Evolution of dogs
We will never know exactly how, why and when wolves morphed themselves into domestic dogs; it was part of the evolutionary process and could have been over a period of 500,000 years or more. Those of us blessed with a vivid imagination can picture in our minds a family of primitive men sitting round a fire eating the results of the day’s hunt. The glittering eyes of wolves can be seen watching from the bushes, waiting for the bones that will be tossed into the undergrowth. Wolves, being intelligent, realized that primitive man was a source of food, and because they went hunting as a group, they would skulk along behind the humans in the hope that when they killed their prey there might be enough left over for them.
Early Man may have thought of wolves as a source of food – they were edible, especially when young. Primitive children may have liked the look of wolf puppies when they were brought back to the cave as living store food, and perhaps they found that the puppies kept them warm at night, so they kept them and became attached to them. Slowly, over many years, the two species came to trust each other and Primitive man realized that domesticated wolves could help him find his prey and then kill it. With their superior hearing, they also made good guard dogs, warning of the approach of any other humans or animals, and this type probably became sheep and cattle dogs as men became agronomists. The early association between primitive man and wolves has been proved by the discovery of wolf bones found buried with human ones, dating back 500,000 years old.
The Parson Russell Terrier is easily recognizable with his longer legs. Like all Jack Russells, he is an excellent ratter and loves to scent and hunt in the garden or countryside.
Selective breeding
We know that breeds of dog were bred for specific purposes even in ancient times and were respected in many early civilizations in the Middle East, ancient Egypt and China. An enormous number of ancient artefacts depicting dogs have been found in what are now Iraq and Iran as well as the Egyptian pyramids. It is not easy to recognize which breeds are portrayed in these ancient sites, mainly because they were not as sharply defined as they are today. Canophilists can find aspects in early statues and frescos of heavy war dogs, slim hunting dogs and small companion animals, but they seldom identify terriers because they probably did not exist in any way as we know them nowadays.
The spread of dogs
There is no mystery as to how breeds of dogs were distributed around Europe. Armies, moving on foot for thousands of miles, were usually accompanied by their own dogs and captured indigenous dogs as they travelled. They needed war dogs, watch dogs and herding dogs to control the herds of animals they took with them. During campaigns, invasions and occupations, they left behind and sold some of these dogs. Another mode of distribution was by coastal sea traders, notably the Phoenicians who sailed the Mediterranean and reached the coast of the British Isles. Dogs were probably sold and even survived shipwrecks, later mixing and breeding with the local canine population. Sheep traders from Europe also brought dogs to Britain, which they would have left behind or perhaps traded with the locals.
Advent of the Terrier
The Terrier was most likely a late addition to the British Isles. Early man saw rats as a food source but later, when he had discovered how to keep the crops he had grown, they became a nuisance and he needed smaller wolf-like dogs to catch and kill them. For reasons not understood, every breed of Terrier emanates from the British Isles, and even though a few new breeds have been developed, they came from British breeds originally. The German Hunt Terrier (Jagdterrier) and the Czech Cesky Terrier are two examples. For millennia, small, feisty dogs of no particular type were kept around British homesteads to control rats and other small mammals considered vermin. These dogs doubled as farm guards. We can only assume that it was from an amalgam of many breeds that the first Terrier types evolved.
History of Terriers
Very little was written on Terriers in ancient times, although Oppian wrote in the third century of small dogs used by the rough natives of Britain to scent and hunt game. Later, in 1486, Dame Juliana Berners mentioned ‘terours’ among other breeds of ‘dogges’ in her Boke of St Albans. Dr Johannes Caius presented terriers as we would recognize them today in his book on dogs, De Canibus Britannicis (1570). In 1686, Richard Blome described the working Terrier, which was indicative of a change in the attitude of huntsmen and the development of Terriers.
It is a Jack Russell’s instinct to hunt and to dig. Like most other Terrier breeds, these dogs were developed to keep down vermin.
In pre-medieval and medieval times, the aristocracy hunted deer for pleasure and the larder, so the development of hounds was their priority. Terriers were for the peasantry and interested the nobility only when they were engaged in dog fights, bull baiting and badger hunting. Medieval laws even forbade peasants from owning hunting dogs and disabled any suspect dogs to prevent them being used for deer hunting. Gundogs became a necessity when guns were introduced – Setters were used to indicate where the birds were, and Retrievers to bring back the dead.
Fox hunting
This sport started to be popular in the fifteenth century when hunters discovered the pleasure of a long run on horseback in pursuit of the fox. They divided their time between stag hunting for food and fox hunting for pleasure and used the same staghounds for both. They soon realized, however, that the staghounds were too heavy and slow for hunting the fox and replaced them with lighter, faster animals.
Because foxes were adept at hiding, the lowly Terrier came into his own. Hitherto the peasant’s yard dog, he was now valued by the aristocracy. He was small with a wonderful sense of smell, feisty and courageous enough to go to earth and either mark where the fox was lying by barking or force him to leave the safety of his lair. If the former was the case and the Terrier was marking the fox, he was expected to keep barking, so the huntsmen could dig out the fox, release it, give it a head start and then pursue it again.
Parson Jack Russell did not want his Terriers to kill foxes, although most were quite capable of doing so; they needed to defend themselves against a fox that was desperately trying to escape. Therefore a Terrier had to be brave and sufficiently skilled to take on a fox fighting for its life in darkness in an unfamiliar, small underground chamber.
Many huntsmen began to develop their own strain of Terriers. In the early days, they favoured the ubiquitous Black and Tan Terrier, which although now extinct is still present genetically in many familiar breeds. The colour white was introduced, because in bad light and heavy undergrowth the hounds could easily mistake a dark-coloured dog for the fox, and many a fine Terrier was killed in that way.
John Russell
Only with knowledge of the Reverend John (Jack) Russell, his life and times can we have a better understanding of the breed that carries his name and has done so for more than 150 years. The rural society in which he was born and lived was one of poverty, with many livelihoods dependent on the whims of land owners. Work was long and arduous and there was little to do in the way of entertainment. Hunting was a way of life, and the very existence of a hunt could sustain whole communities.
Early life
John Russell was born in 1795 in Devonshire, and from boyhood showed an exceptional interest in the countryside and animals. His father, a well-known hunting parson, who, at one time, kept a pack of hounds, encouraged his son to follow in his footsteps. At that time it was not unusual for men of the cloth to be keen on hunting. Indeed, many had their own packs, and they were often admired by their parishioners and overlooked by the church hierarchy.
Young