Feist
A Feist Dog |
| Other names |
Treeing Feist |
| Nicknames |
none |
| Country of origin |
United States |
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| Classification & standards |
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A Feist (or Fyce) is a type of small hunting dog, developed in the rural southern United States.
Description
Feists generally are small (under 18inches/45cm), short-coated dogs with long legs, usually white with dark spots, a pointed (snipy) nose and with ears set high on the head. Traditionally the tail is docked. As feists are bred for hunting, not as show dogs, there is little to no consistency in appearance (breed type), and they may be purebred, crossbred, or mixed breed dogs. They are identified more by the way they hunt than by their appearance.
Individual dogs can hunt in more than one way, but in general, feists work above ground to chase small prey, especially squirrels. This contrasts with fell terriers, earth dogs that go to ground to kill or drive out the prey, usually rodents, European rabbits, foxes, or badgers.
When hunting, feists, unlike hounds, are silent on track. They "tree" squirrels, keeping them in the tree by barking and circling the tree, in the same manner that coonhounds tree raccoons.
Various named varieties within the feist type have been developed, including the Treeing Feist, Mullins Feist, Denmark Feist, Mountain Feist, Kemmer Feist, and Rat Terrier. The United Kennel Club recognizes a Treeing Feist breed.
An example of a Mullins Feist
History
The feist is not a new type of dog. Written accounts of the dogs go back centuries, with several spelling variations seen. Abraham Lincoln wrote about them in a poem, "The Bear Hunt," spelling "feist" as "fice." Reference to them is included in the diary of George Washington in 1770 in which he wrote, "A small foist looking yellow cur," and a feist is also featured in William Faulkner's "Go Down Moses" in the line "a brave fyce dog is killed by a bear." In her 1938 novel The Yearling, author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings uses the spelling of "feice" to refer to this dog. Claude Shumate, who wrote about the feist for "Full Cry" magazine, believed that the feist was descended from Native American dogs, mixed with small terriers from Britain, and was kept as early as the 1600s. (Full Cry, December, 1987).
Similar Breeds
Similar dogs are the Smooth Fox Terrier, developed to flush out foxes for hunters in England (but now primarily kept for conformation showing and as a pet), and the Jack Russell Terrier, used for ratting. Fox terriers and feists are often predominantly white so as to be visible to hunters. There are many other variants of this type, such as the Parson Russell Terrier and Rat Terrier, and many locally developed purebred breeds. The original fox terrier type was documented in England in the 1700s.
Feist and Jack Russell
Because of similarities in appearance, feists are sometimes mistaken for Jack Russell Terriers, particularly in shelters and pounds. However, certain physical characteristics separate the two, and can be easy to identify if you know what to look for. The coat of a feist is generally softer and smoother than that of a Jack Russell. Its legs are longer and in better proportion to its body, and the tail of a feist is usually shorter than that of a Jack Russell.
Despite overall physical similarities, however, the behavior and temperament of a feist and a Jack Russell are quite different.
Most feists are fairly quiet dogs, and lack the tendency to excessive barking demonstrated by Jack Russells. Because feists were bred to hunt in packs, they enjoy the company of other dogs, whereas Jack Russells tend to be more combative, and may be too aggressive to share space with another dog. Finally, while active, feists do not generally exhibit the frenetic energy of Jack Russells.
Feist and Rat Terrier
There has been considerable crossing of feist dogs, since they are bred primarily for performance as hunting dogs. Feist dogs are the progenitor of what we now call the Rat Terrier. The Rat Terrier is a specific breed within the "feist" umbrella. Because the word "feist" refers to a general type of dog just as "hound" and "terrier" refer to a group of breeds, Rat Terriers are often called "feist". The terriers brought to America in the 1890s from England were crossed with feist dogs already here in addition to some of the Toy breeds (Toy Fox Terrier, Manchester Terrier and Chihuahua) to develop the Rat Terrier we know today.
Etymology
The word 'feist' is described in Webster's Third New International Dictionary as from the obsolete word "fysting" meaning "breaking wind, in such expressions as fysting dog or fysting hound". "Feist" is defined as "1. chiefly dial: a small dog of uncertain ancestry..." Related to the word "feisty". More on the Online Etymological Dictionary [1] .
References
"Feist or Fiction?: The Squirrel Dog of the Southern Mountains" by Donald Davis, Jeffrey Stotkit, The Journal of Popular Culture 26 (1992) , pgs 193–201
"Introduction to the Treeing Feist: a squirrel dog breed history" by Marcus B. Gray, Countryside & Small Stock Journal, November/December 2007, pg 48
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