Life as a rat terrier

Qualifications: professional dog trainer for 5+ years and long time student of dog psychology before having my daughter. Previous ownership of a Rat Terrier (it's actually a formal breed, a lot like a Parson Russell Terrier).

-- How will the puppy interact with the other dogs in the household/army?

Hard to say. Different dogs will have different personalities/levels of natural leadership instinct.

A very dominant dog will walk into the existing pack (whose ranks and rules have already been established by the member dogs) with her chest puffed out, her tail held high, and a chip on her shoulder. To an onlooker, it might even look like she's picking fights with the others, when in reality the "victim" dogs did something very subtle to disagree with her immediate mandate that she's the boss around here now.

A very submissive dog would display the opposite body language: tail between the legs, head and ears down, making no eye contact with the other dogs. Since the others would not interpret this as a threat to the status quo, they would likely be curious and come over to sniff her. Further, a very submissive dog might roll onto her side for this, possibly while urinating submissively.

There's quite the large in-between scale too, but those would be the extremes.

-- Will there need to be close supervision when she is introduced to a group of them, or is it sufficient to set her loose among them and let the group sort itself out?

Unless you have a dog in the group that is known/proven to be dog aggressive, I've always been one to let them loose and sort things out for themselves. Dogs speak dog better than I can. They tend to understand one another best without my involvement.

-- Given that the puppy left her home pack very young and unskilled, & my character, while fond of this dog, has no particular predilection for dog training, what kind of training, socialization, & discipline are necessary and desirable to make the puppy well-behaved among humans & at least modestly competent at catching & killing small critters?

First of all, 5-6 mo old is not young, as far as socialization with mother and littermates are concerned. They're ready to go out into the world by around 10 weeks old. More time with the littermates is always preferable, but I don't see it happening in 17c Europe. I'd imagine that if the woman's livelihood depends on getting these dogs out the door, and she's not really training them herself, she'd err on the side of letting them go too young, at about 6-8 weeks old. Unless I'm reading you incorrectly and the breeder actually uses extensive training for ratting as a selling point.

Second, if this is a dog bred for vermin hunting, there shouldn't be much training involved. There's a piece of dialogue from the movie Days of Thunder that I've always loved: "Tim, take a look at that hound. Now that's the best coon dog I ever seen or heard about, and I didn't teach him a damn thing."

Hope this helps

I agree with justbishop on the training for vermin (or the fact that little to none is needed). My dog (a terrier/chihuahua mix) left the litter at 7 weeks, and other than teaching him to sit and stay and walk nicely, he got no direction from me. But lo and behold, when we moved into our new house the little scamp started going on point every night. Full out on point, with no training whatsoever. He was telling me we had mice in the crawlspace, and damned if he wasn't right.

Of course my dog is useless for killing them. No, my crazy mutt actually puts food down for the stupid things when they show. I'm betting being in a pack of dogs that don't feed their prey but eat them would change that quick, though.

I think it would depend on what's going on in your story. If there's a lot of fighting, and your MC is busy most of the time, the servants would take care of the pup, as another part of the household. They'll be the ones feeding it, cleaning up after it, etc. so they're going to want it to settle in smoothly. And learn not to pee in the tent.
If they're at a point of peace, or at least, downtime, 'teaching the new (cute, little) dog stuff' would be a way to fill in time. If it's the off season, and your MC is at home, then he'd have more time to mess with the dog himself.

Also, what are his plans for the dog? Did he pick up the pup with the thought that it could keep the vermin out of the supplies and away from the horses? Or was he thinking that a small dog might be more of a companion than a working dog? That would affect his relationship with the pup as well.

frimble3 said:

Also, what are his plans for the dog? Did he pick up the pup with the thought that it could keep the vermin out of the supplies and away from the horses? Or was he thinking that a small dog might be more of a companion than a working dog? That would affect his relationship with the pup as well.

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A rat terrier is a working dog. Terriers are serious business, and even the modern day watered down variety (there are still plenty of serious working lines out there as well) thrive when given a job.

Size has nothing to do with working ability, except that ratters were bred down in size to better contend with their chosen quarry.

I honestly doubt a working dog breeder in the 17th c would keep two litters of puppies around that long. 5-6 months is half grown. The females would be coming into their first season by then, and she'd be having to wrangle all the girls that she didn't want pregnant separate from their male relatives (because they tend to synchronize).

If she had that many and wasn't able to place them, she'd either be quietly disposing of them behind the shed or giving them away for free.

If she's worth her salt she'll catch and kill things all on her own. Justbishop covered a lot of the social dynamics pretty well. Personally, I wouldn't introduce a very small dog to a group of larger dogs all at once. Terriers have a tendency to scrap, and if the bigger dogs all get offended it doesn't end well. I'd introduce her to a couple of mellow older dogs one on one and go from there.

If you want her to be an older puppy, it'd be really plausible for her to be a breeder holdback that she decided to find a home for because a better prospect was born, or an older favored dog had started picking on her. Dog on dog aggression, especially same gender aggression, is pretty common among most terrier breeds.

In general I notice a lot of terriers a pretty spastic, however, I believe this is a result of under-exercise and boredom. The handful of jack russel terriers I have met that seemed mellow and stable were dogs that ran 4-5 miles next to their owner's bikes, hunted rats in barns, or otherwise had jobs to keep them occupied. Those dogs had a lot of poise and were pretty patient.

I think Canotila's nailed it.

The friend whose animals I look after is a Rat Terrier breeder, and hers work (one is actually her service dog as well as participating in sports and holding several weight pull Ch). Not a one had to be taught to go after vermin. I've owned several Terriers of different varieties myself and have never had to even point one in the direction of killing varmints. It's what they do. It's deep in their genes.

And absolutely, Terriers are apt to scrap and they have no concept whatsoever of size, other than the certainty that they are the biggest dog in the place -- and even if they realize they aren't, they aren't going to let anyone else know they know it, so just throwing a six or seven month old adolescent pup in with the other dogs has a solid probability of nasty consequences.

Like Canotila noted, if it's a bitch pup, it's likely to be on the verge of coming into first heat, which is going to make the pup twitchy and will have the dogs and other bitches upset too -- that's really when you have fights, the kind where dogs get permanently injured or killed.