Feist

When I showed him a photo of Schatzi, a guy I know who grew up in the south said, "In South Carolina they'd call that a feist!"  He explained that a feist is a catch-all for any kind of small hunting dog, usually of indiscriminate breed (except for the Treeing Feist, which is a recognized breed).

I was curious to know if that was the origin of the word feisty, so I looked it up on etymonline.com:

feisty
1896, Amer.Eng. from feist "small dog," from fice, fist Amer.Eng. 1805 "small dog," short for fysting curre "stinking cur," attested from 1529, from M.E. fysten, fisten "break wind" (1440), related to O.E. fisting "stink." The 1811 slang dictionary defines fice as "a small windy escape backwards, more obvious to the nose than ears; frequently by old ladies charged on their lap-dogs." Cf. also Dan. fise "to blow, to fart," and obs. Eng. askefise, lit. "fire-blower, ash-blower," from an unrecorded O.N. source, used in M.E. for a kind of bellows, but orig. "a term of reproach among northern nations for an unwarlike fellow who stayed at home in the chimney corner" [O.E.D.]

Funny.