THE WIRE-HAIR FOX-TERRIER 215 



as the coat is kept down when necessary. Bitches in whelp 

 and after whelping, although ordinarily good-coated, seem 

 to go all wrong in their coats unless properly attended to in this 

 way, and here again, if you wish to keep your bitch free from 

 skin trouble, it is a necessity, in those cases which need it, to 

 use finger and thumb. 



If the old hair is pulled out only when it is old, there is no 

 difficulty about it, and no hurt whatever is occasioned to the 

 dog, who does not in reality object at all. If, however, new 

 or fast coat is pulled out it not only hurts the dog but it is 

 also a very foolish thing to do, and the person guilty of such 

 a thing fully merits disqualification. 



Most of the nonsense that is heard about trimming emanates, 

 of course, from the ignoramus ; the knife, he says, is used on 

 them all, a sharp razor is run over their coats, they are singed, 

 they are cut, they are rasped (the latter is the favourite term). 

 Anything like such a sweeping condemnation is quite in- 

 accurate and most unfair. It is impossible to cut a hair 

 without being detected by a good judge, and very few people 

 ever do any such thing, at any rate for some months before 

 the terrier is exhibited, for if they do, they know they are 

 bound to be discovered, and, as a fact, are. 



When the soft-coated dogs are clipped they are operated on, 

 say, two or three months before they are wanted, and the 

 hair gets a chance to grow, but even then it is easily discernible, 

 and anyone who, like the writer, has any experience of clipping 

 dogs in order to cure them of that awful disease, follicular 

 mange, knows what a sight the animal is when he grows his 

 coat, and how terribly unnatural he looks. 



The wire-hair has never been in better state than he is 

 to-day ; he is, generally speaking, far ahead of his prede- 

 cessors of twenty-five years ago, not only from a show point of 

 view, but also in working qualities. One has only to com- 

 pare the old portraits of specimens of the variety with dogs of 

 the present day to see this. A good many individual speci- 

 mens of excellent merit, it is true, there were, but they do not 



