Terrier Jack lives for the moment

I have a dog.

His name is Jack. Jack is a Jack Russell. A Jack Russell terrier.

His name fits in well with our other pets' names, including an orange cat called Ginger and a chook called Eggy.

Anyway, back to Jack ... When I first told people I was getting a Jack Russell for a dog they all said: "How wonderful. They are so loving. He'll be great for your family."

When I actually had possession of the dog, the same people said: "You didn't get a Jack Russell, did you? Oh no ... what did you expect?"

You see, the thing they forget to mention about Jack Russell's is the last part of their name - terrier. The word is synonymous with, shall we say, fearlessness, and Jack has it in droves. Big or small, he wants to kill 'em all and before he had his nuts cut off, he wanted to love 'em as well.

He has a fatwa against the cat and spends his life plotting against her. It is so bad I have had to fence the back section off from the front. The cat stays out the front and the dog out the back, trying to get to her. The only time they came into contact, Ginger managed to get a claw into the skin just below Jack's eye. There was blood everywhere but all that did was heighten Jack's resolve to get her.

I used to take Jack to work with me and he would sit in the workshop on a lead. Every day, sometimes twice, he would do a stinky poo on the workshop floor. It didn't matter how many times he'd been walked or what food he'd been fed. He was like clockwork.

I stopped keeping him in the workshop when he dragged the chair he'd been tied to over to a newly purchased bucket of rat bait and managed to chew his way through the plastic and guts the lot. When we discovered what he'd done, he was sitting looking smug with rat bait all round his chops, I raced to the vet where they put some stuff in his eye and he vomited it all out (except for the last bit which he saved to vomit in my car on the way home).

I persisted with taking him to work, though, and built a kennel and set him up in a spot where he could watch us and not feel lonely. But all he did was bark, bark, bark.

So I'd take him with me when I was doing jobs and he sat in his little perch in the back of my truck and we tooled our way around town happily enough. Until we went to a French family's house in the countryside.

I rolled up and the homeowner wandered over. I opened the door to speak with him and, quicker than the bat of an eye, Jack was out of the truck and gone.

Within a minute there was high-pitched scream from the house and a group of ladies came running outside holding a small furry thing (which I later found out was a papillon dog) with Jack circling them like a shark. The lady with the papillon was shouting at me in French and kicking at Jack. I had never been sworn at in French before ... it's an interesting experience.

I thought our end was near as the extended family encircled us, but the patriarch, who I swear was wearing a beret, walked up to me smiling, patted me on the shoulder and just said, in the thickest French accent I'd ever heard, "terrier".

I spent a bit of time and money training Jack. No violence, just the squirt of a water bottle here and a doggy treat there. It sort of worked. He now chews to bits anything that remotely looks like a bottle and he is absolutely addicted to bits of dried duck.

My fiance and Jack have a special relationship. She feeds him every morning, comes home at lunch to let him out for a wee and makes sure his licence, etc, is all up to date. But will he come when she calls? Nope. Does he even acknowledge she's alive when I'm around? Nope. He's a one-man dog and that man, through all the trials and tribulations, is me.

I've managed to get to know Jack and work him out. He's a "live for the moment" kind of dog. He'll take a chance - no matter how mental. Car coming? No worries, he can beat it. Psychotic cat with claws like knives? No worries, he can beat it. Big dog? No worries, he can beat it.

Our favourite game is throw the toy and watch as Jack runs away with it. He knows he should bring it back so I can throw it again but he would rather get close to me and pretend like he's giving it back and then go "aha!" and run away with it again. The thing is, even though he's a little so-and-so who has cost me like a billion dollars in vet bills and special foods and hours shoring up the fencing at home, he's my dog.

He has an irrepressible spirit. A joy for life. When the chips are down, his tail is up and he's into it. There's a bond between us. A mateship. When I went through some crap times a while ago he was there. He made me laugh. He sat on my knee and gave me cuddles.

I'll put up with his crap for that kind of loyalty.

-Dan Jackson is a Whanganui journalist and part-time scrap metal dealer.