Many other variants of this type exist, such as the Russell Terrier, Parson Russell Terrier and Rat Terrier, with many locally developed purebred dog breeds. Fox Terriers and feists are often predominantly white so as to be visible to hunters. Similar dogs are the Smooth and Wire Fox Terriers, originally developed to flush out foxes for hunters in England (but now primarily kept for conformation showing and as pets), and the Jack Russell Terrier, used for ratting. The breed was popularized by President Teddy Roosevelt, who frequently hunted with a feist named Skip, belonging to his son, Archie, and a Manchester Terrier named Jack, belonging to his son, Kermit. Claude Shumate, who wrote about the feist for Full Cry magazine, believed that the feist was descended from Native American dogs, mixed with small terriers from Britain, and was kept as early as the 17th century ( Full Cry, December, 1987). In her 1938 novel The Yearling, author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings uses the spelling of "feice" to refer to this dog. William Faulkner mentions the "fice dog" in The Sound and the Fury, but uses the spelling "fyce" in the stories "Was" and "The Bear" from the collection Go Down, Moses: "a brave fyce dog is killed by a bear". George Washington referred to them in his diary in 1770 when describing a dog as "a small foist-looking yellow cur." Abraham Lincoln wrote about the "fice" dog in his poem, "The Bear Hunt". Written accounts of the dogs go back centuries, with several spelling variations seen. if small" – is derived from the dog, which is small and energetic. The word feisty – "energetic, belligerent, esp. chiefly dial: a small dog of uncertain ancestry." The word "feist" is described in Webster's Third New International Dictionary as from the obsolete word "fysting", meaning "breaking wind, in such expressions as fysting dog or fysting hound". Gray's Prairie Daisy – an example of a Gray-bred Mountain Feist Etymology The Treeing Feists include the Atomic Feist, Barger Feist, Boggs Creek Feist, Original Cajun Squirrel Dog, Charlie Feist, Fleming Creek Squirrel Dog, Hickory Grounds Feist, Horse Creek Feist, Hurley Comb's-bred Feist, Mountain Cur, Mullins Feist, Redwood Feist, Riverun Feist, Shaderidge, and Rat Terrier. Various named varieties within the feist type have been developed, including the Mountain Feists, which includes the Baldwin Feist, Buckley Feist, DenMark Feist, Galla Creek Feist, Kemmer Feist, Lost Creek Feist, Sport-bred Feist, and Thornburg Feist. Although they put up a furious chase, feists rarely catch squirrels they typically expect their owners to shoot them. Leashing these dogs in the presence of squirrels is advisable. During the chase, they wade through streams, leap over logs, and dash across roads to get to their prey. When they have treed a squirrel, they chase the squirrel until it leaves their sight. They locate squirrels using their eyes, ears, and nose, then tree them barking loudly and circling the tree, in the same manner that a coonhound trees raccoons. When hunting, feists, unlike hounds, are mostly silent on track until they tree a squirrel. Most feists have an extreme drive to chase rabbits, along with squirrels and other rodents. This contrasts with terriers or Dachshunds, earth dogs that go to ground to kill or drive out the prey, usually rodents, rabbits, foxes, or badgers. Individual dogs can hunt in more than one way, but in general, feists work above ground to chase small prey, especially squirrels. They are identified more by the way they hunt and their size than by their appearance. As feists are bred for hunting, not as show dogs, little to no consistency is seen in appearance (breed type), and they may be purebred, crossbred, or mixed-breed dogs. The tail can be natural, bobtail, or docked. The ears are set high on the head and are button, erect, or short hang. Some of these dogs have been crossed with Greyhounds, Whippets or Italian Greyhounds (for speed), and Beagles or other hounds (for hunting ability)-extending the family to include a larger variety of purpose than the original ratter, or Rat Terrier.įeists are small to medium-sized dogs 10 to 18 in (25 to 46 cm) tall, and weigh 15 to 30 lb (6.8 to 14 kg), short-coated dogs with long legs. These dogs were used as ratters, and gambling on their prowess in killing rats was a favorite hobby of their owners. These terriers probably included crosses between the Smooth Fox Terrier, the Manchester Terrier, and the now-extinct English White Terrier. Treeing Feist, Treeing Terrier, Ratting Terrier, Rat TerrierĪ feist is a small hunting dog, descended from the terriers brought over to the United States by British miners and other immigrants.
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