CHAPTER XXVIII 



The Wire-Haired Fox Terrier 



j HOSE who have based their knowledge of the wire-haired 

 variety of fox terrier upon what other writers have had to 

 say as to its origin had better dismiss from their thoughts 

 all they have read regarding its being a variety of the smooth 

 and of much more recent date as to its origin. It is quite 

 the other way about; the wire-haired terrier being the original terrier, 

 whether called terrier or fox terrier, and the smooth dog the later variety. 

 Fashion, however, made the smooth the popular dog when they began to 

 find favour as companions, and they are likely always to be so with the 90 

 per cent, of dog owners who like what they decide is a pretty dog and know 

 nothing of what a good dog is or what terrier character means. This was 

 the state of affairs at the early dog shows in England, and was so here up 

 to within a very few years. 



We will acknowledge that the smooth dogs were the first to become 

 universally known as the fox terrier, and that more attention was paid for 

 many years to their being bred for show points than was the case with the 

 wire-haired dog, and it is for this reason that when the latter were taken up 

 in a definite manner they were looked upon as a variety of an older recog- 

 nised breed; but they were the original dog, otherwise we would not have 

 had all the terrier delineations of a century since showing dogs of a rough 

 coat, whether black-and-tan or white-pied. To those who hold to the 

 contrary, we say show us another picture. of a smooth terrier with fox- 

 terrier characteristics painted, or drawn, or etched prior to even as late as 

 1825, other than the one of Sprite, painted in 1790, and which latter has 

 never been reproduced in England by any writer on the breed that we have 

 any knowledge of. It does not do to write dog history and say that such 

 and such things were the case, simply because one thinks so or wishes it 

 to be so, or because somebody else said it. Still another thing is that to 

 know the past history of any one breed a very large outside field has to be 

 covered, and with a perfectly unbiased mind, sifting all evidence having 



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