How To Breed A Squirrel Dog

EDITOR'S NOTE: In years past, you would find squirrel dogs as common as front porch swings, big black pots in the backyard for canning and a smokehouse for preserving meat. You expected to see a squirrel dog in a neighbor's front yard, just like you'd know he had a garden in his back yard. But as the country's population migrated from the farm to the city, a good squirrel dog became as scarce as hen's teeth. This week we'll look at why every outdoorsman should own a squirrel dog.

Almost every breeder has his own beliefs about how to produce a top-notch squirrel dog, as does Danny Williams, a longtime squirrel-dog breeder and trainer. "I produce two types of squirrel dogs -- pure-bred rat terriers and feists," Williams explained. "I think the rat terrier is one of the most intelligent breeds in America. These dogs listen, pay attention to what you say and mind extremely well. They obey and constantly try to please their masters. "

Although rat terriers made excellent squirrel dogs, I wasn't getting a satisfactory number of pups that would bark tree at less than one year. Often a rat terrier would require two or three years hunting experience before it would bark on tree. My goal was to produce dogs that would bark on tree before they were a year old." Williams experimented with cross-breeding to get such a dog. He reported that, "I bred a rat terrier male with a blue tick female that was a staunch tree dog. By crossing these two breeds, I thought I could produce a feist that would begin to tree before it was a year old."

To obtain the right size feist dogs, Williams took the female pups from the rat terrier/blue tick cross and bred them to another rat terrier. This mix resulted in a small black-and-white dog with the rat terrier's intelligence and the blue tick hound's treeing power. Williams prefers to hunt with a black-and-white dog with more white on it than black. This coloring makes the dog easy to see in the woods, especially in the early mornings and late afternoons when hunters will find squirrels the most active. "I can see a white dog long before I get to the tree," Williams explains. "Finding the dog quickly increases my chances of locating the squirrel in the tree."

Although Williams prefers to have hound in his feists, Jim Rhea of Wynne, Arkansas, a breeder of several world-champion squirrel dogs, crosses his dogs with English pointers.

"The pointer blood gives them a keener nose and a little bit harder hunting blood," Rhea emphasized. "I also like a squirrel dog that will bring the squirrel back to me. I believe that by breeding the bird dog with the feist you pick up that retrieving trait."

TOMORROW: How to Test and Buy A Squirrel Dog