Antique Terrier and European Badger taxidermy by Hutchison of Derby
Are the working terrier breeds of the UK becoming historical relics fit for museums and bad taxidermy?
In an astounding lack of vision, the birth-nation of the working terrier has failed to employ even a single dog to do the very work they were engineered for: no terriers were hired or even allowed to participate in last year’s UK badger cull and none are on the roster for the continuation of the program this summer.
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Devon, England 1923. Ever Seen a Badger Caught? It’s a rarely seen sport – you just dig till you catch up with him!
Government largess is pretty much the last hope for historical careers that are obsolete, unproductive, or financially wasteful and the fact that the poor working terrier can’t even get on the dole anymore is yet another sign that “working” has been reduced to a hobby for yet another swath of breeds: a heavily regulated hobby–when it’s not expressly outlawed in most of the forms anyone from 100 years ago would recognize.
After the economic and animal husbandry disaster that was the 2001 Foot and Mouth disease outbreak in the UK, which resulted in the mass culling over 10 million sheep and cattle and financial losses approaching $20 billion, it’s understandable that the Brits are a little paranoid about livestock epidemics and the possible vectors of disease which include anything that can come in contact with livestock from people and equipment to food and wild predators, vermin, and fauna.
The consternation du jour in livestock risk management is the fight over the European Badger and the theory that these vermin are a wild reservoir for Bovine Tuberculosis that might infect cattle (and even people via unpasteurized milk), a disease which claims 30,000 cattle a year in the UK and which was likely spread by the restocking of farms after the Foot and Mouth outbreak.
Now, it should be noted that Foot and Mouth is actually a readily survivable disease in livestock but affected animals suffer not only from the namesake blisters on their hooves and mouth, but they very often lose substantial weight and suffer decreased milk production even after recovery — and these are the two most economically important factors in cattle, their weight gain and milk production. The highly infectious nature of the disease and the difficulty in using vaccines sparked the massive cull even though only a few thousand animals were even identified with the disease in 2001.
There is a rather profound leveraging factor in the fight to eradicate infectious disease in core-economic markets like the cattle industry in the UK. Even though Bovine Tuberculosis is estimated to affect only 2-6% of badgers and the massive cull is estimated to reduce the bovine infection rate by 16% or less, that slight improvement is millions of pounds that the government won’t have to pay farmers for the loss of their stock. And yet the decades long history of badger culling in the UK has yet to produce a method that would be a net economic gain or anywhere close to being in the black.
The Government initiated a pilot badger cull program over 2012/2013 that had the goal to eradicate 70% of the Badger population in two areas in the south of the country using professional sharp shooters which were chosen based on cost and humane concerns. The highly controversial cull didn’t meet the desired kill levels nor was free-shooting found to be particularly humane by critics–although one should doubt that they’ll ever be satisfied.
The most recent program is actually an incremental evolution in form from numerous previous badger culls, with the aim to reduce the costs of prior methods (trapping badgers in cages and then dispatching them with rifles) which proved woefully inadequate with the cost of the cull exceeding the economic benefit to reduced tuberculosis transmission in cattle by a factor of 14. The less-than-brilliant idea was to remove the cages and just “free shoot” the badgers during daylight hours. This idea was so ineffective that the badger-loving Animal Rights saboteurs got bored waiting for any sort of action that they abandoned the badger snipers and decided to troll daylight pheasant hunts on private property instead.
The idiocy of the daylight shooting plan is rather obvious. Badgers are both elusive and nocturnal and there’s a very specific reason that the sport of digging to badgers and even badger baiting looks the way it does. Badgers are not found in large numbers walking about in the hedge rows during the day waiting to be shot with rifles like the pheasants are (much like American Prairie dogs which are the favorite fodder for shootists to test their sniper skills). Badgers are dug to because that’s where they are during the day, in their setts. Or they are lamped at night. Both activities which are expressly outlawed in the UK.
In fact, Badgers are among the first and most protected wild animal species in the UK. The Protection of Animals Act of 1835 outlawed badger, bull, and bear baiting as well as cock and dog fighting in the UK. Follow-on legislation curtailed “unnecessary suffering” and demanded “reasonable means of escape” for hunted animals. The League Against Cruel Sport’s “Look Out For the Badger” campaign saw the Protection of Badgers Act passed in 1973 with further limitations seen in 1981 with the Wildlife and Countryside Act and its amendment in 1985. These laws limited badger hunting to landholders, then removed that exception, and amazingly established a rare “guilty until proven innocent” circumstance for those found to be digging up badger setts.
The Badgers Act and the Badger Sett Protection Act of 1991 were consolidated with the 1973 Act for the current and comprehensive Protection of Badgers Act of 1992. Although the Act is rather far-reaching in its protection of Badgers, the key exception allows for the government to issue licenses which pre-empt any restriction of the Act for various purposes, the first of which is clearly under the purview of the Badger Cull:
(2) A licence may be granted to any person by the appropriate Minister authorising him, notwithstanding anything in the foregoing provisions of this Act, but subject to compliance with any conditions specified in the licence—
(a) for the purpose of preventing the spread of disease, to kill or take badgers, or to interfere with a badger sett, within an area specified in the licence by any means so specified;
The issues of cost and efficiency in the current badger cull fiasco could both be solved by the same remedy. In fact, the British Government could easily make money on a badger cull by simply issuing hunting licenses to amateur terrier-men for a fee and deposit and allow them to do all the work, negotiate with farmers for access to the land, dig up the badgers and dispatch them, and make the carcasses available to scientists for counting, testing, and research for a return of the deposit. A tag system like we employ in the US could also be used to distinguish legitimate culls from poaching.
Border, Fell, Jack Russell, and Patterdale Terriers are supposedly still “working” go-to-ground breeds capable of being drafted for the badger cull cause, but the day when there was any industry dependent on their use has come and gone. In the very fields of their creation and former glory, when there is a pressing need for their service in the capacity of their highest and original use, they are being ignored, prohibited, or severely marginalized.
At best we can say they’re now sport dogs for hobby hunters and vermin baiters. It’s questionable if the size of that fringe hobby is even sufficient to sustain several breeds with populations of a healthy size. For most quarry, they have been rendered obsolete by more humane, cheaper, and more effective methods of vermin control and their limited use as an auxiliary breed for British gentry sport and Chav blood sport is not likely to maintain them going forth.
What really puts the nail in the “working terrier” coffin is that they weren’t even considered for their supposed prime use, to dispatch particularly problematic vermin where more modern methods (such as gassing) have been determined cruel and the allowed methods (daylight shooting) are marginally effective, as in the recent and ongoing UK badger cull. If not now, when? If not this work, what work?
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There are plenty of working terriers in GB: Jack Russell Terrier Club of GB.
Here in Austria and other European countries we work our terriers on both fox and badger as well as using them on wild boar hunts.
Let’s get honest with the language. If there’s no industry, if no one is paying you, it’s a sport or a hobby, it’s not work.
It’s a bogus abuse of the language to call a hobby sport, work.
The Jack Russell Terrier Club of GB doesn’t look like a working concern to me! Founded in the 1970s? Their page is full of fancy shows, ribbons, and trophies.
I see NOTHING that looks like a working industry. It looks like a hobby club through and through.
The Greens,UAF and Hope Not Hate would commit state-protected terrorism if working terriers were used. They’re part of the regime so they have a preemptive veto.
The people who work their dogs on boar hunts get paid for it.
So do the people who use their dogs to cull foxes.
Put a number on that. How many terriers are employed by how many terrier-men who go on how many hunts per year totally an industry of how many pounds?
In actual Europe, not the AR Utopia of the United Kingdom. Terrierwork is strictly regulated, and working terrier owners are not esteemed. There is a tradition of breeding unregistered working terriers in the UK– Fells and Patterdales are still outside the Fancy as are the nonstandard JRT’s. But the Parson Russell terrier and the JRTCA dog are now fancy breeds– they are just an old type of fox terrier without the wedge shaped head and the split between coat types.
In actual Europe, there are blood tracking smooth fox terriers, too.
Germans have done a lot of improvements on the earth dog– Westfalenterrier (my dog LOL), Jagdterrer, etc. Plus, the dachshund is a basset-type hound that became a terrier. That’s a pretty smart invention.
One of the things that a certain terrier blogger always writes about is size as terriers were meant to fit down groundhog holes. Except that there are no groundhogs in Europe– unless you count Alpine marmots. The quarry was always badger or otter in addition to foxes, and those things dig big dens.
So who is he to tell everyone what the size of the dog should be?
The terrier in Europe is used on badger and is used to track wild boar and deer, so of course it will be larger.
retrieverman recently posted..What has the dog show wrought?
Retreiverman: Not true! The German Hunt terrier is a very good working dog, highly respected. It is impossible to have a boar hunt without them or other dogs. Parson Russells are becoming more and more popular as they are not as “hard” as the DJT, have fewer injuries, cost less in veterinary bills and usually have a longer working life. Our PRTs are not large as they are allrounders as they are also used for fox. In the UK in the JRTC of GB there are two sizes: under 12″ and over 12″. Patrick Burns needs small terriers for groundhogs which we do not have here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunting_Act_2004#Hunting_below_ground The reason why terriers were not used on the badger cull. Everyone who has working dogs must keep a low profile as ALL hunting with ALL dogs is forbidden by this law.
“Hunting below ground[edit]
Hunting below ground takes place with terriers. The Act outlaws hunting with terriers (also known as terrier work) with a narrowly drawn exemption, described by the Minister, Alun Michael MP as existing “for gamekeepers”.[71] The Act requires that any hunting below ground must comply with a number of conditions:
##The activity must be carried out “for the purpose of preventing or reducing serious damage to gamebirds or wild birds which a person is keeping or preserving for the purpose of their being shot.”
##The person using the dog must have with them written evidence that the land used belongs to them or that they have been given permission to use the land by the occupier. This permission must be shown immediately to a police officer on request.
##Only one dog may be used underground at any one time.
##Reasonable steps must be taken to ensure that: ##the mammal is flushed as soon as found
##the mammal is shot as soon as flushed,
##the manner in which the dog is used complies with a code of practice, and the dog must be under sufficient control so as not to prevent this, and
##the dog is not injured.[69]
Despite this, many fox hunts continue to use terriers on a regular basis. Three people, not associated with hunts, have pleaded guilty to offences under the Hunting Act 2004 for hunting with terriers and a fourth was found guilty after a trial.[72]
Hunting mice, rats and rabbits[edit]
The Hunting Act 2004 bans some hunting but permits some activities believed to be necessary for land managers. Parliament accepted the view that the hunting of pests such as rats and rabbits was legitimate.[73] MPs did not believe that there was any necessity to use dogs to hunt mice.[74]
Terriers are used in paid work in the UK in fact but its all taking place under the radar of the authorities. It’s gone underground pun not intended.
Rats, rabbit and mink are a big problem and terriers and hounds are often called in to estates to do the dirty along with ferrets. Game keeping is big business still especially for shoots keepers in employ will have terriers at their disposal or on call.
Hunts regularly have terrier men on quad bikes following hunts or on call. It’s quite strange to see a master on his horse dressed in traditional garb on the mobile phone. The terriers arrive in a box mounted on the front of the quad bike.
Often these quad bikes are the only clue to what’s really going on as hunting with hounds is banned. The fox is flushed from its hole to be chased some more and accidents of shredded fox do occur with astonishing regularity considering the ban and in the most embarrassing of places. Village high streets full of old ladies go into battle to save the fox and write angry letters.
Tenant farmers usually keep the terriers which are a Parson like animal with extreme prey drive, one look at the eyes and you can see it’s all work bred.
I think the numbers of working terrier breeds has of course dwindled outside of the show ring. But there is nothing the Brits like more than a challenge and evading the law is almost a sport in itself, a traditional past time, up there with poaching.
Im not so sure its so important to maintain all working terrier breeds times change so do dogs. Even nostalgia isn’t a good enough reason, not when it ends up a show cripple.
Badgers Im all for their survival and ideally would like them to thrive. We had a set at “The Bollards” our country house when we still lived there and these animals nocturnal antics enthralled us. The UK is not exactly Africa but what limited wildlife there is is also positively enchanting and I must include the wiley fox in this who also visted our London address regularily.
Peoples relationship to wild animals change so do dogs.
I will say Rabbits are my exception, we had people in with their dogs every year and still our lawn was a dropping infested hole ridden danger to man and horse. I would even say I prefer the rat or common pigeon. To say dogs and ferrets weren’t particularly effective is an understatement.
You may be slightly happier to know that my friendly neighbourhood pest exterminator also here in the UK uses cross bred Patterdale-type terriers to find the rat holes, which they do with great glee.
Not a simple issue.
Seems to me that terriers have always been a mix of pet (ie, people like having them around for many reasons and choose to feed them and let them breed), blood sport, and practical vermin elimination. I doubt that ‘work’ has been the minority reason for keeping such dogs at any point in history . . . though people have found them useful and enjoyable for one reason or another. The balance between pet, sport, and vermin control has varied over time . . . but the juggling still goes on.
In my opinion, the badger hunts you refer to look more like mild blood sport than work. If you really want to get rid of badgers there must be a better way.
The consequences of keeping breeds that like to attack and tear apart their prey are often unfortunate…but modern pest control methods (eg., death by slow internal bleeding) are probably less humane than a dog going for the throat.
I’ve been hunting with terriers since I was a kid. My dad did it, my grandfather did it and maybe someday – if they enjoy it – my kids will do it.
There aren’t a ton of webpages devoted to those who use our dogs to hunt, and the hobby does not receive a lot of press or attention.
But we don’t mind that.
On most Saturday mornings, our group (which consists of several patterdales a handful of JRTs, two jags and a lakeland) hunt the local ranches and farms. A couple times a year other groups host hunts out of our area on some pretty large ranches/farm and a whole host of us show up and meet.
In my little corner of the world, there are more of us hunters than most in the doggy world probably are aware of. Do we get paid for out work? No? But we hunt our dogs regularly and take our “hobby” seriously.
As someone who is part of this canine subculture, I am confident that while whatever terrier business model existed (such as it was) may have gone the way of the dodo, there are enough of us hobby hunters to keep terrier hunting going for the foreseeable future.
The issue of Sport vs. Industry is important. Industry has money, lobbying power, and legal protections that hobby doesn’t have without a great deal of effort. Breed killing legislation often has carve outs for actual industry/agriculture.
Terrier work at best was an industry in service of a sport. And there’s no shame in that, the NRA is probably the example of an influential and powerful lobby which has a significant industry-as-service-to-hobby component.
But without robust participation, the questions of breed longevity remain. If terrier work is just a hobby now, then what are the standards? Certainly different than if there was a more objective industry.
And without the support off an industry are there enough breeders?
And is there a means to track the maintenance of ability or even the improvement of ability of the dogs versus the degradation, as often happens as standards are made lax and popularity decreases.
And from what I can tell there are a lot of one-kennel terrier breeds, the sort that were founded from rather small breeding programs and not likely to hood up over time, just like any number of other breeds that were founded by individuals.
There are some that appear to be better off mostly because of coming in late to the pedigree game, but from the looks of it, they are simply starting the road to genetic depletion a few decades later. I haven’t seen any outcrossing in the JRTCA pedigrees I’ve looked at. So they aren’t really a good example of some superior breed. Those pedigrees just don’t go back very far, which is a sign that they are just a younger breed versus one that is being managed more sustainably.
As for taking a census of the “working terrier” community, you all seem to be much more underground than out in the open. There are thousands of BC blogs and books and breeders who are high profile and out there. Where’s the terrier community?
Well Christopher, frankly speaking, our culture doesn’t look to kindly on the idea of our little dogs harassing and killing little fuzzy creatures. It’s not something I bring up at cocktail parties. I’m not going to speak for all of us, but I for one am fine enjoying my sport/hobby without garnering a bunch of attention to it. That’s just me.
Patterdales are gaining in popularity- which isn’t necessarily a good thing. Many of the lines in this country are being summarily inbred (while many in the hobby sneer openly at labs and poodles for doing the same thing). Superior breed? Some may think so – not I.
And let’s be frank, they aren’t the best family dogs. They are assertive, high energy and difficult in the sense that they need to be worked/exercised/stimulated well beyond most other breeds.
They don’t do well with small things that squeal – be it babies or other household pets.
They are on the cusp of being status dogs. An animal owned because the reputation of the breed is thought to impart some importance on the person who owns it.
Don’t get me wrong, we love our little pat – but she jogs daily, she runs next to the bike a couple of times a week and she hunts. Our kids are older and we don’t put her in situations where her instincts can lead to trouble. We have a giant yard for her to explore and many small critters for her to harass.
There will always be a small group of JRT, jag and pat breeders who hunt their dogs – even as those breeds gain in popularity as status animals. Whether that small group can sustain the hobby remains to be seen.
Pedigree JRT’s are heading for the same disaster all pedigree dogs face. Luckily in fact pedigree JRTs are a minority.
I can’t say why but with all the fiddling that goes on with JRTs breeding they generally remain a very high prey driven (game) athletic healthy little dog. They remind me a little of the pit-bull seems no matter how little or much they actually fight or are bred to fighters they remain extremely game and dog aggressive. Im talking English pitbull. There is almost something primitive about this hardwiredness, almost a species unto itself.
The JRT doesn’t worry me as they are robust as a result. But the show JRT is already considered and described by breeders (as a positive) that they are a relaxed JRT , less gameness. I don’t like them much the type is uncharacteristic and they appear dopey, breeding for broader muzzles and kakha like that.
Terriers come and go in popularity but the non pedigreed JRT is a mainstay amongst a very constant sizable set of owners, mostly involved in the equestrian industry. The working parsons type on the other hand is dead keen, single mindly and seriously so. Not a pet dog at all. They are still bred on form in the field in Ireland and the UK in good numbers. Showing Parsons are not used at all.
The rest working are also basically a mix of terrier anyway, so as long as only some have just a few working strains there is no threat to their existence as they are so happy to outcross to find that gameness. The true game fighting little light of bone English pitbull terrier I believe holds the key to all these currently worked terrier types which dip into that solid working blood when ever and where ever necessary.
No surprise its underground or rather to be found in Ireland (chortle).
There is a good British/Irish forum for working terriers but don’t expect anything but very plain talking, in tongues mostly (lol) regional dialects. It helps to be very thick skinned and eager for blood too. A good place to find that little tyke that wants to kill everything in sight.
In the third picture I see a very charming little working Sealyham , the prototype showing number. Game certainly and without the profuse coat.
In fact they all look like Sealyhams! Wonderful picture.
From personal experience alone but also dealing with the Sealyham here talking about the extremely inbred showing dog is another that seems to have retained its gameness. Something some American terrier men (those with tunnel vision) find completely impossible. But in the same breath they believe (correctly) the pitbull terrier has, for some unfathomable reason they don’t see the connections in terriers.
But to me at any rate it goes a long way to explaining why these dogs are not very popular as pets and on the brink of extinction. Try untangling a “show bred” Sealyham from its fur after a days peasant flushing or earth work and you will see what I mean.
It will have you backed into a corner clutching a bottle of valium before you so much as produce a brush. Otherwise an absolutely delightful little terrier that has been ruined in the show ring.
That is changing though as its being used quite regularly recently as a cross to produce purely working terriers.
Good news for badgers, it’s the cows that must go!
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28033649
Up to at least a quarter of a million head of cattle need to be destroyed to stop cattle to cattle transmission of Bovine TB.
Badgers supposed affect on the spread of TB in cattle completely and utterly negligible compared to cattle to cattle transmission, any significant role Badgers play has no data to back it up. In fact targeting Badgers is a complete and utter waist of time and money.
The necessary action will of course mean a sudden collapse of the cattle industry in some parts of the UK so this brave but absolutely necessary step to destroy entire herds when TB is detected has been and continues to be put on hold.
At the same time vaccinations need to be implemented where ever there are TB free herds and urgently.
However all the while its been badgers that remain the focus of attention instead.
“Lord Krebs, who developed much of the scientific underpinning to assess the effectiveness of culling badgers to control the spread of TB in cattle said that the study’s conclusions “give further support to the view that culling badgers is not an effective strategy for controlling bovine (cattle) TB”.”
Sounds ridiculous because it is. Concentrating on an ineffective strategy to control TB by targeting Badgers instead of taking the necessary fall?
Of course the government should foot the bill and help farmers who lose their entire herds. If anything this would stimulate the agricultural sector significantly too.
But ultimately it will fix the cattle industry.
I’ve never eaten an imported British steak so it can only be a good thing to get their house in order, maybe they can even end up exporting British beef to gastronomes like me (: