THE WIRE-HAIR FOX-TERRIER. 



353 



badger tan and black on a wonderful head 

 and ears, this bitch swept the board, as 

 they say, and unquestionably rightly so. 



Wire-hair terriers used to be much more 

 takingly marked than is the case at the 

 present day. One constantly saw a hound- 



MR. J. J. HOLGATE'S CH. SOUTHBORO' SALEX 



BY CH. SYLVAN RESULT MARCHARD CORONA. 



marked dog with plenty of badger tan 

 about him, but he is not seen to anything 

 like the same extent nowadays. A br indie- 

 marked dog is never seen now, and although 

 this marking is supposed in practice to 

 incur the penalty of disqualification, yet in 

 all truth, if it be a brindle of dark colour, 

 it is a most taking colouring, and one for 

 which some judges the writer among them 

 would not by any means disqualify an 

 otherwise good, sound terrier. It will be 

 seen that brindle markings are not included 

 in " disqualifying points " as laid down by 

 the Fox-terrier Club. All that is said is 

 that they are objectionable, the idea, of 

 course, being that they show the Bull- 

 terrier, which is undesirable, but in this 

 connection what to the writer is much more 

 objectionable, in that they look much more 

 Bull-terrier like, are the pink eyelids and 

 extra short coats, almost invariably to be 

 seen on all white terriers which are occasion- 

 ally exhibited. 



No article on the wire-hair Fox-terrier 

 would be complete without mentioning the 

 name of the late Mr. S. E. Shirley, President 



of the Kennel Club. Mr. Shirley was a 

 successful exhibitor in the early days of 

 the variety, and while his terriers were a 

 good-looking lot, though not up to the show 

 form of^to^day, they were invariably hard- 

 bitten, game dogs, kept chiefly for work. 

 Mr. Shirley was induced to judge wire-hairs 

 at the Fox-terrier Club show about four or 

 five years ago, when the writer had the 

 honour of officiating on the smooth variety, 

 and, as we all knew he would, went in 

 strictly for the little ones, irrespective, to a 

 certain extent, of their points. 



On this question of size nearly all the 

 principal judges of the Fox-terrier are 

 agreed. Their maxim is " a good little one 

 can always beat a good big one." The 

 difficulty arises when the little ones are no 

 good, and the big ones are excellent ; it is 

 a somewhat common occurrence, and to 

 anyone who loves a truly formed dog, and 

 who knows what a truly formed dog can do, 

 irrespective altogether, up to a certain point, 

 of the length of his legs, it is an extremely 

 difficult thing to put the little above the 



MR. F. REDMOND'S CH. DUSKY CRACKER 



BY CH. CACKLER OF NOTTS DUSKY RUTH. 



Photograph by Reveley, Wantage, 



larger. All big dogs with properly placed 

 shoulders and sound formation are better 

 terriers for work of any sort than dogs half 

 their size, short on the leg, but bad in these 



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