Standard coat color variety: Black, liver, blue, or gray, all with or without tan points, creeping tan, or saddle, any shade of cream, lemon, tan, or red, all with or without black, liver, blue, or gray mask (apricot, buckskin), sable, grizzle, badger, all with at least 10% white markings, ticking, roaning, mottling, or speckling, or solid white, solid-ticked, mottled, speckled, or roan. Any unprovoked aggressive or fearful behavior toward people is incorrect for this breed.Ĭoat Color or Pattern: CKC recognizes two color varieties of the Rat Terrier breed: the standard color and nonstandard color variety. Submissiveness should not be mistaken for fearfulness, nor faulted. However, reservation toward strangers in adult dogs is not to be faulted. These dogs bond strongly to their families and are devoted and loyal. In fact, they should not be sparred when being judged for conformation. However, unusual to terriers, they are well-known for being exceptionally tolerable and even friendly toward other dogs and cats, if introduced and socialized at an early age. However, they require training to curb that natural hunting instinct if one plans to keep other small animals around. They require little to no training to do what they were originally bred to do. Rat Terriers are also useful to have around the property, since their rat-hunting instincts (and squirrel and other small animals) are very strong in this breed. Because there is not much that gets past him, he makes for a formidable watchdog. Temperament: The Rat Terrier is one of the most popular terrier breeds due to his compact size, energy, and alertness, as well as his devotion to his family. Today, Rat Terriers are still used for hunting rats in some parts of the world, but they are also used by their American owners for hunting raccoons, wild boar, squirrels and deer. The Spitz-type dogs were bred in for bear hunting, and to this day some pups will be born with a thicker coat that originated when the Spitz breed was introduced into the Rat Terrier lineage. The Greyhound and the Whippet are thought to be the source of the brindle and blue dogs, while the red color was probably a gift from the Beagle. The Rat Terrier was later bred to the Whippet and the Greyhound in order to improve the dog’s speed, and it was also bred to the Beagle for that breed’s hunting abilities, scenting prowess, and trailing skills, as well as an increase in size and sturdiness. He owned at least three, with Skip being the most popular of the bunch. He’s said to have loved the dogs and was fond of taking them with him on big game hunts. It was during his presidency (1901-1909) that President Theodore Roosevelt called his Feist a Rat Terrier, and the name stuck. Even though this cross didn’t really add anything to the hunting abilities of the dog, it did succeed in stabilizing the existing qualities and characteristics. In this case, these early frontiersmen hoped to develop a stronger hunting dog. When canines are bred for change, it’s usually because someone has decided a slight shift in the canine’s personality, body type, or senses will make a human task easier to accomplish. It was during this period that the “feist” was bred again to the Smooth Fox Terrier. In the 1890s miners went to the United States to make a living and carve out a better way of life, and these working-class people took their dogs with them across the sea to their new homes. The record is held by a Rat Terrier that killed 2,501 rats in seven hours in an infested barn. The betting wasn’t limited to the “rat baiting” that went on in the pit it also followed out to farmers’ homes and barns. Bets were placed and rats were poured into a pit with a ratter to see how many it would kill. In fact, a sport grew out of many owners’ belief that they had the best ratter in the area. A dog that could keep the rat population of the home or business low was certainly appreciated, which is one of the main reasons why these little dogs grew in popularity. These dogs were thought to be beyond compare as ratters-dogs that were used to catch and kill the rats that plagued nineteenth century England and America. They were feisty little dogs, which is why the English first called them “Feists.” This produced a remarkable dog that was both strong-willed and relentless in his hunt for rats and other vermin. The Rat Terrier is thought to have descended from several different breeds, beginning in England in the 1820s when a Smooth Fox Terrier was bred to a Manchester Terrier. Click here for FULL BREED STANDARD Origins
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