THE WIRE-HAIR FOX-TERRIER. 



347 



satisfied himself as to the sire of a puppy 

 when it came in from " walk " by just 

 examining it and saying " Oh, that pup 

 must be by owd Jock or Jim," as the case 

 might be, " 'cos he's so loike 'im," and down 

 he would go on the entry form accordingly. 

 However this may be, there is no doubt that 

 the sire would be a wire-hair Fox-terrier, 

 and, although the pedigree therefore may 

 not have been quite right, the terrier was 

 invariably pure bred. 



In the early days the smooth was not 

 crossed with the wire to anything like the 

 extent that it was later, and this fact is 

 probably the cause of the salvation of the 

 variety. 



The wire-hair has had more harm done to 

 him by his being injudiciously crossed with 

 the smooth than probably by anything 

 else. 



The greatest care must be exercised in 

 the matter of coat before any such cross is 

 effected. The smooth that is crossed with 

 the wire must have a really hard, and not 

 too full coat, and, as there are very, very few 

 smooths now being shown with anything 

 like a proper coat for a terrier to possess, 

 the very greatest caution is necessary. 

 Some few years back, almost incalculable 

 harm was done to the variety by a con- 

 siderable amount of crossing into a strain 

 of smooths with terribly soft ffannelly coats. 

 Good-looking terriers were produced, and 

 therein lay the danger, but their coats were 

 as bad as bad could be ; and, though people 

 were at first too prone to look over this very 

 serious fault, they now seem to have recov- 

 ered their senses, and thus, although much 

 harm was done, any serious damage has 

 been averted. If a person has a full-coated 

 wire-hair bitch he is too apt to put her to 

 a smooth simply because it is a smooth, 

 whom he thinks will neutralise the length of 

 his bitch's jacket, but this is absolute 

 heresy, and must not be done unless the 

 smooth has the very hardest of hair on him. 

 If it is done, the result is too horrible for 

 words : you get an elongated, smooth, full 

 coat as soft as cotton wool, and sometimes 

 as silkily wavy as a lady's hair. This is not 

 a coat for any terrier to possess, and it is 



not a wire-hair terrier's coat, which ought 

 to be a hard, crinkly, peculiar-looking 

 broken coat on top, with a dense undercoat 

 underneath, and must never be mistakable 

 for an elongated smooth terrier's coat, 

 which can never at any time be a protection 

 from wind, water, or dirt, and is, in reality, 

 the reverse. 



To those who have owned wire-hairs for 

 the last twenty to twenty-five years, the 

 heading " Scant courtesy received at the 

 hands of many of the owners of the smooth 

 variety and others " will be fully intelligible. 

 It is perhaps unnecessary to dilate upon it 

 at any length, for it was always unsavoury 

 and bound to bring about its own Nemesis. 

 Many of the smooth owners in years gone 

 by could never see anything good in a wire- 

 hair. Why, goodness only knows ! But 

 the fact remains : everything was done that 

 could be done to belittle him at every 

 opportunity that presented itself. Where 

 there were in this respect many, it is re- 

 freshing to be able to say that to-day there 

 are few. The majority have seen the error 

 of their ways, and are even, some of them, 

 using, or thinking of using, or actually 

 owning and exhibiting, specimens of the 

 hated variety. 



It has been a hard struggle, however, for 

 the wire-hair devotee. He has had many a 

 rebuff, many a hard knock to put up with ; 

 but he has in the end come up smiling, 

 and takes sly satisfaction to himself that 

 his enemies, or some of them, have been 

 compelled for the purpose of improving their 

 variety to borrow a bit of his blood, for he 

 knows that if this is done judiciously 

 nothing but improvement can result, and 

 that a still greater admiration will be lavished 

 on his deserving favourite. 



Several incidents could be quoted by the 

 writer to prove the existence of what always 

 seemed to him the shallow-minded and foolish 

 opposition which the wire-haired had to put 

 up with from many owners of his smooth 

 brethren. It used to be said of them that 

 they had in reality no good points ; that 

 they were full of faults, which were always 

 hidden by a clever manipulation of hair, which 

 made their crooked legs appear straight, 



