104 Modern Dogs. 



merits of this dog and about the defects of that one. 

 They wonder at your presumption, perhaps, as you 

 give your opinion against theirs ; why, they will even 

 talk to the judge himself, and tell him where he has 

 done wrong, and how that terrier ought to have won 

 and the actual winner only been placed third. 

 Further inquiry might elicit the fact that the person 

 so laying down the law was an interested party, and 

 had shown a dog (in the same class as that in which 

 he was criticising the awards) as long on the legs 

 and as defective in ribs and loins as a whippet, 

 and was highly indignant that it had not won the 

 cup. 



I have known a man to judge fox terriers who had 

 never bred one in his life, had never seen a fox in 

 front of hounds, had never seen a terrier go to 

 ground, had never seen either otter, weasel, or foul- 

 mart outside the glass case in which they rested on 

 the wall in a bar parlour, and had not even seen a 

 terrier chase a rabbit. His slight experience of 

 working a terrier had been obtained at a surrep- 

 titious badger bait in the stable of a beerhouse, 

 and a violent attack on a dozen mangy rats by a 

 mongrel terrier in an improvised pit in the bed- 

 room of the landlord of the same hostel. How- 

 ever, such things are not so now, and the popularity 

 of the fox terrier is as great as ever it was. 



