Stayers or Quitters?

[jessdale 416]

"IMHO a dog is a stayer if it stays until dug to -any depth any length of time.Some shallow places can take a while to dig around us and the opposite also applies -some sand holes of 7foot can be reached in under an hour .The main thing with any terrier is that it does whats asked of it ,no messing ,no popping out for a breather .Also to be a purist ,only one hole should need to be dug .Many times I have seen lads put a dog in then its on with the box after a couple of yips .A hole is started only to hear the fight move elsewhere.This is down to impatients mostly and not a shit dog.Let the dog settle for a while in one place before digging.I llike to beat the ground with the flat of the shovel to see if the quarry is stop ended or not .One of the worst faults in a digging dog is that of going at the quarry hard whilst your digging and then climbing out the hole wagging its tale when you break through.This is very hard to rectify and embarrassing to say the least.

Needless to say that particular terrier will be kept for rats only and not bred from."

 

Very, Very good post foxdropper

[phil wright 2]

yes but do some terriers get a lot of work under their belt wthout ever having to go say 3-4 hours or more.

those terriers would be called workers but does a terrier not have to have a certain amount of long sessions to ground to be called a stayer?

[Guest Stevie D]

Be interesting to know the average time a terrier spends below ground before each task is complete.

I would bet the vast majority of digs would be well under 2 hours. Surely if a terrier successfully completes eack task asked of him, every time, regardless of time spent below, he is worthy of being called a stayer.

 

Stevie

[Squirrel_Basher 17,100]

yes but do some terriers get a lot of work under their belt wthout ever having to go say 3-4 hours or more.

those terriers would be called workers but does a terrier not have to have a certain amount of long sessions to ground to be called a stayer?

 

It is not the dogs fault if shallow digs are the norm.A stayer ,in my book anyway is one that keeps the quarry where the dig was started and does not allow the quarry to push past .Time is irelevent to this terrier as it knows what it has to do.

[phil wright 2]

thanks for the replies lads