The Complete Dog Book by American Kennel Club

The Complete Dog Book by American Kennel Club

Author:American Kennel Club. [Club., American Kennel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780307416995
Publisher: Random House Inc.
Published: 2007-12-17T22:00:00+00:00


Approved July 13, 2004

Effective September 29, 2004

SCOTTISH TERRIER

MOST LOVERS OF THE SCOTTISH TERRIER HAVE A DEEP AND ABIDING BELIEF that this breed is the most ancient of any of the Highland terriers; that the other breeds are only offshoots from this, the parent stem, and that the Scottie is the original, dyed-in-the-wool, simon-pure Highland terrier. They will tell you that the Skye Terrier mentioned in early histories and chronicles was not the Skye as we know it today, but the forerunner of the Scottie and similar in type to it. They will refer you to such early writers as Jacques du Fouilloux, who published La Venerie in 1561, Turberville and Dr. Stevens, whose books The Noble Art of Venerie and The Maison Rustique appeared in 1575 and 1572, respectively. All of these works described an “earth dog used in hunting the fox and the brocke,” and these descriptions fit closely to what might have been the forerunner of our present-day Scottie.

In the seventeenth century, when King James VI of Scotland became James I of England, he wrote to Edinburgh to have a half a dozen terriers sent to France as a present and addressed the letter to the Laird of Caldwell, naming the Earl of Montieth as having good ones. Later, the great English authority Rawdon B. Lee wrote:

The Scottie is the oldest variety of the canine race indigenous to Britain. . . . For generations he had been a popular dog in the Highlands where, strangely enough, he was always known as the Skye Terrier, although he is different from the long-coated, unsporting-like creature with which that name is now associated.

While all this is very interesting and quite possibly true, the fact remains that it is neither definite nor conclusive.

Leaving the realm of speculation and inference and coming down to history and known facts, the Scottish Terrier as we find it today has been bred in purity for many years. The first show to have a class for Scottish Terriers was at Birmingham, England, in 1860. Later, a number of other shows carried this classification, but the dogs shown in these classes were not Scottish Terriers, but Skyes, Dandie Dinmonts, and Yorkshires.

All the while, however, Scotchmen who saw these dogs winning as Scottish Terriers were indignant, and about 1877 they broke into print in the Live Stock Journal with a series of letters protesting the situation and discussing the points and character of the true Scottish Terrier. The discussion waxed so furious that the editors finally called a halt with the statement, “We see no use in prolonging this discussion unless each correspondent described the dog which he holds to be the true type.” This challenge was taken up by Captain Gordon Murray, who in a letter to the Stock Keeper under the nom de plume “Strathbogie,” described in detail his conception of a proper Scottish Terrier. This quieted the warring factions, and about 1880 J. B. Morrison was persuaded to draw up a standard. This was accepted by all parties.



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