2 EARTH TERRIERS

DAW - Are dogs proof of how epigenetics works in wolves?

. . . continued from pit bull clan..

2. EARTH TERRIERS:

A) TRUE EARTH TERRIER CLAN:

Hardware: small dogs, or sometimes the larger of the tiny dogs, who can fit into the burrow of their prey, without getting stuck or blocked by the twists of the tunnels..

Software: no fear of dark dens, willingness the enter and scrap in total darkness.

Traditional biting software may vary:

Draw Earth Terriers: will bite & hang onto their prey and drag it out of the burrow.

Rocky Earth Terriers: will go into a burrow & kill their prey below ground.

Bolt Earth Terriers: will go into a burrow and yap and nip at their prey, trying to force it to bolt out of the burrow..

Uses: to draw, bolt, bay, or kill varmints in a burrow.

Bio: The software to fight comes from the stage where young puppies work out their pecking order within their litter. In the wolf, this would be the stage where cubs sleep in a wolf den and first start on solid food..

Ancestral lines:

Earth Terriers often have a mixture of bite software. Most of the breeding stock have not been field tested for so many years, and some of the 'purebreds' are not really purebreds but have had other breeds crossed in for show coat.

Dachshunds are another line of Earth Terriers, a bit different from the British Earth Terriers; some people believe Dachshunds trace back to dwarf sprinthunds of the Egyptians.

Even if their hardware resembles a dwarf Saluki, their software has been terrier, with some tracking hound software being common. Dachshunds have many slightly different lines..

B) DASH TERRIER CLAN:

Hardware: small or medium dogs with an cat like agility, good at short sprints, but able to snatch up small rodents from the ground.

Software: the desire to dash small animals; the fighting head shake of the previous category and the quick head shake of the next category.

Use: to see small rodents, dash after them, and kill the rodent by shaking it. To kill rodents that are too big for a cat to kill. Sometimes used on game bolted by Earth Terriers..

Bio: The expression "to shake it like a terrier does a rat" refers to the instinct used during the stage where puppies in a litter work out a pecking order - the fight instinct where a cub would shake his littermates during a fight (when they are still to small & weak to harm each other), and for the Dash Terriers if they grab something too large for the quick shake.

This is another cusp stage, an overlap of the true ground going terriers and the sprinthunds. Dash Terriers usually lack the speed of whippets, and the ground going skills & desire of true terriers. Dash Terriers have their own speciality - to kill rats. A rat catcher (person) moves things around, the rats dart away the Dash Terrier kills the rats.

.. . . next the sprinthunds.