The breed gallery
Jack Russell Terrier
The Jack Russell Terrier is the smallest working dog with the fullest diary. In nineteenth-century Devon the Reverend John Russell bred terriers that could follow a fox underground without killing it — predominantly white, so that the huntsman could tell his dog from the quarry.
At the workbench that white is a gift: the markings on head and back stand like planes on an empty canvas.
- Origin
- England, 19th century — the working terriers of the Reverend John Russell
- Coat
- smooth, broken or rough; all three hard and weatherproof
- Colours
- predominantly white with black and tan markings
- Height
- roughly 25 to 30 centimetres
- Life expectancy
- roughly 13 to 16 years
- Character
- tireless, bold and enterprising — a terrier in the fullest sense
Character
A Jack Russell has two settings: busy and asleep. The breed is quick, brave and inventive, and would rather meet a challenge than avoid it — a quality that was necessary underground and asks for leadership above it.
Boredom with this breed is no small matter but a digging, barking, garden-rearranging force. Give him daily work — searching, retrieving, agility — and you have a cheerful and remarkably loyal housemate.
Appearance and coat
The standard knows three coats: smooth, broken and rough, all three hard enough for poor weather. The body is predominantly white with black, tan or combined markings, usually on the head and around the set of the tail — that white was a hunting necessity, not a fashion.
A Jack Russell brings his own composition with him: white planes with exactly enough black.
The head is flat with a moderate stop, the eyes small, dark and almond-shaped, and the V-shaped ears drop forward. The body is slightly longer than tall and supple enough to turn in a narrow tunnel.
Care
Little work: a weekly brush, and for the rough and broken coats a few strippings a year rather than clipping. The real care this breed asks for is the walk — two short circuits are seldom enough.
History
John Russell, huntsman and parson in Devon, bought the bitch Trump around 1819 as a student and built from her a line of working terriers selected on courage and size. For more than a century it remained a huntsman’s type without a standard; only in the twentieth century did Australia set down the breed description on which international recognition followed.
The portrait
Your Jack Russell Terrier as an art portrait
A predominantly white dog calls for a style that works in planes rather than in detail: the portrait arises on the border between white and marking. Photograph in soft light, or the white burns out — and preferably in the one second he stands still.
