee and the Teastas Mor on that occasion consisted of an artificial earth constructed of stones and covered over with sods some time previously. The growth of grass made it, in the absence of direct evidence, almost impossible to prove the construction artificial. The badger was put in early that morning before the possible arrival of any police inspectors. It was one captured by a small Blue Bitch of mine, 'Emer,' the previous week. These preparations defeated their own object, for the earth was too long and too narrow and too twisty for the dogs, and none of them succeeded in drawing the badger while some were severely mauled in the attempt. I never saw that particular earth, but it was feelingly pointed out that the members who constructed it had not entered any of their own dogs! After that it was a case of 'back to nature' - a decision both welcome and sound."

In fact, there was no "back to nature" with the Glen of Imaal; very few of the dogs ever worked historically, and almost none are found in the field today even in those countries where legal and illegal badger digging is common.

This is hardly surprising -- a dog designed to be mute and to fight anything it sees head-on is a dog that is hard to locate and likely to be wrecked in short order by a badger. Badger diggers at the turn of the century --as today -- prefer a smaller dog with more discretion and more voice. Unsurprisingly, they use the same terriers for badger work today that they did 100 and more year s ago -- Jack Russells, Fells, Patterdales, and various crosses in between.


For more see:

• >> The Nonsense of Pulls Dogs
• >> Honey Pots and Trolls in the Land of Eire
• >> The Sad Rise of Hard Dogs
  

Virginia is Just Like Shropshire?

The Fauquier Times Democrat (Virginia) has a piece on the huntsman for the Piedmont Foxhounds who compares Fauquier County, Virginia to Shropshire in the English Midlands on the Welsh border.

One of the most famous terriermen of all times was from Shropshire of course -- the late great Bert Gripton.

The Masters of Foxhounds Association of America is located in Millwood, Virginia.

New to ... Piedmont Foxhounds by: Betsy Parker, 10/03/2006

UPPERVILLE - Richard Roberts steps atop a low flat rock at the center of the grassy pasture. A perfect perch. Relaxing in the warm September sun, he lets the long leather thong of his hunt whip flop casually: curled around his right fist that lightly holds a sturdy hunt crop, the whip beats a rhythm: "flap, flap, flap" against one thigh as he gazes at the three dozen cavorting foxhounds below. They gambol about the meadow, bowling each other over in their enthusiasm, occasionally stopping to lift their eyes to Roberts for approval - and their legs on the fenceposts - before pawing in the lush grass, others flopping in a nearby puddle for a morning splash.

"C'mon-n-n-n-n, boy-y-y-y-s-s-s-s." Roberts draws out both words, pitch rising at the end, thick English accent tucked deftly under the universal language of the dog. "C'me along. C'mon-n-n-n-n." Flap, flap. Roberts taps his thigh to get everybody's attention as he turns to walk up the hill. The pulsing group of hounds bounds ahead. Roberts smiles.

Though he's been in America barely two years, 33-year-old Roberts says he feels strangely at home in Virginia's Piedmont. He says he felt it from the start.

"It's a lot like home," Roberts said, comparing his native Shropshire in the English Midlands on the Welsh border. Growing up hunting the rural, rolling farmland gave him a taste for open country and sport with horse and hound. As new huntsman for the Piedmont Foxhounds, Roberts says he finds Virginia's hunt country - in particular Piedmont's of northern Fauquier and southwest Loudoun - much like England.

"Look, over there. See that hedgerow?" He waves toward a honeysuckle-covered fencerow - probably a rusted American wire to pped with sagging barbed wire holding up the tangle of weedy growth - lining the field where the hounds frolic "at walk," Roberts' term for morning exercise. "I call that 'Piedmont hedge.' All bramble and briar. Just like at home. Those type hedges are all over."

Roberts takes the reins from outgoing Piedmont huntsman Butch Gray, who he whipped in to last season. "The hounds had to get used to me not being a whip," Roberts said, explaining that a pack of highly trained hunting hounds looks to the whip, or assistant to the huntsman, for guidance and direction when out hunting, but that they see the huntsman as their true master. "They had to learn to look at me as huntsman. But the transition was pretty seamless."

New Piedmont whipper-in Spencer Allen feels that Roberts' voice has a lot to do with the easy switch. "Hunting behind Richard has shown me a lot of the particulars and finesse" of handling a forward thrusting, highly tuned pack of hounds. Allen filled the vac ant whip's position left open when Roberts stepped into Gray's shoes for the 2006-'07 season. "I love working in an 'English-run' kennels. I want to be a huntsman someday, and I really like learning from Richard. The hounds respect him. You can see he knows their language."

Lifelong passion

Roberts learned the language of hounds and hunting growing up on the family farm in rural Shropshire, England. When not following hounds, he, along with four sisters (three older, one younger) helped their father tend the family's cattle and sheep and "a bit of arable" cropland. In addition to farming, the senior Roberts trained a few hunter 'chasers and occasionally whipped in to the local South Shropshire Hunt.

"All I wanted to do was go hunting," Roberts said, smiling as he recalled his youth. "I remember being a little squat of a kid, doting on (South Shropshire huntsman) Michael Rowson when he'd come into our house after a day's hunting. He was a grand old chara cter, with an old-fashioned huntsman's voice. A booming voice. He always promoted kids' hunting, though, and he sometimes invited me to come up front with him.

"I remember one day he sent me to the far side of a covert to holler if the fox went away. Dammit if Charlie didn't pop out right there! Well, I pushed the fox back in (accidentally) and of course Michael wasn't very happy and gave me a dressing down. I was meant to let the fox go on. That was my first telling off by a huntsman. Oh, golly, I still remember it."

Steeplechasing evolved as another of Roberts' passions. Even when his father died when he was just 15 and they sold the family farm, Roberts continued to pursue a life in racing.

He earned an equine degree from Walford College of Agriculture in Shropshire, and exercised jumpers, hoping to make race riding a career.

"I had a schoolmaster," Roberts said, recalling the talented and experienced hunter 'chaser he point-to-pointed. "But it was al ways a struggle with weight." Featherweights assigned to young or inexperienced horses beginning jockeys are often assigned to ride did not suit Roberts' 5 foot, 8 inch frame. Reluctantly, he gave up the jockey dream.

After a brief stint in forestry, Roberts found his way back into horses via the bloodstock industry, prepping yearlings for the blue-blooded Doncaster and Newmarket sales while learning from fellow foxhunter and bloodstock agent Robert Purcellville.

"He told me that was the road I should take," selling bloodstock, Roberts said.

Fate intervened.

Breeding sales were over for the year, 1996, and one day Roberts was casually flipping through "Horse and Hound" - a weekly magazine that is the English standard for equestrian news. "I saw an ad for kennelman-second whip for a hunt in Cheshire."

And, just like that, he was off and running.

After three seasons with the Sir Watkin William Wyn Hunt, Roberts moved to the Oakley Foxhounds i n Bedfordshire, hunting two seasons as first whip to huntsman Paul Bellamy. Next he went to the Berkeley Hunt in Gloucestershire near Bristol, where he rode as first whip to huntsman Chris Maiden.

"I loved it," Roberts said of the open, galloping terrain of the Berkeley. There, small farm holdings were criss-crossed with hedgerows much like established Piedmont farmland. "It was lovely grass country."

After five years, Roberts said he was ready to move on, but his wanderlust collided with the "hunting with hounds" ban in Britain. Parliament outlawed all hunting with hounds, including, naturally, foxhunting, in 2004; the ban took effect in February, 2005.

"I was at the point that I wanted to move up to huntsman, but I wanted to fox hunt, not drag hunt," one of few forms of hunting - one without live quarry -- that remained legal under the new code.

"People had said 'what about the U.S.?" Roberts said. "So I rang up a few people and was on a plane to Virgi nia" to take an open slot as first whip to the Piedmont.

Roberts hunted behind Gray last season, fall 2005 through spring 2006, taking over the huntsman's position when Gray decided to retire from hunt service to work with show hunters.

"Butch built a nice pack of hounds" at Piedmont, one of Virginia's oldest packs, Roberts said. "I hope I can carry it on."

Assisting Roberts are Spencer Allen as first whip and yard manager, and Molly Forlano as second whip and horse trainer. Don Yovanovich occasionally whips, as does Sarah Waterman, daughter of longtime Piedmont master and huntsman Randy Waterman.

"There's a ton of tradition here," Roberts said. "It's a lot like hunting at home, but with an American flavor. At home in England we catch more foxes, but the countryside and the sport is the same. Even the hounds are the same." Piedmont hunts a primarily Crossbred pack, with a few pure English hounds mixed in. "I've got to adapt to the American way, but hones tly, we provide the same sport."

Part of the English way Roberts has brought to Piedmont is the distinctive use of voice when cheering his hounds. Many huntsman rely more on the small, brass hunting horn to communicate to the hounds; others use primarily voice. Others combine the two.

"It's different hunting with an English huntsman," said whipper-in Spencer Allen, who previously worked for American-born Greg Schwartz and Billy Frederick at Bull Run. "Richard brings a lot of the English formality with him. It's all in his voice."

For his part, Roberts does not claim ownership of the low-toned, drawn-out voice he uses to direct his hounds, words and commands that to the human ear sound muddled and sing-song but to a hunting hound are clear.

"Even today hunting I remember (South Shropshire huntsman) Michael Rowson's voice," Roberts said, again flapping his hunt whip on his thigh, peering through time as he gazes across the foreign yet familiar Virginia hil ls. Across decades, he said, "I can still hear him. It gives me a tingle to just talk about it."
_ _ _ _ _ _ _

More on the Piedmont

* Established: 1840
* Recognized: 1899
* Kennels: Upperville
* Country: 20 by 12 miles in northern Fauquier and southwest Loudoun
* Hounds: Primarily Crossbred

Baiting Dogs Are Not Hunting Dogs

.

No terrier breed is very old.

Depite the fact that all but one or two terrier breeds originated in the last 150 years, most breed histories are so riddled with myth, lies, confusions, disortions, exagerations and fantasies that they are nearly unfathomable.

Part of this has to do with the mythology of show ring aficionados. A coat color variation will pop up in a litter and someone will admire it and attempt to breed more like it. To butter the bread a bit, a short story is invented to explain why the attribute has some imagined import in the world of working terriers ("White dogs are less likely to be mistaken for the fox"). A dog's legs are low to the ground and another attribute is given meaning ("The dachsunds short legs enable it to get to ground with ease"). A dog's nose is lengthened, solely for looks, and we are told this is necessary for work ("The fox terriers long snout keeps its eyes well back from the fox").

In fact, most terrier breeds were never seriously or commonly worked, and even a few of the breeds which many believed were commonly worked never did much outside of one or two owners. The Sealyham terrier -- a great favorite of Sir Jocelyn Lucas -- was such a smash favorite that it was repeatedly said that Lucas "had the only pack of working Sealyhams" in the U.K., and he himself attempted to abandon the breed by crossing it with a Norfolk terrier which, in turn, resulted in such an unimpressive dog that it too passed into the realm of footnotes and fantasy until it was recreated and shoved into the show ring in recent years.

So it is with breed after breed in the terrier world, from Cairn to Norfolk, from Scottie to Irish, from Manchester to Skye, from Yorkie to Kerry Blue. None of these dogs ever saw serious work underground, at least not in anything like their current recognizeable form.

The short and simple truth is that the world of working terriers has changed very little in the last 200 years. The same dogs are being dug to today that were being dug to 100 years ago -- no more and no less. The shovels are the same and the bar is the same. Only the Deben locator is different.

This is not to say that a lot of trumped up histories have not been invented -- from fake paintings of Trump (Jack Russell's dog) to fanciful descriptions of shepherds protecting their flocks from marauding fox the size of wolves, to the creation of mysterious "extinct" breeds of terriers which, a close reading of history reveals, never even existed at all (or still exist, but under a different name).

As noted in previous posts, most terriers breeds evolved (or devolved as the case may be) from cross-bred farm terriers with little or no particular function. Most of these dogs were all-purpose pets and chore companions who, it was hoped, would score an occassional rat, bush a rabbit, and perhaps discourage a fox from entering the farm yard and stealing a chicken. In truth, their chief "job" then -- as now -- was to sleep, clean off kitchen plates, trot at their owner's side, and greet guests and family members with enthusiasm.

Some of these all-purpose terriers found honest work as cart dogs, riding high on the cart and protecting the horse-drawn "trucks" of the 19th Century from petty thieves. Every bread man had a cart dog, and so too did most fishmongers, butcher boys, and fruit merchants.

A few terriers found work as "turnspit" dogs. The job of the turnspit dog was to walk around an endless wooden "rat race" wheel turning meats that were being roasted -- or else churning butter, pumping water or even washing clothes.

Turnpsit dogs had to be short since they had to fit within half a turning wheel housed inside a small kitchen or out building, but they also had to be very strong, as their jobs frequently lasted many hours without rest.

What ever happened to these "turnspit" dogs? Most simply vanished, but one Irish type -- the Glen of Imaal Terrier -- was declared a "breed," though in truth it never much caught on with the public.

The Glen of Imaal Terrier stands about 14 inches tall, but it has a massive head and chest and weighs in at around 35 pounds -- more than twice the weight of the average vixen. These dogs were never designed to go down a fox den -- they are simply too big. This is a short strong dog designed to turn a spit. They also found some use in another arena -- badger baiting and dog fighting.

Small strong dogs were often used in the cruel-practice of badger-baiting which, it should be said, has nothing to do with badger hunting despite the rather obvious effort to confuse the two by animal rights lunatics.

Badger baiting is a betting game in which captive badgers are loaded into barrels, pipes or artificial earths so that humans can bet on dogs that are timed as they draw them out. A baited badger may face several dogs over an extended period of time and there is no larger point to it than to win sums of money or bragging rights, while considerable stress (and sometimes injury) is inflicted on the badger and the dog.

Badger hunting, on the other hand, is a legitimate form of pest control in which the badger is terminated as quickly and painlessly as possible, or else sacked to be moved to another earth. There is no betting, and the badger is not likely to suffer damage from the dog, though the converse cannot always be said.

The Glen of Imaal Terrier, which started out as a turnspit dog, found some popularity with Irish badger baiters and dog fighters. This was a dog that was large enough to pull a large badger out of a barrel -- something beyond the abilities of most 15-pound fox-working dogs.

The use of Glen of Imaal Terrier by badger baiters led some to believe this dog was often used for badger hunting. In fact, this was not so. Arthur Heinemann's Badger Digging Club, which later became the Jack Russell Terrier Club of Great Britain, used Jack Russell Terriers to do the job. Sir Jocelyn Lucas used a pack of very small Sealyham terriers. Bert Gripton used very small cross-bred Jack Russells, etc.

When badger baiting was banned, a small group of Glen of Imaal Terrier owners invented a "test" in an attempt to give their breed continued purpose in a changing world. Thus was born the "Teastas Beg" and the "Teastas Mor" -- gaelic words meaning "Little Test" and "Big Test"

The Teastas Beg was a pretty modest affair and was really nothing more that artificial ratting and rabbit bushing.

"A Teastas Beag consisted of flinging rats into a large pond and allowing the dogs competing to swim and hunt one at a time. The inexperienced handlers of the rats created much merriment and a large proportion of the rats survived to tell the tale. In the case of the rabbits, each one was released from a marked spot on the fresh ground. As soon as it had taken cover the dog was released at the spot where the rabbit had been set free. He was required to run the trail accurately and to hunt will through briars and undergrowth. The actual catching and killing of the rabbit was immaterial as any untrained dog will often do that. Often to save time, the judges would call up a dog once he had satisfied them as to his capabilities."

The Teastas Mor was simply an attempt to bring back badger baiting, albeit under the cover of a "club" activity. Only a handful of Teastas Mor events were ever held, as the authorities quickly ruled them illegal and in violation of the badger baiting laws. As one observor noted of a 1926 Teastas Mor event:

"On the first and second occasions the badger chute was defined as, (rule A4) 'A natural shore at least fifteen feet long, not more than sixteen inches wide with a bed ten feet from the mouth. A well about twelve inches square to contain the badger must be at least eight inches below the level of the shore and at right angles to it.' It is obvious that such an exact arrangement could not have been natural. It was artificial, the sides and top being of timber. This rule cause the Committee's undoing at the subsequent State Prosecutions. The Court held that the baiting of a captive animal had been proved which is contrary to the law and the defendant members of the Committee were fined."

Later the "earth," while still artificial, was constructed of earth and stones and sodded over with grass. The end effect was a bit like a cross between an AKC earthdog set up and an artificial earth for fox.

Unfortunately, a twising den earth in real earth proved too difficult for over-large Glen of Imaal Terriers to negotiate!

"Natural badger work still appeared unwieldy to the Committee and the Teastas Mor on that occasion consisted of an artificial earth constructed of stones and covered over with sods some time previously. The growth of grass made it, in the absence of direct evidence, almost impossible to prove the construction artificial. The badger was put in early that morning before the possible arrival of any police inspectors. It was one captured by a small Blue Bitch of mine, 'Emer,' the previous week. These preparations defeated their own object, for the earth was too long and too narrow and too twisty for the dogs, and none of them succeeded in drawing the badger while some were severely mauled in the attempt. I never saw that particular earth, but it was feelingly pointed out that the members who constructed it had not entered any of their own dogs! After that it was a case of 'back to nature' - a decision both welcome and sound."

In fact, there was no "back to nature" with the Glen of Imaal; very few of the dogs ever worked historically, and almost none are found in the field today even in those countries where legal and illegal badger digging is common.

This is hardly surprising -- a dog designed to be mute and to fight anything it sees head-on is a dog that is hard to locate and likely to be wrecked in short order by a badger. Badger diggers at the turn of the century --as today -- prefer a smaller dog with more discretion and more voice. Unsurprisingly, they use the same terriers for badger work today that they did 100 and more year s ago -- Jack Russells, Fells, Patterdales, and various crosses in between.


For more see:

• >> The Nonsense of Pulls Dogs
• >> Honey Pots and Trolls in the Land of Eire
• >> The Sad Rise of Hard Dogs
  
  
  .