Working Terrier Past and Present (circa 1907)

by T.F. Dale

reprinted from Blackwood's Edinburgh Mag. New York Oct. 1907 pp535-541

The man who loves hounds is sure to be interested in terriers. The foxhound and terrier are connected in our minds by their common enmity to the fox.

Indeed, in the warfare against the fox the terrier has been the ally of man for a much longer period then the hound. When stag-hunting was the sport of kings, and before the idea of the fox as a beast of chase had dawned on the nobles and gentry in England and Scotland, the peasants and the terriers were harrying the fox even in his stronghold of Malepartus, as they do to this day in Scotland or Wales, and in the mountain districts of Westmoreland and Cumberland.

It was no doubt in their warfare against vermin that the terriers acquired the characteristics of gameness, hardihood, and intelligence which their successors have inherited. Their evolution has fol- lowed the same course as that of all modern breeds of sporting dogs. Chosen at first for working qualities only, it is later refinement which has grafted beauty on to ability. The division of terriers into breeds and their classification at dog-shows is quite a modern development. Terrier was a name give to any hardy, active little dog that would face a badger or a fox in its earth, or sometimes a cat in a corner, the last-named being by no means the least formidable antagonist of the three. There was no exclusiveness in the breeding of a terrier, and he was crossed with the bull-dog to give him courage, with the beagle to improve his nose, and in later days the greyhound to give him speed. The crossing was limited only by the necessities of his work, for the terrier needed to be a comparatively small dog, since a dog over sixteen pounds is too large, and below twelve pounds too small, to be of use for going to ground. I know of course that weight has more to do with make and muscular development than with size, yet nevertheless the weights give a rough method of estimating the limits of serviceable size for the working terrier.

Looking back into the past history of the terrier, I seem to find two different types, which have never the less certain common characteristics. The one an active fairly speedy little dog, with prick ears, and an obvious dash of bull. These were the dogs which in small packs were used to work above ground, and this type well depicted in a beautiful plate, after a painting of Reingale, n the Sportsman's Cabinet (1805), where the terriers are reprinted in the chase foumart, or in the early volumes of the Sporting Magazine, engaged in a most spirited combat with a wild cat. Sharpness, activity, and courage are the characteristics written all over these terriers. Then there were the long low dogs with drop ears, of the type endeared to us by the faithful memories of friends and companions - the Skye, the Dandie Dinmont, the Poltalloch. These were essentially dogs to go to ground, and were protected by their coats from their enemies, while the drop ears were a shield to the auditory organs from falling earth and sand. But if we look closely at these pictures (and the terrier of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries has been fortunate both in his chroniclers and the artist who have painted him), we shall see that they have certain characteristics in common. They are strongly built dogs, compact and well knit, with rather short necks and powerful jaws. The modern fox- terrier, with his long graceful neck and narrow snipy jaw, is quite a recent manufacture. The short neck is a great point, since it is necessary for the terrier to be near his work if he is to have full advantage of his immense muscular development of neck, shoulders, and forearms, in conflict with fox and badger.

Then there are the mental characteristics which are common to all terriers: the high-stung nerves, the excitable temperament, a reckless disregard of danger, coupled with (perhaps in part occasioned by) a peculiarly faithful devotion to the chosen master, and I must add, a certain pugnacity. The Skye terrier is in disposition the most typical, for he is a strange hairy bundle of nerves courage, shyness, and in- tense devotion, so that all dogs I have known it is the Skyes that carried with them, when when their short span was ended, a part of my life.

It is interesting to note how highly Scotland was accounted of for its terriers, for of the many old pictures I have studied, nearly all the best dogs were said to come from Scotland.

But of all our dogs there is none so versatile in mind and body as the terrier. There is no service that a dog can do for us in sport or as a companion that he is not capable of. Let us note some examples, old and new, of the many duties which terriers can fulfil.

There lies before me as I write an engraving published in The New Sporting Magazine" for 1833 (p.348). Two terriers, Shivers and Pincher, are depicted listening at a box in which a badger is supposed to be confined. The most notable of the two is "Shivers," described as a Scotch terrier. The portrait is that of a small white dog with a wiry coat, so thick about its neck and shoulders as to be almost like a mane. He has great depth of body, excellent legs and feet, and prick ears, a broad head, and rather a short but very powerful jaw. He was the property of Mr. Surtees, of Hamsterley Hall, Durham, and being described as being the "best dog of the breed in that part of the North of England; and though little, and by no means a heavy animal, there was never a fox or badger found too large or savage for him to grapple and draw. His pluck exceed all belief, and he actually once followed a cat up a chimney, passing over a burning fire in the grate below." The shortness of neck is notable, and its certain that when he had hold of a fox or badger he could use his muscular strength, and that muscular development which is well shown by the artist.

But it is not only the dogs of old times that could draw a fox. When Mr. Chandos Pole was master of the Cattistock, he had a terrier in his kennels of Miss Alys Serrell, of Haddon Lodge (author of 'With Hound and Terrier in the Field"). This dog, named Veto, could draw a fox from any drain. He would go straight up to his fox and close instantly. Thus he took the fox by surprise. He would fix his hold on the side of his head at the end of the jaw. A fox so gripped by a good dog is powerless, and can be easily drawn. Miss Serrell had another dog, Racer, that went with such a dash in a drain that he variably made the fox back out, fighting him face to face to the other end. When Racer was in, the whipper-in would simply wait till the fox's brush appeared and then pull him out.

This is the terrier's legitimate work, but it is difficult to restrain a terrier from attacking any vermin. I knew one terrier in India who devoted herself to the dangerous and exciting sport of snake-killing. Her method was to irritate the snake into sitting up. She would dance round it sparring for an opening as it were. Then with incredible swiftness she darted at the reptile and gripped it close to the head, a sharp bite and the snake was dead. She was marvelously successful, until on an unlucky day, when one of her puppies was with her, she found a snake; the puppy got in her way at a critical moment, and the snake struck Nettle on the nose. The wound was slight, it was cauterized at once, and a strong dose of whiskey was administered. Apparently Nettle was quite well the next morning, but as she was playing with the puppy she suddenly turned head over heels, and when we reached her she was stone dead.

If we looked over the records of past sport we shall find that there is almost nothing terriers have not been used for. There is, in fact, no limit to the sporting uses of the fox terrier. I have one that was an excellent retriever, and in the "The Sporting Magazine" for October 1831 there is a picture of a little wire- haired, prick-eared terrier that is bringing a partridge in its' mouth. I know of two working packs of fox-terriers that hunt rabbits in Dorsetshire, beating the hedgerows and driving the rabbits to the gun. One of these packs, with which I have often been out, is very handy, and the terriers pack well without losing their individuality, What struck me as much as anything is the control they submit. If a terrier has marked a rabbit to ground, he will at once come away from the earth to the whistle, although, as we all know, in the case of less well-broken dogs, a terrier will return again and again to dig at the bury, and, indeed, unless dragged away by force spend half the day there.

In this pack, which has been bred for hunting for many years, there is an interesting example of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, for the dogs bred from those which have been hunting with the pack take to work far more readily than those bought from the outside. Indeed I was watching, only a few days before writing this, the early efforts of a puppy whose father has long been a noted member of the pack. This puppy put his nose down and hunted like a hound, and was never far from the others. On the other hand a bitch from another kennel had an excellent nose, worked hard, faced the briers and thick undergrowth of the Dorsetshire doubles, but was notably independent in her work, constantly being wide of the pack. One Terrier, a leggy black-headed bitch of the modern type, has the curious habit of standing like a pointer when she winds a rabbit lying out in the open. In other respects she works well. I have heard it said that terriers accustomed to work above ground will not go underground to a fox, but this is certainly not the case with these terriers, nor was it so with my own two mentioned elsewhere. Sport to them is sport, whether it is above or below ground, and they always seemed to me to know quite clearly what was expected of them. The pack of terriers I have mentioned above, until a regular pack of otter-hounds worked the streams in their neighborhood, were able to hunt and kill otters without any assistance from hounds. I may say that the training and discipline of these terriers is carried on without a whip at and. if I may put it so, by an appeal to their intelligence and consideration of their characteristics and dispositions. But their owner feeds them, hunts them, exercises them, and of course enters the puppies so that they have every chance of turning out well.

The best working terriers I have ever owned were Vanity and Vixen. The were given to me when I was stationed at Simla. The latter I gave to a friend, but she was often lent to me on hunting days.

Vanity was a small terrier, very neat and compact, with excellent legs and feet, but rather light and elegant. To look at and in manners she was quite the lady's pet, and altogether the most faithful, affectionate, and intelligent little dog anyone could wish to own. But in spite of her appearances she was game a terrier as I have ever known. At first I only knew she had a marvelous gift for hunting and killing rats, and I recollect a most interesting hunt from the stables at Christchurch Lodge, Simla, with a kill just outside the west door of the church. Circumstances, however, subsequently revealed the full value of my little dog. When I went to Sialkote I found the Queen's Bays had bought a pack of hounds, and they, knowing my enthusiasm for hunting, kindly appointed me as whipper-in, and Major Henry Clerk, the Master, allowed me to help in exercising hounds. I was able to be useful, because I was my own master in the early morning, whereas soldiers in India are often on parade at that time.. So I used to go out exercising with hounds, and took the terriers with me, as this way they learned to run with the pack.

It occurred to me that on drawing some sugar-cane coverts, which are very thick, the terriers would be helpful. Vanity proved to be very useful, She had a gift, which I think some hounds possess, of knowing when there was a "Jack" in the covert. She would trot round at my horse's heels. If she left me and dived into the covert, her sharp little bark soon declared a find. If she did not go in, I knew it was no use. After a week or two the hounds flew to her as to one of themselves. She had an excellent nose and would use it patiently. I have seen her carry the line along the path when not even Sultan, the tender nosed, could own it. It was funny to see this little terrier hunting along, and the big black-and-tan hound in attendance waiting to be sure enough to speak.

It was a very difficult country for a terrier, being intersected with banks and deep muddy ditches, and poor Vanity was left behind when it came to running.

The first season she stuck to the pack somehow, but after that she found it was useless, so when she had enough she would go home, and I never failed on my return to find a little, black, muddy dog curled up in the middle of my bed.

Our hunting-ground was eighteen miles from the cantonments. My servants and horses always went out the night before, and we took up quarters at a dark bungalow and kennels built I believe by the Carabineers when they had the hounds some years before. Vanity never left me as a rule, but she knew when hunting was in prospect, and scrambled up on to the ekka: she understood that there was hard work for her, and always rode all the way. When later, I had a pack of my own, and Vanity was joined by her daughter Vixen, the gave many proofs of gameness. These two little terriers tackled a wild cat in a covert and killed it before the hounds could come up. On another occasion Vanity pinned a large jackal by the nose, and held on till the pack arrived. We had run the jackal into a covert, and Vanity (of course obliged to skirt) came in after the pack, and met the jackal crawling in the covert. It was a big old dog jackal, and when I brought up the hounds he was trying in vain to shake the terrier off.

On another occasion Vanity actually tackled a good-sized wild boar, and in this conflict she lost an eye. The hounds had brought the boar to bay, and Vanity went in at once and got hold. How she managed to keep hold as long as she did I do not know, but, luckily, when I at last took the hounds away and the boar broke loose from his bay, she was shaken off.

Her daughter Vixen was quite as game, and indeed eventually lost her life by going to ground in a place which she could not be dug out. These were small terriers, not much over twelve pounds, but for strength, gameness, and activity they left nothing to be desired. If I had an occasion to keep working terriers again, I should certainly look out for animals of the type of my old friends, which were handsome too.

Every now and then there is a complaint raised that dog shows are spoiling are terrier. Certainly the type one sees on the bench are not suitable for work. I do not say that would not work no doubt they would; but I think those I have seen are not compact enough, and have not the most effective type of head. If we take the old Scottish breeds in what we may call their primitive state, and compare them with the champions of the modern day show bench, we shall see that the latter have not the type of head which made the former so successful. The old or working type is longer and wider in the head above the eyes, and shorter and stronger in the jaw, than our prize specimens, in which invariably tend toward narrowness and shortness in the head and exaggerated and quite useless in the jaw. In the same way coat, ears, length of body, and many other unimportant points, are bred for, while if one looks in their mouths we see that the teeth most important to a terrier are often inferior. Clean, level, strong teeth are indispensable to a working terrier, but not to a prize winner.

But we may leave the champions at the show bench. They are too valuable to be worked. The risks a terrier takes when he goes into a rocky cavern of the fox or the badger's den are not small. Here and there are terriers bred for work and kept for it. "Points" are not much thought of, but those families are most cherished in which the best qualities are inherited. So that we do in fact, obtain a certain family likeness and quite recognizable. Such, for example, are the Duke of Argyll's Roseneath terriers; the working strain of Poltalloch, with heads almost ideal for work underground; and the Skye, as I have seen him, when untouched by show influence. Active dogs, compact they were, with a reasonable coat, and with such keenness and gameness that they were rather difficult to keep above ground.

So, too, in the South we have the kennel terriers, of which the best known were those of Rev. John Russell, so famous that every terrier of any note at work in the West claims descent from those famous kennels, Or the old type of Badmitton kennel terrier, of which breed the following story is told. A fox once went to ground in a narrow drain; two terriers were running with the pack. The first went in and, unable to get right up to the fox, caught hold of the brush, the only point he could reach. The second terrier also went in, but could not, of course, get far, as his companion blocked the way, so he caught hold of the first terrier's tail. The came the whipper-in, and he stooped down, put in his arm, and feeling the second terrier he caught hold of him and pulled him out. There was considerable resistance, but at length, to the amusement of the field the second terrier appeared to be holding tight to the tail oh his predecessor, who in turn was holding on to the brush of the fox, which was also drawn in its turn. But the terrier has another softer side. Of all the dogs I have known the terrier has the best memory for friends Even casual friends are not forgotten if once accepted. As for the master, what can exceed the patience and fidelity of the terrier if once his heart is given; and if he is a little jealous and exclusive, after all that is not peculiar to dogs. The terrier is of all dogs the most dependent on human companionship for his efficiency. If your terrier is to do his best for you in the field he must share your home, or if he lives in the kennel you must be often with him; but my experience is that the best for work have been those that have lived with me day and night. A dog so studies your face that he learns to anticipate your wishes, almost to read your expression. Moreover, he picks up a good many words when he is always in the house, and I have generally found there are some words which are so thrilling that they must be spelt out by members of the family. The sound of them is too exciting for the small friends under the table, or seated in their favorite chairs round the room. The terrier, moreover, that lives in the house develops a vocabulary of his own, and one I knew well had three distinct tones. With one he called his mistress when he was in trouble or wanted help; in another, respectfully imperious, he invited a trusted friend to take him out. If however, the servants, with whom he was a great favorite, he would put his head through the banisters of the kitchen staircase and bark sharply and imperiously for one of them to come. Each tone was known and recognized, and I never knew him to deceive by using one in place of the others. þ þ þ