Jiggs the Feist

Jiggs was a feist, but he was almost solid black, except for a white ring around his neck.

My grandfather was born during the Great Depression, and his first job was hoeing corn for 10 cents a day at the tender age of 6. He often tells me stories of that time, but almost all of them go back to the times he spent hunting with his little varmint dog.

His first dog was a feist, although he says no one ever called them that. They were just varmint dogs. In this part of the world, I’ve always suspected that pinschers or pinscher type dogs played some role in the development of the feists and curs, because many of them have a pinscher appearance. And the area had lots of German settlements and German immigrants (including members of my family).

That dog sired a litter out another feist. This other feist was half-spitz or half Pomeranian (the terms weren’t as clear cut as they are today). The bitch was black. Out of that litter were born five black puppies, one of which had a white ring around its neck.

While the bitch was in whelp, a ignorant neighbor did an awful thing. He chopped my grandpa’s feist’s head off. Instead of keeping his bitches locked up when they were in heat, he was more than willing to kill all the dogs that came calling.  (There were no leash laws in those days, and it was legal and customary to let your male dogs roam, provided they were trained not to kill sheep, run cattle, or worry chickens.)

Now,  such a crime was not well-received in the community. To kill someone’s dog was an absolutely horrible thing to do– especially if it was a child’s dog. The news soon spread the feist bitch’s owner, who invited my grandpa down to his place shortly after the puppies arrive. He told my grandpa to pick out the pup he wanted, and he would send the puppy up with the mail man. He chose the little black one with a white ring around its neck.

About a month later, the mail arrived, and a little black puppy with a white ring around its neck was delivered. He was named Jiggs, and he became a superior little varmint dog.

He was then trained as a varmint dog. He treed squirrels, raccoons, and opossums and bayed up rabbits and foxes in groundhog holes. He was too big to really work as a terrier, but that problem was remedied. The next animal my grandpa received was an albino ferret, which he used to drive the rabbits out of the pipes and groundhog dens into Jiggs’s jaws. (Of course, using ferrets to rabbit in West Virginia was against the law, even back then.)

That worked well for about a year or two. One day, however, the ferret bolted the rabbit, and Jiggs missed. Then the ferret came to the surface, running as fast as a ferret can. Jiggs didn’t miss the ferret and quickly dispatched him. And that was the end of that hunting arrangement.

Jiggs was such a well liked dog that people would pick him up as he walked along the road. In rural West Virginia, dogs could roam at will, and some dogs developed such a good reputation that they were called “community dogs.” That meant that they were staples of the community, and that anyone would feed them or take them hunting. Today, this custom is largely restrained by leash laws, but at the time, dogs were seen as important animals that deserved some respect. Perhaps this goes back to the days on the frontier, when a good dog could help provide food and furs, bring in the milch cows and sheep, and act as a guard against humans and predatory animals.

My grandpa had Jiggs all through his childhood, but when he moved out of his parents’  house to a home closer to town, Jiggs followed him. He would wander from my great-grandparents’ farm all the way through town to my grandpa’s new house. He would stay a week or two, then he’d go back.

Then when my grandpa built his own house near where I am writing this post, Jiggs was brought over to stay. However, he soon wandered back to my great-grandparents’ home. He simply couldn’t stay in one place.

Then one day, he disappeared. He couldn’t be found at either house, and none of his usual benefactors, who often picked him up along the road, had seen him.

He was nowhere.

He was gone for about a month, and then one day he appeared at my grandpa’s new house. He was dragging a tie-out chain, and he was wearing a new collar with a new rabies tag.  Someone had picked him up and tried to keep him as their own. Jiggs had already had his rabies vaccine that year, so now he was double-vaccinated!

But the dogs free-roaming days were soon to end. A fox bit someone up the road and because he thought he was developing rabies, shot himself.

The county went on a quarantine for dogs. All strays were picked up and gassed. No hounds could be run.

Jiggs was out roaming when the edicts were put in force. Jiggs didn’t normally wear a collar or tag– everyone knew who he was and who he belonged to.

The dog catchers didn’t know this, and old Jiggs was picked up. He put int he back with all the poor dogs that were about to be gassed.

The dog catchers stopped at the gas station to fill up before taking their collection of strays to the facility. A neighbor happened to stop by, and he looked over the collection of strays in the back of the dog catchers’ truck. He noticed a small black and white dog with a ring around its neck. After closer inspection, he realized the dog was Jiggs.

When the dogcatchers came out of the gas station, the neighbor told them to turn out that little black dog, because he was vaccinated for rabies and taxes were paid for him. He was the community dog, and he was an excellent varmint dog. Several people came by and vouched for the little dog.

Not wanting to upset the community too much, the dogcatchers turned Jiggs out at the gas station.

He went on his merry way.

For 19 years Jiggs was a varmint dog. But as he aged, he stopped leaping at the tree when he treed a squirrel.

He would just lie down at the foot of the tree and bark.

But for shortly before he turned 20, old Jiggs just didn’t get up one morning.

And thus ended the story of a brave little feist, the community dog.