I never thought I'd ever see or
have a smaller, handier bitch than Snippet, but little Twiglet is indeed
just that! At only 10 1/2 inches, she barely grew big enough to even
meet registration requirements! She was a shrimp from the get-go, and
it was obvious from early on that she certainly wasn't the pick puppy.
But she was so small, that I couldn't resist hanging onto her for that
very reason. I also needed a tiny name for her. While waiting for
our dinner table one night in a pub in Middleburg, Va. with Brian & Lee
Ludlam, who had come over to judge the Hunt Country Classic Terrier
Trial hosted by Linda, we were seated at the bar. On the bar sat a jar
of those tiny pretzels. Lee reached in for one, and said, "What are
these?" I told him they were pretzels, and his response was "in
England, we call them Twiglets". Instantly I said, "What a neat name for a puppy!!! Riot's litter was only
about 3 weeks old at the time and no one had names yet. But that night
at dinner little Twiglet got hers.
Twiglet was a dynamo from day
one.........very intense, very focused. When she and her littermates
were first introduced to quarry (rats) at about 9 weeks, they were all
pretty keen, but Twiglet was the obvious standout. She would just go
crazy trying to get to the rats, and once she did, everything was over
very quickly! Her drive was so intense that I started her in the field
fairly young; her very first experience with the "real deal" was nothing
short of awesome.......she got to the hole, never hesitated an instant
to enter, and then started baying almost immediately. After a couple
of minutes her baying stopped, and a couple of minutes after that out
she backed with a fairly good sized teenager groundhog in her mouth!
And she's never looked back from there. Her "specialty" is bolting
these big chucks right into the lurcher's mouths, which she does on a
regular basis. It's almost comical to see a huge chuck pop out of the
hole,get snapped up by the lurchers and Bear,
and then a nanosecond later, out comes little Twiggy! With a 12
1/2 inch chest, there isn't anyplace she can't go. As Teddy Moritz
said, "Between Twiglet and the lurchers, no groundhog is safe." Even
when she can't bolt them, this little bitch never backs down. She
knows her limitations due to her size, and her strategy of being a "gnat
in the groundhog's face" works extremely well. She never blinks, and
keeps them well occupied until I can get to her. She is the ultimate
hole dog. Watching her work makes my heart sing!
Naturally, being as little as
she is, she isn't a "force to be reckoned with" on the race track. As
a puppy she'd manage to make the finals, but usually she was at the back
of the pack. And there's no sense wasting entry fees on her as an
adult. She manages to do a bit better in the conformation ring, but
her diminutive size is still a pretty big handicap. While she's much
too tiny to ever do much under most judges, everyone is always amazed at
how well put together she is for something that small. Twiglet even
managed to pin 4th in the Bred By Exhibitor Working Bitch class at the
2005 U.S. Nationals because of that. She did manage to go Working
Terrier Champion at one show where the judge really loves the little
ones, but that's an accomplishment she probably won't be repeating
anytime soon! Guess her catch phrase could be "I coulda been a
contender". But not winning ribbons is the least of my
worries..........any of them can do that. But very few can do what she
does in the field, which is priceless! I'm looking forward to having
tons of fun hunting with this little bitch. She already has quite a
few groundhog notches in her stock, and there's no doubt in my mind that
she'll continue to amass many, many more. God bless the little ones!
