Opinion & Comment

Small, snappish terriers were much appreciated on Appalachian farms

APPALACHIAN NOTEBOOK - Steve Oden

“Small, snappish dog,” said my wife, reading from Webster’s Dictionary. “I’d say Mr. Noah Webster hit the nail on the head when he described the rat terrier.”

Holding my swollen thumb, wrapped in gauze and throbbing with pain, I had to agree. The official definition of our pet, an active canine also known in Appalachia by its other name, American feist dog, could not have been more accurate.

“Rat terrorist, is more like it!” I grumped, unwinding the bandage to check multiple tooth punctures suffered when I attempted to separate the terrier from a rawhide chew toy she was munching while reclining on my pillow.

Her name is Gracie the Terrible, and she is the latest in a long line of rat terriers that have dominated households in my family down through the years. My maternal grandfather, Mack Brown, always had a pack of rat terriers around the old home place, down by the river in Mussel Camp Hollow.

The running, leaping, digging, yapping, nipping frenzy of feist dogs bounced all over the farmyard and spilled out the doors of the barn and smokehouse. They were the pups, grand-pups, and great-grand-pups of a flea-bitten matriarch named Suzy.

All my grandfather’s female rat terriers were named Suzy. Like the name, a gene ran true through the breeding: fox-like ears and bandit masks. So, one Suzy looked like the next. Their litters thrived because rats and other vermin proliferated faster than Suzy dogs. In other words, there was plenty of game on which puppies could sharpen their hunting skills.

Grandpa Mack had a soft spot for those little bundles of energy. He fed them stale cornbread and buttermilk. As a result, an army of rat terriers followed him everywhere. If Grandpa Mack strolled across the pasture to check his fences, keeping pace at his heels was a rollicking pack of feists, bouncing like Mexican jumping beans and sticking their pointy noses into every hole and crevice.

The Alpha Suzy, whatever generation she represented, led the way. She kept a careful eye on her master, whether he was plowing new ground or chopping the weeds in young cotton. She stayed no further than an arm’s length away, ready to nimbly leap into his lap. Grandpa Mack owned many working and hunting dogs but no “pets.” Suzy was the only dog he allowed the intimacy of stroking.

One of the last photographic images of my grandfather is of him tipped back in a cane-bottomed chair, with Suzy IV or Suzy X balanced on his thigh. He holds a floppy felt hat in one hand; with the other hand, he’s ruffling the terrier’s fur.

Suzy, in all her generational successions, hated my guts.

Rat terriers are funny dogs that way. They often imprint on one person and are fiercely loyal to them. They might be indifferent toward other humans, or – like the Suzy monsters of my childhood – they might develop an intense dislike to certain people. I apparently fell in the latter category.

When I approached to within six feet of a Suzy, she would begin to growl. The volume and pitch of the growling increased as I closed the distance until the Suzy, whichever one she was, had transformed into a pop-eyed, saliva-frothing, fang-snapping creature from Hades.

Grandpa Mack thought this performance hysterically funny.

“Go ahead ‘n pet her. The ol’ gal is trying to be friendly,” he cajoled. I would inevitably attempt to reconcile with the little dog and get nailed on the hand, arm, or leg. A bloody wound was my reward, and I would retreat to the kennels to commiserate with the beagles, bird dogs, and coon hounds penned there. They liked my company.

But, the Suzy dogs and their progeny were good for one thing. They kept the rodents at bay. The terriers were efficient and bloodthirsty ratters. Almost every night, Grandpa Mack locked a Suzy and several of her littermates in the barn, smokehouse, and root cellar. In the wee hours and dark corners of the outbuildings, life-and-death dramas would unfold as Suzy dogs sniffed out and attacked grain-robbing and chicken-killing varmints.

Come morning, the proud little terriers would be released and rush to the cow stalls for a pan of warm milk. In each building, we would find a pile of Norway rats, gopher rats, and assorted mice, mixed with the occasional weasel.

The puppies later would be allowed to play with and consume the rodents, thereby guaranteeing the training of another generation of ruthless rat killers.

To my knowledge, Gracie the Terrible has never killed anything except stuffed toys and tennis balls. She is my wife’s lap dog, devoted solely to her mistress like the rat terrier before her named Crackers. She is eerily similar in size and coloration to those Suzy dogs of old, and I wonder if I am to be haunted by ill-tempered terriers for my entire life.

Rat terriers are an old breed. President Teddy Roosevelt owned rat terriers, and they patrolled the corridors of the Whitehouse to help exterminate an infestation of rats. A rat terrier in England was credited with killing 2,501 rats in a seven-hour period back in the 19th Century.

I truly believe they fit with the character and history of Appalachia because, for all their small size, they are tough, resilient creatures. I just wish to one day find a rat terrier that will tolerate me. Maybe it’s my smell. Maybe it’s the Suzy gene… but when I get too close to Gracie the Terrible, her lips draw back from wickedly sharp little teeth and she growls.

This time, it’s my wife who says, “Go ahead and pet her…”