The Mounted Hunts, One Year On

One year after the ban on hunting with dogs, a new poll done by the Countryside Alliance shows that 34 percent of packs consulted reported an increase in subscribers, two new hunts have been created, and 90 percent of the hunts report the same support or better since the Hunting Act became law.

About 130 of the 185 hunts in England and Wales have switched to drag hunting in which hounds follow a lure doused in fox urine, but the rest are using hounds to flush foxes from cover to be (theoretically) killed by birds of prey such as Golden Eagles and Eagle Owls.

Terrier work is still allowed, provided the hunting is done on land with the owners written permission and to protect game bird populations. Only two terriers are allowed in the field at a time, and only one dog, with locator collar, is allowed below ground at a time. Only fox can be legally hunted by terriers; badger work remains illegal despite such an abundance of badger that the Government is now using gas to kill thousands every year in an effort to control bovine tuberculosis.

New Bristol University shows that there has been no change in the fox population since the ban. Its two-year nationwide study, to be published early next year, shows the number of adult foxes has remained stable at around 250,000. About 425,000 cubs are born each year, and the same number are killed by disease or cars (most fox mortality in the UK), are shot, or are snared. In short, the ban has not saved a single fox life, it has only meant an alternative death. Prior to the ban fox hunting with hounds accounted for just 20,000 fox deaths a year.

For more information:

• A Detailed History of the Ban
  
  
• The Rosettes and Animal Rights Connection
  
  
• Where Anti-Hunting Lunacy Leads
  

The Kennel Club Wrecks More Than Terriers

.
The Cocker Spaniel was once a fine pocket-sized bird dog, but the show ring emphasis on exaggerated coats has created a dog that cannot get through a hedgerow even if its life depended on it.


Mark Derr, the author of Dog's Best Friend: Annals of the Dog-Human Relationship wrote the following paragraphs in a March 1990 Atlantic Monthly article entitled "The Politics of Dogs":

The cocker spaniel, along with the poodle, the perennial favorite of American pet buyers, has not competed in field trials since 1965, having lots its ability to hunt. Elizabeth Spalding, a leading breeder of Cavalier King Charles spaniels, says, "Most people don't know it, but up until the 1970s a sentence in the cocker-spaniel standard stated that a dog could be penalized for excessive coat. But for twenty years cockers had been bred for long coats, which brought them championships." The long-haired little hunter has developed a reputation as a foul-tempered, possessive, and nervous creature.

In the 1950s show people turned the German shepherd into a weak-hipped animal with a foul temper and bizarre downward-sloping hindquarters. A few breeders are trying to restore the dog to its former dignity. The Monks of New Skete, a religious order in the Orthodox Catholic Church, near Cambridge, New York, have for twenty-two years worked to produce dogs without those problems. "We stopped using American dogs and turned to German ones, because breeding there is better controlled," says Brother John, a member of the order, which has a waiting list of more than a year for its dogs.

Many of the toy breeds are so small and fragile that they cannot live outside artificial environments. The bulldog and the Boston terrier have difficulty whelping naturally, because of the breeds' exaggeraged heads, and bitches are regularly subjected to cesarean sections. Hetherington says, "The bulldog is a man-made dog, and man has to be responsible for it. The dog hasn't come out perfectly, but that's reason to keep trying to improve the breed , not to abandon it."

The problem exists throughout the world. In Australia the kelpie, which is considered a rival to the border collie in the management of sheep, became the darling of the show ring in the 1930s and within three decades had nearly lost its herding instinct. In the 1960s the Working Kelpie Council of Australia began to rescue the breed, by establishing a registry for working stock. In the United States the Australian kelpie has been in the AKC's miscellaneous class since 1941, and Susan Thorp, the secretary of Working Kelpies, the American breed club, wants to keep it there. "In the AKC," she says, "the dog becomes an object. People get dogs, don't use them, and then selectively breed them for characteristics other than work."

Peter Borchelt, an animal behaviorist in Forest Hills, New York, says that springer spaniels, mostly the males, born of a particular show line frequently develop dominance-related behavioral problems that lead them to become aggressive toward their owners, while those from field stock don't manifest that tendency. Among labrador retrievers there are as many as three distinct varieties with different characteristics--show dogs, somewhat large and slow afoot; dogs adept at AKC field trials, smaller and more high-strung; and working dogs, varying in appearance but bred for their ability to swim and retrieve.

Among other AKC-recognized hunting breeds--including the German shorthaired pointer, the Chesapeake Bay retriever, the pointer, the Brittany, the Gordon setter, and the English setter--are dogs that can point, retrieve, or flush birds as well as any every have. People work hard to preserve those traits, and they don't intend to stop. (Many register their dogs not with the AKC but with American Field, an organization in Chicago devoted to field dogs.) But the trend among people who want breeds unspoiled by an overemphasis on appearance is toward animals the AKC doesn't deign to register, such as the Catahoula leopard dog, Australian and English shepherds, the beauceron, and European pointers (including the English).

The trend has not escaped the notice of the AKC. Kenneth Marden, the AKC's president, says, "We have gotten away from what dogs were originally bred for. In some cases we have paid so much attention to form that we have lost the use of the dog." Marden has supervised the establishment of herding tests, which are scheduled to begin this winter and are subject to a great deal of controversy among people with working stock dogs, who argue that AKC animals like the collie and the Old English sheep dog will prove unable to complete them. Marden has also expressed interest in terrier tests to measure the dogs' ability to flush game from underground dens, and in lure coursing for sight hounds and whippets.

He has publicly recognized the need to emphasize function as well as form, despite strong opposition from the AKC's powerful traditionalists, who argue that he is denigrating shows. They have nothing to fear. In some European countries dogs must excel both in the field and in the ring, and be judged physically sound, before they can become Champions. But an AKC dog can become a Champion in the show ring alone.

The above post is a repeat of a post from this blog from June 4, 2005.

Great Moments in Advertising

Man tamed the dog 10,000 years ago, at about the same time that he figured out how to ferment mead, beer and wine.

Coincidence?

Probably, but it's an association that lives on in a suprising number of beer and wine labels, as I have noted in the past.

Now our crack research team has uncovered a small treasure trove of great dog and beer commercials, including ones featuring both Jack Russell Terriers, Border Terriers and cross bred terriers. We even throw in a cat for garnish. Click here to enjoy.

Keeping the Jack Russell a Working Terrier

Some years back, I collected a list of 400 American working terriers and the quarry they had worked. I did not care what breed the dog was, and I did not ask for paper; it was enough that someone said their dog had worked at least three types of quarry in a natural earth. Word alone would do for my purposes, as the table would be put up on the internet, and such exposure tends to discourage liars and pretenders. In the end, the list contained a few Borders and a few Patterdales, but the rest were all Jack Russells.

The purpose of the list was pure science -- an effort to get a handle on the average size of American working terriers, and to see if the size of the dog varied based on the type of quarry worked. It did not. What the list did reveal was a fairly significant bias towards working bitches -- a fact that I think is attributable to their smaller size.

If a new list of working terriers was collected today, would the results be any different? I don't think so. There would be a few more Patterdales, perhaps, but not too many from what I can see. There would be a few cross-bred dogs, I think, but the number would not slide into double digits. A few more working borders might pop up, but they are still a very rare dog to find in the field.

When push come to shove, the Jack Russell remains the dog that is most likely to be dug to in the United States. It's no suprise why that is so; no other pool of dogs is as well documented in terms of size and working ability as the dogs of the Jack Russell Terrier Club of America. While other registries have tried to put together a working program and registry, such things have proven harder to do in practice than in theory.

The list below are the 2006 Bronze Medallion dogs -- a nice little list of 26 dogs that have worked at least three different kinds of quarry in the field before a JRTCA working judge. Most of these dogs have multiple Bronze Medallion winners in their five-generation pedigrees, and the heights of all of the dogs in the pedigree are likely to be known and recorded by the JRTCA as well.

The protection and preservation of the working terrier is made possible by elevating the status of work within the Club, by encouraging the pursuit of diverse types of quarry, by keeping honest records on the size of the dogs and the types of quarry worked, and doing it for generation after generation.

This focus and dedication is what makes the JRTCA a different kind of registry -- and it has made a world of difference to the sport of working terriers in America.

• Brandwine Punch: Raccoon, Groundhog, Opossum
• Briar Run Addytude: Raccoon, Groundhog, Opossum
• Briar Run Wango: Raccoon, Groundhog, Opossum
• Brockwood Sprint: Raccoon, Groundhog, Opossum
• Castle Pines Kessa: Raccoon, Groundhog, Opossum
• Conquest Strike: Raccoon, Groundhog, Opossum
• DayDream Bayou Billy: Raccoon, Groundhog, Opossum
• Firestorm Fever: Raccoon, Groundhog, Red Fox
• Foxton Locks Ted: Raccoon, Groundhog, Opossum
• Golden Hills Tansy: Red Fox, Groundhog, Opossum
• Little Eden Ovation: Raccoon, Groundhog, Red Fox
• Little Eden Turbo: Raccoon, Groundhog, Opossum
• Little Eden Maggie: Raccoon, Groundhog, Opossum
• Natural Instinct Q-T: Raccoon, Groundhog, Opossum
• Oakwood Brass: Raccoon, Groundhog, Red Fox
• Old Glory Jarrett: Raccoon, Groundhog, Red Fox
• Pheasant Hill Kylee Kaboom: Raccoon, Groundhog, Opossum
• Pine Hill Reva: Raccoon, Groundhog, Red Fox
• Runaway Farm Mocha: Raccoon, Groundhog, Opossum
• Skytop Squire: Raccoon, Groundhog, Opossum
• The Holow Zeena: Raccoon, Groundhog, Opossum
• Sallishan Twilght: Raccoon, Groundhog, Opossum
• Sow's Ear Taltos: Raccoon, Groundhog, Opossum
• White Rose Tipple: Raccoon, Groundhog, Opossum
• Woods End Chase: Raccoon, Groundhog, Opossum
• Hart Farm Dancer: Raccoon, Groundhog, Opossum
• Salt Valley Wolfman: Raccoon, Groundhog, Red Fox

Hunting in America

MYTH: Hunting is in decline in the United States.

TRUTH: There are more than three times more hunters in American today than there were 35 years ago.

Source: http://wdfw.wa.gov/wlm/game/hunter/gametrails/2000/gt2000-21.htm


Today there are about 13 million hunters in the United States, with the number of big game and water fowl hunters steady, but the number of small game hunters and trappers in decline due to the low price of pelts, the easy availability of larger game (there are only so many days to hunt in the year), and some declines in pheasant, quail, rabbit and grouse numbers due to changes in habitat and farming practices (tripple hay harvests, fewer coverts on large farms, etc.).

Hunting is far more popular than most of the elected politicians in America, and not only do most Americans support hunting, the largest Congressional caucus is pro-hunting and angling.

JRTCA Nationals

People waiting for a judge in the ring. There are no professional handlers at the JRTCA, and there is no dress up -- a welcome thing in my opinion. It is supposed to be about the dogs, right?




John Broadhurst judges in one of the rings -- a long day of spanning terriers and checking bites. With over 1,200 dogs at the trial, some of the classes were quite large, but John did a nice job of keeping his end of it moving. He kept his sense of humor too!





A few vendor tents selling everything from high-quality leather leashes and custom embroidery to books, sweaters, fox nets, and jack russell-themed crafts.



I stopped by JRTCA Nationals on Saturday -- the one dog show I attend these days.

This was the 30th Anniversary of the JRTCA, and Alisia Crawford was there in honor of that -- she founded the JRTCA and was the guiding force behind the JRTCA's focus on registering dogs, not litters, and giving the highest awards in the Club for field work.

The weather was very good, but it had been windy the day before and I am told that a couple of pop tents took off flying in the 30-mile-per-hour winds, some only wrecking themselves, while others wrecked a car or two. That's what we have home-and-auto insurance for, right? Or let's hope. . . .

I saw a lot of very nice dogs. I also saw some enormous dogs, some odd looking dogs, and some dogs without tails. All in all, however, the quality of the dogs was very high, and there were some real stunners among the more than 1,200 Jack Russells that attended.

JRTCA nationals is a pretty impressive single-breed show.

On the working side, it was nice to see a rather lengthy parade of Bronze Medallion dogs -- dogs that have worked at least three of the six kinds of terrier quarry we have here in the U.S. -- Raccoon, Groundhog, Red Fox, Gray Fox, Badger, Possum -- before a JRTCA field judge.

I think about 50 veteran Bronze Medallion dogs were at Nationals, and 27 new ones were ushered into the ranks of the hundreds that have come before. Such stuff is the tip of the iceberg, of course, There are the dogs like Mountain, who have worked it all and who do not have scrap of paper to show for it, and the dogs like Sailor who got their bronze, and went on to work 400 more critters for the pure fun of it. And then, of course, there are the many people who are unwilling to take off a week from work to drive clear across the country for a dog show -- to say nothing of the many hundreds of wonderful old working dogs that have gone on to the Other Side to meet their maker. Without a doubt, more Jack Russells are being dug to in America -- and around the world -- than any other breed.

Events like JRTCA Nationals are a brain-defying amount of work. For starters, there are the registrations, collecting the trophies, and recruiting the judges. Then you have to make sure the field is mowed before any of the setup begins, you have to stake out the parking rows, assemble the intercom system, and put up the larger tents for awards, rescue, electronic equipment, etc. Then you have to find someone to bring in all the agility equipment and the go-to-ground tunnels, and do the set up for all of the same (to say nothing of taking it all down, taking it home, and putting it all away). On top of all this, you have to network with the small-business vendors, the food concession folks, the port-a-potty people, the folks running the BAER clinic, the Super Earth setup, and the folks that run and maintain Stepping Stone Park. You have to make sure the racing and agiltiy sections are well fenced, and that the show rings are properly measured, staked, and roped. You have to put up signs up for reserved spots, and you have to collect, organize, price, and lay out all the stuff -- shirts, hats, fox nets, locator collars, books, etc. that are to be sold. The work goes on and on and on .... made possible by a small cadre of volunteers who are never thanked enough. I do not know who they all are, but a tip of the hat to each and every one of them. There is a special spot in heaven for those who do thankless work.

And so what is the result of all this?

Well, Nationals seemed to go swimmingly as far as I could tell. Of course, there will always be a few whiners, pouters, ingrates, and misanthropes in any crowd. There is always someone with a Unified Field Theory about How Everything Should Work. For my part, I give simple applause. Nice work, all you nameless, faceless people toiling in private for the common good. And a nod to the front office too -- they make it all possible, and are the main difference between success and failure. Don't believe it? Fine -- look at how the other Clubs and organizations are doing. Compare and contrast. The JRTCA is simply better, and the management and the volunteers are the reason.

Retreat of the Clones

Genetic Savings and Clone is not accepting new orders for clones because the company was "unable to develop the technology to the point that cloning pets is commercially viable," according to a letter sent out to its clients.

The company, started by octogenarian billionaire John Sperling, has cloned a total of two cats for sale, including Little Nicky, whose owner paid $50,000 for the duplicate in 2004. The company also charged clients to bank genetic material from pets they intended to clone.

The long-sought goal of replicating John Sperling's husky (or is is border collie?) mix, named Missy, who died in 2002 at the age of 15, has never been achieved.