THE WIRE-HAIR FOX-TERRIER. 
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 ’1m,” 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 flannelly 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 asa lady’s hair. This is not 
a coat for any terrier to possess, and it is 
347 
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, 
