The Irish Terrier 473 



Taneous came from a dog which had a very narrow, long head, and anything 

 approaching his style of head still goes by his name. 



Another change of a desirable nature has been the return to something 

 more like the right thing in the condition of coat on the exhibition dog. 

 The Irish terrier is a rough dog and should look as if he was rough, without 

 it being necessary to rumple up the coat to see if it is any length. We have 

 seen Irish terriers win, and that under judges whose names appear on the 

 list as approved, by our Irish Terrier Club, when they had no more coat than 

 that of a smooth fox terrier. That is, however, dying out with the Taneous 

 head and the equally erroneous idea that the Irish terrier should have a long, 

 square muzzle, or what Mr. Fred Breakell of Manchester calls the "coffin" 

 muzzle. What we want to preserve in the Irish terrier is the expression. 

 This is different from that seen in the fox terrier, the Scotch, the Airedale 

 or the bull terrier, just as each of them differ from all others. 



At one time our judges went solely for length of head, but that has 

 met with a timely death, and we are really closer to the correct thing in our 

 judging than for some years now. In place of balking at everything but a 

 narrow head and long foreface the same men are now going to the opposite 

 extreme, and we have short, square-headed dogs winning, for no reason 

 than that they have good legs and feet. There is moderation in everything 

 and in our opinion the first thing a judge should look for is the Irish ex- 

 pression, the one thing especially indicative of the breed. If you get that 

 the head is pretty sure to be not far from right. Then comes the racing 

 outline of the breed, which calls for not too much width of chest, though the 

 fox terrier front is equally wrong, the pasterns springing a little. He should 

 show sufficient length of leg to look as if he could extend himself a bit, and 

 to do so the back ribs do not want to be let down as in a cobby dog. A 

 modified greyhound cut-up in the loin, and good length from hip 

 to hock, while a gay carriage of tail assists materially in setting off the 

 "Dare devil." 



In the old days we showed our Irish terriers in what would now be 

 called the rough. They were brushed with a dandy brush, and the only 

 thing we learned from Graham in this line was that the hair which was apt 

 to overrun the edge of the foot and make it look large and flat, should be 

 "shingled" off with a poor cutting knife edge, so as not to make jagged 

 cuts. That was done a month or six weeks before an important show. 

 We do not say that even at that date there was not a trimmed or plucked 



