Читать книгу Jack Russell Terrier: An Owner’s Guide - Robert Killick - Страница 14

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.