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THE DOMESDAY BOOK OF DOGS

Rat Hounds.

  Rat hounds appear to be all things to all people. From a bobbery pack of terriers: border, fox and Irish in Collingham, Yorkshire (Dixon Evening Telegraph, 1931), to a motley assortment of various sized dogs as sported by Jane Dane, mistress of the Back Bay Rat Hounds and her friends. That particular Back Bay, Boston pack and followers were described as: “one Airedale, one Airedale-Poodle cross, one Dachshund (my own) and one Jack Russell Terrier belonging to Mrs Tuckerman my sister, and assorted people (The Chronicle of the Horse, 1957).

  Thirty fox terriers described as rat hounds worked the port of Buenos Aires and accounted for about 30,000 rats a month apparently, whilst working strict union hours: 7 ‘til 11AM when they took lunch and then 1 ‘til 5 or 6PM when they would voluntarily go for an antiseptic bath before their evening meal.  All steamers coming into the port were gassed first and the rat hounds were on hand to mop up the survivors (Mexia Daily News, 1923). Rats appear to be a magnet for "fishermen's tales" but if this figure of an average of rats destroyed by dogs per month seems a little far-fetched, author and schoolteacher D. Brian Plummer calculated that his dogs had killed an estimated 78 ton of rats at a battery hen farm in the 1970s. This was assuming an average weight of twelve ounces per rat! Under ideal conditions rats can occur in very large numbers indeed.

From Rod and Gun in Canada. 1916.

  What may be seen as a peculiar dog advert. Presumably the 'fox and rat hounds mentioned above should be fox terriers and rat terriers.

  Perhaps the most famous pack were the Bagley Rat Hounds managed by Jack Ivester Lloyd. the pack constituted at various times: a cairn - west highland cross, "a big and very game dachshund" a quite leggy Jack Russell-type "very near to the old Devonshire parson's description of his beloved Trump," a leggy border collie, a Patterdale-type, a Jack Russell-type rather shorter on the leg than the Patterdale. Descriptions compiled from The Hunter's Year Book and Vive La Chasse. 

  Many were inspired by Jack Ivester Lloyd's writing in the 1950s and 60s be it for his tongue in cheek accounts of his rat-hunting escapades or his acute observations of natural history and field sports.

  In 1911 the first Doberman pinschers to be registered in Sweden were supposedly registered as 'rathounds' (Walker, 1981) but the source for this claim is difficult to track as both the German and Swedish for dog is hund and for some reason English speakers insist on mistranslating hund as 'hound'.
N.b. German for hound is 'bracke, while the Swedish word for hound is 'stovare'.

Rod and Gun in Canada. 1916.

National Business Publications Ltd. Gardenvale, Quebec.

Mexia Daily News. 1923.

Dixon Evening Telegraph. 1931.

Chronicle of the horse. 1957.

The new Doberman pinscher, 1981.
Joanna Walker. Howell Book House, New York.

The Hunter's Year Book. 1981.
Huddlesford Publications.

Vive La chasse. 1989.

Waddy Wadsworth.

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