The Art of Being a Terrier

Once he lost his poaching habit, Mike the terrier redeemed himself many times over as a superb rabbiter, ratter and finder of tennis balls, recalls Frank Bonnett

Mike was an Irish terrier and the first dog of my very own. He was well bred on his mother’s side but his points were not perfect and that, I think, must have been mainly his father’s fault. He was given to me by a Scottish friend who found it impossible to keep him because of his bad habit of poaching. Mike had never been a poacher in his early days, but he fell in with another dog that was addicted to it and very soon was taught all about it. The two of them were always going off together, and on one occasion came back covered with blood and with several shot pellets in them.

Though this alarming experience did not entirely cure Mike of his poaching propensities, it made him gun-shy. A few months after this adventure Mike became my property and went away with me to another part of the country. Opportunities for poaching were quite as good there except that the dog was under better control generally, but he seemed to have forgotten all about it after he was separated from his erring companion. He had the most affectionate disposition, absolutely devoted to his master, and was of the most extraordinary intelligence. You had simply to show him once how to do a thing and he would do it ever afterwards as often as he was told to.

When I got Mike he was nearly two years old — gun-shy, fond of hunting rabbits, but no good at all at killing anything. He had never been shown how to deal with rats and mice, but after I took him in hand he was soon initiated into these and other of what I considered the necessary arts of a terrier. He was so scared of the gun that the mere click made by opening or shutting it was enough to drive him off the premises, not to return for hours. But I felt sure that I could teach him that the gun, in my hands at any rate, would do him no harm.

Plenty of rabbits