PRESENTED BY
THE DOMESDAY BOOK OF DOGS
Hole dog.
Creeper.
Are North American foxes smaller than their European counterparts? That was the question that American hunters pondered over and the answer is - possibly yes. Certainly the grey fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) is, indeed slightly smaller than the Red fox (Vulpes vulpes). Either way some American hunters came to the conclusion that terriers in general were a little too large to flush foxes from their lairs. This could have been J. Watson Webb's motive when he experimentally crossed various breeds for a few generations, based around the Norwich terrier for the Shelburne hunt. Certainly Sir Jocelyn Lucas used Norwich terrier blood to achieve the smaller size he needed for his own breed of terrier. Webb would probably have been better using straight Norwich terriers or Norwich terrier first crosses.
To be an earth dog a terrier must be man-spannable, i.e. a chest circumference of 14" or less. Many terriers these days fail that test hands down and it appears they've been becoming progressively larger for maybe the last century and a half. Roughly since about the time dog shows became popular. Quite a sad indictment on terrier breeders. To paraphrase show judge Col. David Hancock, a terrier owner or breeder may not want his dog to flush a fox from its den but it must still be physically able to do so, otherwise you need a new name for the breed.
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| Trixie, a Hole dog (or Creeper) from 1948. |
By breeding from smaller terriers and feists (presumably) American hunters appear to have been attempting to reinvent the earth dog. Necessity is the mother of invention and one Pennsylvanian vermin controller: "started about ten years ago to cross the fox terrier and the black and tan with the idea of breeding a dog that would not be too large and yet be strong enough to whip any fox that might hole up." PGM, 1933. But there is no evidence supplied that the breeding regime was taken to successive generations.
Ely, 1947: "This is the trouble with most working terriers, they are too big, weighing often fifteen or twenty pounds or more." Ely had a terrier dog of about 10.5 lbs and "about fifty per cent of the time he gets stuck and cannot get to the fox without a great deal of digging." He goes on to lament: "The best working terriers or hole dogs produced by the local gentry are various crossbred ones, which incidentally do not breed true to type, either in size or in gameness.
One of the most popular crosses is the black and tan rat terrier, which is really an unregistered Manchester terrier, and the Chihuahua. The trouble is when you get one of these small enough, they very seldom have the ability to dislodge the fox."
This last paragraph seems to some up the problem nicely. The dens are so small that Hole dogs tiny enough to access the earths were too small to tackle the inhabitants and seems to show that the hidey-holes chosen by American foxes, almost burrows, were quite a bit smaller than anything their European counterparts were able to choose.
More about creeper dogs.
Pennsylvania Game News. 1933.
Game little dogs ... 1947
Newbold Ely. M.F.H. The Chronicle, N.Y.
Outdoor Life. 1948
Bonnier Corporation.
Predator control study and an analysis of the Pennsylvania.
Roger M. Latham. Pennsylvania Game Commission. 1951.
Are North American and European Red foxes different species.
Wildlife online.
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