Why I Love Jack Russells

If you’d told me four years ago that I could have a Jack Russell, I’d probably have turned the offer down! Before having Saffy, I made the assumption that all Jack Russell Terriers are angry, yappy little dogs who are impossible to train and don’t really do much other than make noise. Ok, ok I know I clearly hadn’t done a lot of research, but I’m not alone in thinking this. Nowadays though I’m singing the praises of these little dogs and telling anyone who’ll listen about why they’re so amazing.

Saffy on the day we brought her home

Good things come in small packages:
Saffy’s tiny- which is ideal for me and my family! She can run around the house and garden happily during the day without getting in our way. She’s also lightweight which makes lifting her into the sink for a bath, putting her in the car and holding her at the vet’s much easier. Plus she’s still the perfect size for cuddles on the sofa- the idea of a giant Labrador or Newfoundland climbing into my lap is a bit daunting! Lots of people want to keep their dog puppy-sized forever, and Saffy hasn’t really grown all that much. The only thing that puzzles me is how such a small dog can still manage to take up all the space on my bed!

Does this look like a noisy dog?!

They’re only noisy if you let them be:
Saffy’s actually pretty quiet most of the time. Yes she’ll have a good growl and bark if anything dares come into her garden (be it a squirrel, neighbour’s cat or a pigeon) but around the house and out in the park she doesn’t need to make her voice heard. There are dogs living nearby who can be constantly noisy, maybe because they’ve never been told not to. When we got Saffy we tried not to encourage incessant barking, and whilst dogs will be dogs, she’s not yappy at all.

They can be trained:
People will tell you that Collies, Labradors and similar breeds  are the best to train and this is why they make good working dogs. Even if this is true, it doesn’t mean that all other breeds are beyond hope.  In my own experience with a Jack Russell she wasn’t a particularly quick learner when it came to basic training, but I think a lot of that was down the fact that she just didn’t understand what we were asking her to do. She figured out ‘sit’ quite quickly, and could manage to ‘stay’ and ‘come’ as she was told but it wasn’t until I took her to training classes that I was able to teach her to lie down. This was simply because I didn’t know how to teach a dog to lay down- understandable really as Saffy’s my first dog. Saffy’s now mastered ‘paw’ as well and I’ve taught her to jump. I don’t think she’s ever going to be considered an ‘intelligent’ dog, she is a little bit ditsy at times, but that’s just her character!

Playing with an old pair of tights

They love to play:
Saffy is a really energetic and playful dog. I’ll be honest- there are plenty of times that she wants to play and I just want to sit in front of the TV, but I’m just taking that as part of having a dog. I think she fitted in well with a family with teenage children because we all understood how to play with her and to teach her what she can and can’t do. A useful trick we did teach her though was to play by herself with a tennis ball. She drops it from the top of the stairs and then fetches it before starting all over again- far better than us throwing it for her all the time!

These are just some of the reasons that I love my dog and her breed, hopefully you agree.

More jumping photos

 To add to the ones from my previous post, here are some better quality pictures :)

 

Jumping For Joy

Last summer (when the weather was a lot better!) I taught Saffy to jump over some small obstacles. I’ve never done agility before with a dog, but teaching her was a lot of fun.
It took a long time to get her to make the first jump- in fact I had to put jumps across the whole width of the garden so that she couldn’t run round the outside! Because she was a bit unsure, I didn’t want to force her to do anything so I gave her time to sniff the jumps and see what they were. The way I finally got her to make the first leap was actually to stand at one end of the garden with her and throw a tennis ball over the jumps. She was so distracted by the thought of retrieving the ball; she leapt over the jumps without thinking! After that I gave her loads of encouragement to do it again, backed up with some food rewards. At the start I had her jumping over blocks which I think helped because we could progress very gradually from jumping on and off the block, to jumping straight over.

Over the course of a few days, I was able to have fewer jumps across the width of the garden and Saffy was choosing to go over a jump for a reward, rather than run around the edge for nothing. Once she had learned to follow a treat over a single jump, I began to link a few jumps together at a time into a course. Again doing things slowly I was rewarding her with a treat for each jump to start off with, and then moving onto only rewarding her at the end of a course of three or four jumps.

Once she had mastered jumping easily, I tried to come up with some other obstacles that I could make from things in the garden. Now that Saffy was jumping confidently over poles, the wooden blocks were freed up and I could make a sort of raised platform to walk along. I also used some of the poles placed end up (and supported on cricket stumps) to make some poles to weave in and out of. Obviously they aren’t quite like the weaving poles used in agility competitions but it was still fun teaching Saffy to walk in and out of them. I did want to have a go at teaching her to go through a tunnel, but the one that we used to have had been thrown away.

After all this practising, I have tried Saffy on the agility courses at the Dogs Trust Harefield open days and I think the practice has paid off- she’s confident at jumping and weaving, but is a bit nervous about getting up high or going through tunnels which are both things she’s never had a chance to try.

It’s been so enjoyable teaching Saffy something new and I feel like we’ve learnt together and developed a really good bond from this. It’s rewarding to run round a course with her and have her follow my instructions, I think we’ve both achieved a lot!

PS Look out for a future blog post on how I made the jumps!
PPS Apologies for the bad quality of photos- they were taken on a rather grey, frosty day with a not very good camera. When I get a chance to check my other computer I will see if I can find some better examples

Walkies 10th July

Due to the bad weather recently, taking Saffy on a really good walk had been a bit difficult seeing as we both hate the rain!
So I made the most of the dry weather this morning for a trip to the woods. As we got there I met a man with two Jack Russells, one of them looking identical to mine! He told me that he'd only adopted his dogs recently from Dogs Trust and asked how I got on with mine in the woods. I explained that it had taken probably about a year for me to really trust my dog enough to be off the lead there. There's a lot going on in the woods- school groups, walkers and horse riders- and I wanted to be fully confident that I could get Saffy back rightaway if I needed. I mentioned that even now when I let her off the lead in the woods, I always carry some treats and get her to come back every so often even if there's nothing around.
Finally, he asked if he could have a photo of Saffy to show his wife how similar she looked to their dog- and Saffy was more than obliging, she loves a good photoshoot!

Take The Lead

Which lead to use is the subject of a lot of debate in my family!

Dogs Trust lead and collar

When we first adopted Saffy, she came to use with her yellow Dogs Trust collar and lead. However, this didn't last very long. It took a while for her to understand how to walk on a lead properly and she spent a lot of time jumping up and chewing it resulting in a very worn, very scruffy lead that was about to come apart.

Control Training Lead
£12.99 Pets at Home

Nowadays the lucky girl has a choice of two leads to go on walkies. My preference is this Control Training Lead from Pets at Home. It's longer than a lot of leads which is good because it allows me to give my dog a bit more freedom. It's also very sturdy so I feel like I have good control. It's a multi-purpose lead which means it can be used in various different configurations. The long length means that I am able to use both my hands if necessary to hold the lead. Before getting a dog, I was taught to handle horses which are obviously far larger and stronger. I was always taught never to let the horse drag you along which is something I have applied to dog-walking. With a long lead, I can prevent Saffy from pulling infront of me by holding the lead across my body and having one hand down beside me to keep her beside and slightly behind me.

This photo is the best I could get to explain what I mean about using a long lead. Usually I would be holding the middle part in my right hand as well as the looped end- but here I have a rosette to carry instead!

The lead that the rest of my family prefer is this Classic Compact Extending Lead by Flexi. This is a 5m lead at its longest. It does give far more on-the-lead freedom than the control lead does, but generally I feel that if its appropriate for her to have that much freedom, its probably ok to have her totally off the lead.
My main problem with this lead is that my dog tends to pull a lot on it, and because it's so thin, I can't hold it in the same way I do with the control lead. Also, it can get very tangled very quickly and unlike a normal lead, you can't just drop it to sort out the mess because it rapidly recoils which frightens a lot of dogs.
It does do everything it says though- it's strong, it has good locking and quick release mechanisms and my parents love this. For me, it's a just a matter of personal preference.

As for Saffy- well she probably prefers no lead at all!

Adopting Saffy

When my parents finally agreed to getting a dog we hadn't thought much about what type of dog we actually wanted.
My mum had big dogs in the past, and we knew a few people with labradors and retrievers so this was our first idea. And they sounded great- generally smart and easy to train, playful, cute- ideal pets, no? Well after a bit of thinking, we realised that taking on a labrador or similar would probably be a lot of hard work. They require a lot of exercise and can be pretty strong, which might have made it difficult for my younger sister to walk the dog.
The next idea was to get a spaniel because of their smaller size. What put us off here though was all the talk about inbreeding and the damaging effects. It was after researching this breed that we decided it might be better to adopt a dog rather than buy a pedigree dog from a breeder.
We had been to see Dogs Trust Harefield a couple of times before but hadn't found any suitable dogs. Now though that we were more certain about adopting a dog, we were able to register to be able to look at puppies that came into the centre as my mum doesn't work so would have been at home during the day. Quite quickly we were told about some Jack Russell puppies that had just come in. Although we went to see them, we doubted whether any of them would be what we wanted. Previously we had always assumed that terriers were small, yappy dogs- the opposite of what we wanted! We were shown to an enclosed outdoor pen where the puppies were running around. Saffy was one of three from her litter, and at this point all of them looked identical! It was my mum who picked Saffy- she wanted the playful, energetic one (something I'm sure she must sometimes regret!). A short while later, and a quick phonecall to dad, we were making the arrangements to adopt a puppy. Dogs Trust were great, everything went through very quickly even with them making thorough checks that we were suitable. We were able to go and visit Saffy at the centre whenever we wanted in the days before she came home to us which was always exciting.
Bringing her home was a lot of fun- watching her run around her new house and garden. She was a perfect dog and settled in really quickly. We had a crate for her that had a bed in it and a sheet over the top to make it feel safe and cosy, and this was one of the first places she went to.
It's now been over three years since we adopted Saffy and everything is still going extremely well :)

Introductions

My name is Jenny and I've been meaning to start blogging for years! The reason it's taken me so long to get started is that I didn't know what to actually write about. I've come to realise though that I constantly talk about my dog on Facebook and Twitter, and (whilst out on a walk!) I came to the conclusion that she's the ideal subject for a blog.

Before I get started, I want to make it clear that this isn't me giving advice on dogs and their care. Everyone has their own way of doing things and my way is by no means the only way to look after a dog. I'm more than happy to discuss tips and different methods of training, feeding and bringing up dogs but please don't criticise my methods if they're not the same as your 'expert advice'. Also, I'm the first to admit that my dog is probably a little over-indulged and spoilt but I never forget that she's a living creature and not a toy nor a baby. So with this little bit of serious talk out of the way, let's get onto introducing my dog!

My family adopted Sapphire (Saffy) from Dogs Trust in 2009 when she was just 3 months old. She is a little brown and white Jack Russell Terrier (sometimes she's described as a Parson Russell Terrier because of her long legs). We don't know very much about her history before then, other than to say she came over from Ireland with the other females in her litter. She's a crazy, energetic little dog who clearly landed on her feet when she was adopted by us because she's had the best of everything ever since!