I could go on and on, but not one of those traits makes a rat terrier a Decker, it requires ALL of those traits.
There is the misconseption that, it looks like a decker it must be a Decker, WRONG.
A Decker is the combination of many traits that many times are overlooked by breeders in favor of another trait. I will also define the meaning of each of these in layman terms.
I will be covering both the traits that are important as well as those traits that I have heard breeders place negative thoughts on, that really have no dire importance to this breed.
Hunting ability
The hunting ability is quite simple if you don't try to lump the other traits involved, in with it, such as nose, drive, grit, and treeing ability. Hunting ablity is simply the act of the dog going out and searching, searching for something, he may not know what, but trying to find something that stirs his interest.
Myself, I havn't seen too much of this being lost in our Deckers since this tends to come natural to any breed of dog.
Nose, eyes, & ears
All of these must be used when hunting, how else are they going to find the game they are after?
When I speak of the nose in terms of hunting i'm refering to the ability to use it, as well as if the dog has a hot or cold nose, how old of a track can he follow.
Now in my opinion, most Deckers are going to be warm to hot nosed, we may see a few dogs that can work out a colder track, but nothing we could compare to the hound noses.
The use of the nose is what is important. Sometimes this comes natural other times it doesn't. Sometimes a dog will have it and not realize it till the need arises to uses it. In a case where a dog is involved in a sight chase and the game goes in brush or anywhere out of sight, generally if the dog is going to know how to use it this is when it will happen, their noses will go immediatly to the ground. One point I would like to mention however, knowing to use their nose is a needed trait, however it does take sometime to learn how to use it. Its like riding a bike, you know you push the peddles to make it go, but you then have to learn to balance.
Eyes and ears are pretty self explanitory, but it needed to be mentioned, to make people aware that these dogs should not rely on just one of the scense to locate game.
Drive
Drive kicks in during and after hunt. Drive during the hunt refers to how hard is this dog willing to work to find game. And drive after finding game is how hard will this dog work to stop their prey. This can be by either catching, treeing, or baying.
I don't believe a dog can really ever have to much drive once the chase is on, however while searching for game, if a dog has too much drive this can cause handling problems and dogs may work out farther than you want them too.
However, different game species require differnt amounts of drive. Squirrels for example require about the least amount of drive, with the exception of game birds. On the opposite end of the spectrum, it requires a great deal of drive for big game such as bear, cougar, bobcat, even fox and coyote which tend to be more reluctant to stop, because they don't have the option of going up a tree... with the exception a gray fox. If they stop, a fight is inevitable.
Grit
I think there is some misunderstanding as to the difference between grit and aggression. They arn't even close to the same thing and we need to make sure to keep grit and stay away from aggression.
Grit only comes into play after the game is subdued. Aggression can and will show itself in everyday life if it is there. There can be a number of different reasons why we may see agression, and i'm really only refering to aggression toward other dogs, because this is were we see it most often. On the rare occasion that we may see people aggression, it most likely has an underlying reason, from mistreatment to no socialization.
Grit on the other hand, either a dog has it or doesn't have it. It can come in varying degrees. Grit must be accompanied by one thing to be very productive, and that is the intelligance to use it properly. Many times the itelligance behind it is regulated by the amount of grit a dog has. If a dog is to gritty, adrenilin overrides the ability to think, and use their intelligance. A dog that has to much grit is likely to get itself killed. If used on big game such as bear or cougars, a dog with too much grit may barrel in without thinking about it and end up in the more powerful jaws and claws of its prey.
More to come