Jack Russell Terrier Mix - Bandit

by Stephen Harris
(Hazard, KY, USA)

My Maltese Jack Russell Terrier mix, or Jacktese, will be 3 years old in December this year (2011). We bought him from an expecting couple who couldn't/didn't have or want him in the same place as their newborn. He is a very easygoing and friendly dog. He is very excitable but at the same time very hard to make angry. He is very loyal to the family and does not like to see any rough-housing. When he first came me and my little girl used to play-wrestle on the bed and at first he would jump on the bed and bark at us. He is a very good watchdog, as well. When we first put him in the house, he would sleep only with my wife and I on our bed, either at our feet or in between us, or at the bottom of the bed. I was on 3rd shift (nights) at the time, and the first morning I came home after we bought him, he barked at me coming into the bedroom! He likes to play, either with pull-toys, balls (rubber or tennis, doesn't matter to him), and to rough-house. He also likes to dig. If he gets shut away (as is the case when strangers come, as he starts barking at the first knock until they come in, then he either jumps on them and begins to sniff or he pees on the floor/them). My Maltese Jack Russell mix has a healthy appetite. He is very smart, and very intuitive, picking up training tips from other dogs (like going outside, see below). He is very good with our 5 year old (3 when we first got him). One of his favorite games is to put something under a blanket and make it move, while he attempts to dig it up or pull the cover away. Likes attention. He LOVES to lay on his side/back and have his belly rubbed/scratched. He looks like a Jack Russell but for the long hair and fluffy ears that mark his Maltese blood. The kind of dog that meets you at the door when you come home from work, jumping up to be petted and to lick his master. When someone is outside or in a different room with a door seperating them, he will lay on his belly and stick his nose to the crack and blow/sniff every so often. He is not a HUGELY active dog, but whenever we can we take him outside and let him get in a good walk, he enjoys it very much. Not a bad chewer. He likes to settle down with a good chew toy or a bone and chew until he's done. He has never been bad to chew on shoes, though he has a habit of sniffing mine and going to sleep while laying his head and paws on one or both of them. Also not bad to bite. There have been times where we have scolded him or whipped him (depending on the severity of his actions) when he has bared his teeth as if he wants to snap, but he has never bitten us in anger. We have gotten teeth marks on occassion when we play with him and he begins to really get into a playful mood, but if we show pain he always shows surprise first and then remorse, hanging his head, droopy ears, low tail and tends to lay down or walk away slowly. My wife is fond of having me act like I am hurting her and she screams OW! and yells for him, and he tends to look at me like he'd like nothing better than to make ME say ow..

Bad traits of my Maltese Jack Russell Terrier mix are his easily excitable nature (may or may not have a weak bladder, he is very bad to pee on people or in the doorway when someone new comes in the apartment) and the fact that at times he will not leave people alone. When this has happened we have had to put him in another room until he calms down (and in several cases he has proceeded to dig at the door, pulling the carpet up in several places). As to housebreaking, he has never used a puppy pad, but since day one has always went into our bathroom/laundry area to do his business. During a time when my mother in law lived with us and brought her poodle (CKC registered, named Shadow), she had him trained to scratch at the door when he needed to do his business, or when asked if he wanted "go pee-pee" he would wag his tail and run to the door. After a couple weeks, Bandit seemed to get the idea and a few times we let him out with Shadow and he would go outside with him, but we had trouble getting him to come back in. We live within 15 feet of a highway so we are very afraid of letting him go outside by himself. He can be hurt very easily, as there are times when my wife and I are gone to work he whines and cries for a time while sitting in front of the door or on top of our couch looking out the window to the driveway. This is also not a dog you want to leave your food too close to. On a percentage, I would say if you were to lay a pork chop or fried chicken within his reach and were gone for a fair amount of time (5-10 minutes), 40% of the time you would come back and he will have pulled it out of the plate and eaten it. This having happened in the past and him knowing the consequences of this, it has not happened in quite some time. But perhaps the biggest problem we have with him is his sex drive. We did not have any female dogs in the house, nor where there any in the neighborhood. Around the time he turned 2, he began to hump pillows, blankets, people, etc. It was very rare and random at first, but got increasingly more common. My opinion was that it had less to do with breed, more to do with age. As a house dog with no females in the area, he had no other way of release, and I found it hard to get mad at him for that. But after a time, it got more and more common, and we eventually had to scold and use a rolled-up newspaper on him to show him it was wrong. We very recently acquired a CKC registered Yorkie female named Laci Shea (4 years), who is very small compared to Bandit. Bandit is 30-31 inches, nose to tail, and goes about 20-22 lbs. Laci is about 15 inches (bobtailed) and weighs in at barely 5 lbs. Normally we would not mind but where she is so small, and the size is a big factor here, that we are afraid if she got pregnant with his puppies she could not have them naturally and would need vet assistance to have the pups, or run a risk to both her life and the life of her litter. After 2 months, this issue has come under control on its own, after she stopped running away from him (she was a VERY nervous dog, shook constantly and would not leave Amanda for any prolonged period of time. We believe she was mistreated at her former home, as she displayed a behavior common with an abused animal).


Bandit was the first dog I had gotten my wife that she had alot of interaction with and genuinely seemed to grow on her. After several dogs had went on their way (runaway, death from snakebite, taken to pound by landlord) I was hesitant to get this one. But he proved to be the one that would win her over. My Maltese Jack Russell mix has become a part of the family, and we would not trade him for anything.

Any information about this breeds name that anyone could give us would be appreciated. We cannot find any information online, even identifying this as a recognized hybrid.