Sting was part bulldog, part terrier. Fox, in the background, was a fox terrier, which also has some bulldog ancestry.
And here, I don’t mean that smooth terriers were bred to bulldogs to make the bull and terrier type, which gave us the various dogs called pit bulls, American staffordshire terriers, Staffordshire bull terriers, the Boston terrier, and standard and miniature bull terriers.
I’m talking about terriers, as in Jack Russells.
Stonehenge writes about the common practice of breeding terriers to bulldogs to make them more game on vermin in the 1859 edition of The Dog and Health and Disease:
Most of our smooth terriers are slightly crossed with the bulldog, in order to give courage to bear the bites of the vermin which they are meant to attack. When thus bred, the terrier shows no evidence of pain, even though half a dozen rats are hanging on to his lips, which are extremely tender parts of the body, and where the bite of a mouse even will make a badly bred dog yell with pain. In fact, for all the purposes to which a terrier can be applied, the half or quarter cross with the bull, commonly known as the “bull-terrier” or “half-bred dog,” is of more value than either of the purely bred progenitors. Such a dog, however, to be useful, must be more than half terrier, or he will be too heavy and slow, too much under-jawed to hold well with his teeth, and too little under command to obey the orders of his master. Sometimes the result of the second cross, which is only one quarter bull, shows a great deal of the shape peculiar to that side; and it is not till the third or fourth cross that the terrier shape comes out predominant: but this is all a matter of chance, and the exact reverse may just as probably happen, if the terrier was quite free from the stain of the bull, which is seldom the case; and this may account for the great predominance of that side in most cases, as we shall see in investigating the subject of breeding for the kennel in the next Book.
The field fox-terrier [the ancestor of all fox terriers, including the Jack Russell], used for bolting the fox when gone to ground, was of this breed. So also is the fighting-dog par excellence, and, indeed, there is scarcely any task to which a dog of his size may be set that he will not execute as well as, or better than, most others. He will learn tricks with the poodle, fetch and carry with the Newfoundland — take water with that dog, though his coat will not suffer him to remain in so long, — hunt with the spaniel, and fight “till all’s blue.” For thorough gameness, united with obedience, good temper, and intelligence, he surpasses any breed in existence (pg. 160-162).
So, the Jack Russell is actually derived from dogs that we would call “pit bulls” today.
Stonhenge goes further:
Terriers are entered to vermin with great facility, and require very little breaking, unless they are intended to be used with ferrets, when they must be broken to let these animals alone, as they are apt to make their appearance occasionally in passing from one hole to another. It is only necessary to let the ferret and the terrier be together in a yard or stable, cautioning the latter not to touch the former, for a few times, and the young dog soon learns to distinguish his friends from his foes. Some terriers are not hardy enough to brave the bites which they are liable to in ratting, &c., and, indeed, the true terrier without any cross of the bull-dog is a great coward, so that he is quite useless for the purpose. In such a case he must be encouraged by letting him kill young rats first, and as he gains confidence he will perhaps also increase in courage. If, however, the terrier is well bred, he will seldom want anything but practice (pg 279).
The gameness in terriers, according to Stonehenge, came from the bulldog.
When my aunt and uncle stopped at a truck stop in Southwest Virginia when they were coming to West Virginia for Thanksgiving. They had both Cammie and Rhodie in tow, and some woman asked if they were “baby pit bulls.”
And these two aren’t very pit bull-looking Jack Russells.
So here’s the wonderful irony of a noted Jack Russell terrier blogger bloviating about pit bulls and how we need all these regulations on them: his dogs are derived from dogs that if we saw them today, we’d call them pit bulls.
It’s so ironic, one can smell the rust.
Wouldn’t crossing the two types of dog make the terriers too big around to fit down the fox holes, though? How small of a bulldog are we talking about here?
Bulldogs came in a ton of different sizes.
The dog named sting at the top image is the same size as the fox terrier sitting beside him.
Lady Wentworth talks about a toy bulldog that was bred to several toy spaniels to reduce the muzzle length.
The image of Billy on the next page shows him to be very much like a Jack Russell.
You can decide the size, actually !
If you chosse a Russell Terrier as a bitch, the pups adjust their size to their dam’s.
There are some famous bull X Russel Terrier ancestors, and that can be still seen in the present Russell stock. Some are very strong – boned, sturdy and ferious .
Given that dogs were used in lion hunting and war as early as the Assyrian period, were bulldogs derived from these kinds of hunting/war dogs? (not directly, obviously. I’m not asserting a “bloodline” decent. But war dogs went with a lot of armies and could have disseminated their genes far and wide).
I would find it surprising that terriers would “as a whole” lack grit or staying power, but certainly bulldog was added to some herding breeds to add grit and a willingness to stand up to cattle (and probably also the reverse, for those “bulldog types” that also were used as cattle drovers) It wouldn’t be that surprising if bulldog was added to terriers other than the “dog fighting” types. On the other hand, just because Stonehenge said so doesn’t make a thing necessarily true. It’s likely, but did other sources say the same thing?
There are other sources.
The best is the Rev. John Russell, who was a big fox terrier fancier. His type of fox terriers were later called Jack Russells.
[…] Smooth terriers were often crossed with bulldogs Share this:TwitterFacebookRedditPrintDiggStumbleUponLinkedInEmailLike this:LikeBe the first to like this post. […]
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[…] and not all bulldog/terrier crosses were bred for fighting. It also could refer to ratting and go-to-ground terriers that had some bulldog blood. Fox and Jack Russell terriers were all famously derived from a mix that included a bit of bulldog, […]