All Heart
Back in the day, I used to do a few carpentry jobs for people. (I actually trained in a cabinet shop at one time and worked as a carpenter on summer breaks from college.) One guy I worked with hired me to help him build a deck one summer. He was a bit hard to get along with in some ways, but really a very nice guy. He had a dog, named Francis, of a breed I had never seen before. He told me that Francis was a Jack Russell terrier. Francis was very small, less than a foot high but acted very much like a big dog. He had no notion at all that he was physically very small. He used to dive down woodchuck burrows and kill them. He always won - and woodchucks can be very, very aggressive.
My friend explained to me that there was at that time a battle going on about what form of the Jack Russell terrier would be recognized as the American Kennel Club standard. There were the short, stocky Jacks like Francis or the longer-legged rangy types. The taller Jacks were nice, but they acted more like small dogs. The shorter ones did not. They really had a big dog attitude despite their stature. (All this is based on what my friend told me, I have never owned a Jack Russell.)
All that is a preface to this story out of New Zealand. A Jack Russell had to be put down after he took on two pit bulls. In order to save the five children he was with.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand - A plucky foot-high Jack Russell terrier named George saved five New Zealand children from two marauding pitbulls, but was so severely mauled in the fight he had to be destroyed, his owner said Wednesday.
George was playing with the group of children as they returned home from buying sweets at a neighborhood shop in the small North Island town of Manaia last Sunday when the two pitbulls appeared and lunged toward them, his owner Allan Gay said.
"George was brave — he took them on and he's not even a foot high," Gay told The Associated Press. "He jumped in on them, he tried to keep them off.
"If it wasn't for George, those kids would have copped it."
One of the children, Richard Rosewarne, 11, was quoted in the Taranaki Daily News on Wednesday as saying George fought with the pitbulls to keep them off his four-year-old brother, Darryl.
"George tried to protect us by barking and rushing at them, but they started to bite him — one on the head and the other on the back," Rosewarne said. "We ran off crying and some people saw what was happening and rescued George."
I rather suspect from the description that George, like Francis, was the short, stocky Jack.
And he was all heart. His size meant nothing.
By Chris, Wednesday, 2 May , 2007 @ 5:08 am
My ex-wife has a Pomeranian, who also thinks he is a big dog.
Godspeed, George.
By BlogDog, Wednesday, 2 May , 2007 @ 12:15 pm
Chihuahuas are incredibly truculent little boogers too. But it just goes to show - it really is the size of the fight in the dog.
I’m always amazed at people who blame the breed for dog attacks. There’s no dog that will tear you up like a Rotty but *only* if the dog thinks you’re a threat to his family (which is of course the humans in the household). Come to the Rotty as a friend and you’ll find a very sweet-natured and tempered dog.
By BubbaB, Wednesday, 2 May , 2007 @ 5:09 pm
Wow, the best and the worst of the canine world in one article.