My first thought is Rhodesian Ridgeback/ Pitbull mix. Take a look and tell me what you think. GIS: Pitbull/Rhodesian Mix
Undercoat rakes are used to get down to the skin. With slicker brushes and short combs, it's easy to brush only the top layer of fur and inadvertently leave the rest matted.
By "undercoat rake," I mean something like this, not a deshedding tool with blades.
Looks like a beagle mix to me. This plush looks close to me, especially if you sewed up the ears so they stood more. Otherwise I'd look for beagle plushes with some modifications to the ears.
Mongrels are mixes of breeds, either 2 or 20 or 100 it doesn’t matter. Most of our modern breeds come from the Victorian era so barely 200-250 years ago and they were created by selecting village dogs that had the characteristics people wanted… you want a big fluffy breed? Then take big fluffy dogs and start breeding them for generations. Short hair medium and strong dog? Then breed dogs of those characteristics. Village dogs are the dogs we have always had before ANY breeds, the dogs that descend from their “wolf-like” ancestors and have been living close to humans. Most times not even WITH humans but just around their settlements to take their scraps, and occasionally some of them would be “adopted”. Village dogs are nothing but naturally-selected dogs that thrived without any human intervention.
Nowadays though, it is very hard to find pure village dogs in many countries because they have been bred to our breeds (fixing dogs was never a thing until recently) and you can only find true village dogs without any trace of modern breeds in perhaps the Amazon or remote villages in Africa… islands… places like that. Isolated places. The rest of the gene pool is probably contaminated with modern breeds.
DNA companies can only reliably test for about 4 generations so anything further away gets either lost or listed as “trace breeds”
Here is a short video. He's about 8 weeks old and around 5lbs. https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNvMyOOGPXGVnec7ZkuqK14K15UYdtQfh-cwqEwnbH5vXaIW0T9mqXKx3ZBvIyO4w?key=bC1XbExJeHlyRWNiWjF5MEZBc3F6QkJpQmRWOHR3
If you can get stuff shipped from Amazon UK, I got a Wisdom Panel for my pup from there. It's expensive but the new Wisdom tests are pretty reliable.
I'm looking at this, and I realise its also wisdom panel. Is it the same thing?
https://www.amazon.com/Mars-Veterinary-Wisdom-Panel-Identification/dp/B01EHX2BH0
Oh wow, I would not have guessed she was that big!
I still see JRT and Chihuahua in her shape, expression and color... I honestly don't see many other obvious characteristics she might've gotten from whatever gave her the size. Her snout looks a touch wider than a JRT or Chi's... maybe there's a touch of Boston Terrier or something in there that's rounding out her skull some and widening the muzzle a bit?
Have you thought about getting a Wisdom Panel done for her? I'm curious to know what else is in there!
p.s. this is completely unsolicited feedback, but I think she looked like she was in great condition at 17lbs :)