The Dandie Dinmont Terrier. 289 



artificially whitened. Dogs with uneven mouths, 

 either overshot or undershot, ought likewise to be 

 firmly dealt with, and kept altogether out of the prize 

 lists. Of course, there are some exhibitors who do 

 not so " trim " their dogs, as there are others who 

 deny that anything of the kind is done to any unfair 

 extent. But the fact remains, and at least two 

 owners of good dogs to my knowledge discontinued 

 exhibiting, their chief reason for so doing being the 

 prevalence of plucking and general trimming of the 

 coat and face. 



Whether the best specimens of to-day are as 

 good or better than those of twenty years and more 

 ago is rather a difficult problem to solve. Our 

 judges do not always quite stick to type, and some 

 of the southern bred dogs that have done a great 

 deal of winning of late are to my mind too light in 

 bone and generally weak, unterrier-like, and consti- 

 tutionally puny in appearance. Though the Dandie 

 Dinmont is not, as a rule, used by the " show man " 

 as a working terrier, he must not be allowed to 

 degenerate into a ladies' pet. Remember that the 

 border farmer and gipsies used them for work long 

 before Sir Walter Scott christened them Dandie 

 Dinmonts and made them fashionable dogs. 



A writer in the Scottish Fancier, about twelve 

 months since, gave his opinion, in very strong 



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