Don’t suppose anyone knows a reputable breeder of long legged rough coated JRTs? Bonus points if they’re in or near New England. We had a breeder years ago who bred smooth coated JRTs with the loveliest temperaments, super healthy, lived for ages, but she hasn’t bred for years. I’m no use at all in the terrier dept - this is for a dear friend.
Thanks for any direction!
Is that a Parson Russell terrier? Isn’t leg length the primary difference between those breeds?
oh, god, I don’t have the remotest clue - there are lots of dogs I can talk about but terriers are not among them, other than to say that my mother had a silky terrier before she had us, so maybe I have baggage. LOL
I know a couple people. Not in the north east but MD/WV area. Let me go find their info.
You might check this website: http://www.jrtcabreeders.com/ Hart Farms is in West Virginia, but when I had Jacks, she was an outstanding breeder and judge.
They are known as Parson Jacks or Parson Terriers. They come in smooth coats as well.
I thought Parson Terriers were the AKC version of Jack Russells. The Jack people fought AKC recognition – as have other working breed organizations – and managed to force the AKC to at least not call them Jack Russells.
I also recall that Jack Russells can carry a mutation for achrondoplastic dwarfism, aka short legs. Called ‘Puddin Jacks’ when they occur, this is sometimes deliberately bred for, because cuteness. I’m betting that this is a major flaw in the AKC ‘Parson Terrier’ standard, and that’s why you don’t see the Parsons with short legs. Because the original Jacks are not a bred-to-a-standard breed, they are going to vary a lot more.
This is a very good summary of the differences between them, from Quora, by Jeff Dege:
Originally? Nothing. Over time? Everything.
What happened is that the kennel clubs saw the growing popularity of the Jacks, and determined to take control of the breed standard, just as they had for the Border Collie.
The Jack Russell owners were opposed to this because they correctly saw that it would destroy the essence of what made a Jack a Jack. They feared that the kennel clubs would do to the Jacks what they had done to the Standard Collie - create a dog that had a consistent appearance, but none of the behavioral characteristics that were so important to what a Jack is.
So, there was a lawsuit, and the Jack Russell owners won:
The Jack Russell Terrier experience - Politics and Culture
The end result was that the kennel clubs chose a new name, Parson Russell Terrier. And at the beginning, the two different names referred to dogs from the same gene pool.
But it’s been a number of generation, now, and they’ve begun to diverge, just as the Jack Russell owners knew they would.
The differences:
Parsons have a closed stud book. Jacks do not. Only dogs descended from the initial list can be called Parsons. Any dog that meets the breed standard can be registered as a Jack, regardless of ancestry.
The Parson standard on appearance is narrower. The Jack standard accepts more variation.
The Parson standard is genealogical. Every puppy in a litter of two Parsons is a Parson, and can be registered at birth. The Jack standard is individual. A Jack can only be registered as a Jack after the age of one, and then only if it meets the breed standard.
But most importantly, the Parson standard has no behavioral requirements. Ancestry is all that matters. Parsons are judged in the show ring, strictly on how well their appearance conforms to the breed standard. Jacks are judged in the same way, except that to even enter the most prized competition, the dog must be certified as having successfully hunted at least one of the recognized prey species: Red Fox, Grey Fox, Woodchuck, Raccoon, and Badger.
So, what it works out to is that at the time of the split, there wasn’t any difference, but over time the Parsons have been bred to conform more closely to a narrow appearance standard, while Jacks have been bred to maintain their working abilities.
The fascinating behavioral aspects of the Jack - the assertiveness, the obsessiveness, the high prey drive, are being lost in the Parson, as they were lost in the Standard Collie, and are being lost in the Border Collie.
They are being retained in the Jack.
I don’t know that I would assume this description is a truthful explanation of the differences. Who is that guy, anyway? (It looks like chat GPT to me).
That link led to this one, which is an interesting summary that sounds quite different.
The part that is unclear is how “AKC is at fault.” (From the article: Like the border collie, the Jack Russell Terrier was recognized by the AKC against the wishes of most JRT breeders and owners.)
My breed is trying to allow a split and AKC has little to do with it – it’s the parent club(s) that make the rules. So, the angry sentiments against AKC should really be pushed back to the parent club(s) that approached AKC for acceptance. There are lots of breeds that are not affiliated with AKC. It’s not like they chase them down and demand they belong. I’m sure there’s more to that story but I don’t really understand it…
This is correct. AKC is an umbrella organization consisting of breed clubs. What happens with these breed splits is that a group within the fanciers of the breed desires the things that the AKC requires – a written conformation standard together with a closed stud book, with a competitive system that rewards dogs which most resemble the appearance standard. Most working breeds fanciers realize that this system creates a breed which lacks the working qualities they need. It doesn’t HAVE to – but it does, almost invariably, because of what is rewarded and what is limited. They petition the AKC for acceptance. The working fanciers fight like hell to keep the appearance fanciers from changing the breed, and generally they lose, in court. The working Jack people partially won. The Border Collie people lost, after an epic battle, with predictable results. The breed I have now, English Shepherd, has yet to develop an AKC-favoring group within it, so it remains a landrace farm dog as it has always been. As yet, anyway.
The AKC is not in the slightest an innocent party, however. They use their deep pockets to help appearance breeders ruin the working qualities of breeds, among other things. I’m not a fan, to say the least. Generally working dog fans loathe the AKC and they have very good reasons to do so.
Explain how this works? Really. I sort of disagree with AKC having deep pockets, too. They are a registry, and establish and govern events for titles. I’m not sure how they are at fault for “ruining” a breed?
My breed is the Brittany, and there is also a French Brittany (Epagneul Breton). Currently both “types” are registered as “Brittany” in AKC, not two separate breeds, “American Brittany” and “EB” or two varieties of the same breed. (They are two separate breeds in Canada and in UKC).
AKC requires a parent club to establish itself before they will recognize the breed. And in our case, the AKC Brittany club needs to agree to release the EBs from our registry. There is (apparently) some disagreement on the EB side about which parent club is “THE” parent club, and also AKC won’t allow the UKC parent club to also be the AKC parent club. But beyond that - so far as I can tell - I don’t believe AKC has an opinion about splitting or not splitting. There are pros and cons for both sides, but not sure it makes any difference to AKC either way.
I could be wrong, but from what I see it’s the same for AKC whether we split or don’t split. And not sure how it would impact the breeds working/hunting ability.
Brittany people are not allowed to respond! You have the ONLY breed that has managed to be an AKC registered breed for about a hundred years, retain its working traits, not become an exaggerated-appearance breed, and everyone in the club is apparently friends! I mean, what is up with that?
Any other AKC breed I can think of has become a caricature of its former working self, and if it does have a working self somewhere, it is registered by an entirely different registry which has vocal contempt for the AKC dogs which have the same name.
While it is technically true that the AKC doesn’t deliberately ruin breeds, in fact does nothing malign at all, just manages closed stud books and puts on competitions, you’d think then that breeders of working dogs wouldn’t believe them to be absolute poison. And yet, they do. At the most charitable, they might say that the AKC has nothing of interest for them, and their stand-alone breed club or the UKC is all they need. But I’ve had my ear bent by breeders of livestock guardians, protection K9s, hounds, herding breeds, working retrievers …
The AKC used to have much deeper pockets than it does now, for sure. At one time an AKC dog had immense cachet. Those days are long over, and the reason they are over has a whole lot to do with their management system.
We had American Water Spaniels for many years. In that breed, field working qualities are still prized, and the dogs at the shows looked the same as the dogs at field trials to me – there weren’t two types. Maybe because they’re ranked #166 out of 200 AKC breeds in popularity, and they never got popular enough to be ruined.
I showed miniature schnauzers, Irish terriers, border terriers, wheaten terriers, bearded collies, half a dozen toy breeds and cannot recall a single where a show quality AKC dog was seen as a diminished representative of the breed. I’ll certainly concede that most of the working breeds and definitely labs have very different morphology between working and bench bred but even there I’ve seen a ton of crossover. For example, My farrier duck hunts but happily crossed his female with an AKC GCH male recognizing his value despite being heavier boned and lower on the leg than his personal preference.
Oh wow…flattering but not really the truth.
There are people in the breed and breed club that actively and intentionally push the boundary of the standard, including deliberate crossbreeding. These people tend to be field people, looking to breed an even more competitive FT dog.
But the value of the dog has to come from the parent club. I suppose the fact that hunting is still so important (even to a fault) is probably one reason even our show dogs still retain hunting abilities, but there are definitely splits between show and field lines. Some of our field dogs (including national champions) are nearly unrecognizable as Brittanys, but some of that could be due to cross breeding. 
We don’t have any real UKC competition — I have no idea if a parent club even exists at UKC - nothing is listed, no idea who wrote the breed standard, who conducts judges ed (if anyone) or anything. I don’t think they ever had enough people interested in forming a club. So maybe that’s another difference.
None of the breeds you showed have a role as a working dog in the US. The working terriers are generally JRTs and Rat Terriers. Toys don’t work, of course. And Beardies are nearly extinct as working dogs even in their native Britain (the working dogs looked nothing like show Beardies – I knew an AKC Beardie who was a great herder though, we assumed she was some kind of throwback). I was just referring to those breeds which do work in the US.
How are you defining a working dog?
Well, my criterion is something like: does the breed work at its traditional job, as opposed to competitions designed to mimic the work they used to do but don’t any more. Gun dogs that are popular with hunters. Ranch dogs who move cattle and sheep. Personal protection dogs and police K9s. Terriers used for clearing out vermin. Livestock guardians.
My experience is with herding dogs. About the first question someone needing a dog who will be useful asks is: what do the parents work like? Because herding instinct is inherited, and If you don’t work the parents, you have no idea what they are capable of. Herding is a complex of traits, separately inherited, and if you don’t have the whole package you will feel it out there in the field. It’s hard to breed a good sheepdog. There’s little room in the genetic selection process to go for pretty as well as useful.
I’ve had these discussions with non-working-dog people many many times. It’s always in vain, so I don’t know why I get sucked into them.
Gotcha. You are looking for agreement not a discussion. Noted and moving on.
OP best of luck finding a wonderful partner and a supportive breeder! I’ll ask around and see if anyone I know has any recommendations.
Looking for interest and understanding. It’s not there. Also moving on.
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