“My goal was to collect as many facts as possible for those who have a deeper interest in our breed and to present the background stories”.
This is from the back of the book, and I didn’t really know what to expect. At first, I was briefly looking through the book and just saw a collection of dogs with their pedigree. I was happy to find two of our own dogs in it as well, but then I started reading the book from the start, and I was impressed!
Everybody “knows” the story of the JRT’s and so did I (I thought), but it turned out that I didn’t! The author starts the book by outlining the history of John Russell and how it all started. In addition she has several photos as illustration, and it is very well written (easy to read). Even the famous drawing of “Trump” is in there! She then moved over to the history of JRT’s in Australia, and shares the stories of Johnnie, Malung and then the magic four. We even get to hear about several dogs that are in the pedigree of our own dogs today! The author has collected photos of all these famous ancestors to the breed today and it is really fun to be able to see the dogs that we have heard the names of so many times!
The author includes the breed standard, and in addition, the extended breed standard by the Australian National Kennel Council.
She even has a chapter about the concept of spanning, which is something that is an important attribute for the breed.
Ericsson continues with the story of the JRT in Sweden, how it all began, who were the individuals that spent extremely many hours in the work of establishing the breed in Sweden. She has also collected statistics about the number of registered dogs, imported dogs, breeders, the standard, dog show facts, mental descriptions, and other dog related activities and club activities. She has an overview of which dogs have been winning the specials from the start in 2003, until 2008 – and photos of them all!
After this, we find the large collection of JRT’s in Sweden, the part of the book that I started looking at in the beginning; where I found my own dogs and their pedigree when I first started reading the book. It is fun to look through them, because many of the names are very famous – still there were many dogs I had never seen before (I had only heard about them)!
This book is a gift to all the JRT people in Sweden! If you have a JRT and are interested to know a little bit more about the breed, this is the one book that is worth buying and reading!
The author has put in a lot of work into her writing, and it is amazing that someone has used time to collect all this information. If she had not done this, I am sure this information would have been lost at some point, and then it might have been too late! All the photos and all the stories, I can not imagine how much time she has used.
Enjoy this book, it is worth both reading and buying!
... and here is the paw rating.

Review
by Kennel Arctic Maple, breeder of Jack Russell Terrier in Norway