The Fox Terrier - Its History, Points, Breeding, Rearing, Preparing for Exhibition and Coursing

By Hugh Dalziel

This vintage book contains a detailed guide to owning and keeping fox terriers, with information on history, breeding, rearing, exhibiting, and more. Man has been using these small game canines to assist him with sport and hunting for several hundred years. This volume explores this relationship between man and terrier, and offers the reader tips on keeping and breeding them. Highly recommended for fox terrier owners and those with an interest in working dogs. Contents include: "Working Terriers", "Introduction", "The Smooth-coated Variety",. "The Wire-haired Variety", "Breeding", "Preparing for Exhibition", and "Coursing". Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new introduction on working terriers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vintage Dog Books
• Release date: Sep 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9781473341050

Book preview

THE FOX TERRIER.

INTRODUCTION.

Popularity of the Fox Terrier—Origin and Early History of the Breed: Opinions of T. H. Scott and J. A. Doyle—Dr. Caius on the Work of the Terrier—Turberville, Stevens, Giles Jacobs, Blome, Daniel, Whitaker, Oppian, Sydenham Edwards, Samuel Howitt, John Lawrence, and the Sportsman’s Repository on the Breed.

THE FOX Terrier is much the most popular variety of the Terrier tribe. Evidence in support is abundant, but it will be sufficient proof to point to the great number of clubs that have of late years been formed to stimulate the cultivation of the breed by exhibitions of the finer specimens, and other means. Of these the parent society is the Fox Terrier Club, instituted 1876; and following it, at least on main lines, are the Darlington, the Southdown, the Fylde, the Salop, the Yorkshire, the London, and many more.

This, too, is the only breed that can claim the honour of having a journal devoted entirely to its interest, that being the Fox Terrier Chronicle. Some of its admirers claim that it is the only true Terrier, and many of them are at all times ready to declare that, though there may be other breeds with some slight claim to the name and qualities of a Terrier, to compare any one of them as a Terrier with the Fox Terrier is—pho! The mere fancier never reasons—he asserts.

It will not be difficult to show that the claim in favour of the Fox Terrier being in any special degree the representative of the ancient Terrier of Britain—if such a dog was indigenous to these islands—is without proof; and further that, in making the claim, the most contradictory arguments are used. One writer, however, cuts the Gordian knot in the characteristic style of the dog fancier, and settles the question ex cathedrâ.

Mr. L. P. C. Astley, editor of the Fox Terrier Chronicle, in the issue of that journal, June, 1887, says: The breed was started a score or more years ago, and during the last ten years it has been perfected. The writer just quoted is in this matter at variance with all contemporary writers on the Fox Terrier I know of, and certainly with Stonehenge, Idstone, Yero Shaw, T. H. Scott (Peeping Tom), J. A. Doyle, and many more who have been accepted as authorities. It is not easy to understand what is meant when a writer who is giving a history of the Fox Terrier says the breed was started at such and such a date. It can scarcely be seriously taken to mean that the breed was suddenly projected into being from nowhere at the will of fanciers, or had a spontaneous origin, independent of the usual preceding efforts to create. Started, in such a sense, is manifestly absurd, and if it was intended to convey to the mind that the Fox Terrier at the date given became for the first time fashionable, and was then also for the first time taken in hand by competent persons for the perfecting of the breed, we have before us an ignoring of well-known and authenticated historical and traditional facts, and an assumption of superiority of merit and judgment for the modern Fox Terrier fancier—of which sept or sect Mr. Astley is one—over all preceding breeders, which includes those who cast the Kennel or Fox Terrier into his present mould or type. To take the latter as the true interpretation of the words quoted would be, virtually, to make a charge of vanity against the spokesman of his class, which far be it from me to do, and I therefore give the whole statement up as being beyond my comprehension.

Mr. T. H. Scott, who contributed the article on the Fox Terrier to the first edition of this work, and whose opinions have been frequently quoted, said:

"Among all those who have written on Fox Terriers of late years, none appear to have been inclined to go to the root of the matter, and tell us anything of the origin and early history of this breed.

"A general idea seems to prevail that Fox Terriers are a production of modern times, and this idea has, no doubt, been fostered by the way in which spurious imitations of them have been from time to time manufactured, and by the ignorance of judges who have permitted various and very opposite types to find favour.

The Fox Terrier proper is not a modern breed, and perhaps there were as good dogs fifty years ago as there are now.

Mr. J. A. Doyle, in his contribution to Vero Shaw’s Book of the Dog, says: The antiquity and the precise origin of the modern Fox Terrier are involved in considerable obscurity.

Both writers just quoted recognise the difficulties in the way of clearing up the origin of this breed by tracing it to its sources, knowing that there are missing links in the chain of evidence very near to the end of it which we now hold.

I am always disposed to make the attempt to go to the root of the matter, and I have done so in this instance—with, however, very meagre results; yet, as my efforts enable me to place before my readers some facts and opinions not to be met with in any present-day book on the dog, I think it will interest Fox Terrier men, at least, to give them here.

I am in harmony with the writers who claim the modern Fox Terrier as a descendant of the hound for the fox and the badger of Dr. Caius. None of us insist on direct descent without intermixtures of blood, but rely on the inference drawn from the fact that, through all the centuries since Caius, as probably for many more centuries before his time, the Terrier was used for the same work; and it is, and has been, the practice to use the animals we have suited to our several purposes, whilst ever attempting to improve them. Such attempts result in some modifications, but the work of the dog remains the same. The fox and the badger in their form, nature, and habits being unchanged, the dog used to follow them into their terriers would, of necessity, be kept of certain character or type, however modified in trivial points.

Terrier—the word being taken from the Latin terra, the earth—clearly indicates that the dog is one that burrows, or goes to earth after his quarry; and the suitability of the term, is enhanced when we recollect that the hole, berry, burrow, or earth of rabbit, fox, or badger, is also called a terriers The prefix fox to this particular variety shows him to have been selected from others as specially suited to bolt the fox.

Dr. Caius disappointingly gives us no description of the Terrier. He, however, gives us a fair picture of the dog at work. Writing of hounds, he sandwiches the Terrier between the Harrier and the Bloodhound in these words: Another sorte there is which hunteth the foxe and the badger or greye onely, whom we call Terrars, because they (after the manner and custom of ferrets in hunting for connyes) creepe into the grounde, and by that means make afrayde, nyppe and byte the foxe and the badger, in such sorte, that eyther they teare them in pieces with theyre teeth, beying in the bosome of the earth, or else hayle and pull them perforce out of their lurking angles, dark dongeons, and close caves, or, at the least, through conceved feare, drive them out of their hollow harbours, insomuch that they are compelled to prepare speedy flight, and being desirous of the next (albeit not the safest) refuge, are otherwise taken and intrapped with snares and nettes layde over holes to the same purpose. It is to be regretted that Dr. Caius did not write a description of these Terriers. There were, however, several writers about dogs contemporary with Caius, or very near his time, among them being De Fouilloux, Stevens, and Liebault—all French authors—and Turberville, Surflet, Groodge, and other English writers dealing more or less with dogs, who have, partially at least, made up for this omission. Two centuries earlier than these, De Langley had described several of our breeds; but I have found no mention of Terriers in those of his manuscripts I have consulted. The works of De Fouilloux I do not know: he was a contemporary writer with Stevens, a physician of Paris. Liebault, also a doctor of medicine, simply edited and added to Dr. Stevens’ Maison Rustique, but added nothing that concerns us here. Surflet, also a physician, translated Dr. Stevens’ book, as did Goodge in part; but as the latter omitted that part essential to our present purpose, we here dispense with him.

Taking the description of the Fox Terrier of that date, as given by Stevens through Surflet, and comparing it with that given by Turberville, there is an agreement in the main, yet with such difference as to make it clear they did not copy the one from the other, and possibly that Turberville, the earlier translator, did not even consult Stevens, although that author’s date permits him to have done so. As Turberville admits having taken his matter from various authors, and as his contemporaries and he agree in substance, it suggests itself to my mind that all of them—this includes De Fouilloux—had taken their matter to a great extent from still older writers, with all too slight, and most certainly with too indefinite, acknowledgment; for plagiarism was then, as now, much too common, and avowal of sources of information too rare.

Such being my opinion, and my researches carrying me no farther back than I have stated, having found no finger-posts to indicate the way, I think it will be well to give here, verbatim, the descriptions taken from Turberville and Surflet’s books, beginning with Turberville as the earlier writer of the two. The book from which I am about to quote is entitled The Noble Arte of Venerie or Hunting, and it is stated to be Translated and Collected for the pleasure of all Noblemen and Gentlemen, out of the best approved Authors which have written anything concerning the same.

Turberville deserves to be acknowledged to be frank and open; although one cannot help wishing he had given us the names of the authors he admits having consulted. On our present subject he says:

"Now to speak of the Foxhounds and Terriers, and how you are to enter them to take the foxe, the badgerd, and such like vermin: you must understand that there are two sorts of Terriers, whereof wee hold opinion that one sort came out of Flanders or the low Countries,