THE WIRE-HAIR FOX-TERRIER. 
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 brindle- 
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 
45 
353 
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 
