Understanding Your Jack Russell Mix-Breed

As a dog owner, one of the most frustrating challenges was understanding my dogs’ individual quirks and personalities. A lot of the behavior displayed by your dog is characteristic of your dog’s breed. If you have a mix breed, but don’t know your dog’s exact lineage, look at your dog closely.

            Your dog’s appearance is your biggest helper. Look at your dog’s coat type, face shape, and build. Look through encyclopedias and websites to find other dogs that are similar looking to yours. This will help you identify the breed.

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            I had one Jack Russell/Miniature Poodle mix and one Jack Russell/Australian Cattle Dog mix. They were most certainly a handful! Terrier mixes, regardless of their other lineages, will most certainly have that larger-than-life terrier personality. They will be stubborn, intelligent, and very loyal. But what about everything else?

            Take Raider, our cattle dog/terrier mix. He had sort of a dual nature. He was every bit as stubborn as a purebred terrier, and had all the energy, but his temperament was different. He wasn’t as confrontational as a lot of terriers can be. He preferred to lounge, more like a large dog than a lap dog. He enjoyed his time outside and had boundless energy, but he enjoyed lying by our feet just as much as he liked to chase the cats outside.

      

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      Knowing the quirks of his breed allowed us to understand him better. Though he was a mere eighteen pounds, he regarded himself as an eighty-pound beast. Knowing this allowed us to understand some of his quirks: he hated to be picked up. He didn’t enjoy the company of other dogs as much, and being around other dogs with boundless energy made him irritable, not excited.

            It is important to understand every aspect of your dog to provide them with all the love and care they deserve. So if you know some of the negative aspects of your dog’s mixes, you can correctly adjust them to better suit the temperament and personality of your dog.