Berlin Bear?

One thing Berlin is famous for is bears. They love their bears - and selling bear souvenirs to tourists, which of course I fell for. You can find buddy bears all over the city with their arms stretched to the sky. Coincidentally, this is also a pose our little Bear can often be found doing, which somehow I don't have a photo of (distressing)! Today, we made a discovery that our very own Bear just might be German too.

Bear makes all kinds of friends at the dog park, both pets and people, the latter always asking, "what kind of dog is he?" This is the standard dog park convo, like going into work on Monday and asking, "How was your weekend?" We always respond with some variation of, "standard pound puppy breed: terrier mix" which is exactly what we were told. The organization we adopted him from also said he's likely part dachshund and upon telling people this, the response is largely skeptical with a wide variety of rationals (my favorite being, "oh I don't think so; he's too smart").  Bear has even met another pup just like him who was also a rescue and her person had even fewer guesses than we did. We think rescue mutt is an honorable breed in its own right and have no problem offering our ambiguous answer, although we've always been curious.

Today, Casey met someone who disagreed with said ambiguous answer and told him he didn't think he was a mutt at all, rather a specific terrier breed from Germany - the Jagdterrer (Yack-Terrier) or German Hunting Terrier. So, naturally, we went home and googled Jagdterrier until we ran out of youtube videos (not involving dead animals) and got sick of reading technical breed specifications. However the conclusion is: knowledgeable stranger was totally right! Minus a few 'flaws' like pricked ears and non-docked tail, he matches the photos and descriptions pretty well.

Take a look for yourself:

Image of a Jagdterrier snagged from the interwebs.

What little Bear probably looked like. So cute!

Does this look familiar?!

We also read a lot that reinforced our observations of his personality and gives us insight on how to keep him happy and healthy. These are definitely working dogs that are happiest when they have a job to do and get quite a bit of exercise on a regular basis. Good thing I've started taking him on my morning runs in addition to the dog park trips! Should we become unBearably curious (I crack myself up), apparently most vets can run a relatively inexpensive DNA test to help you figure out your pet's makeup. Until that time comes, I think we're pretty convinced that this is it. Awesome unexpected discovery!