Grooming Wire Fox Terrier Coat

The greatest care must be exercised in the matter of coat before any such cross is affected. The Smooth Fox Terrier that is crossed with the Wire Fox Terrier must have a really hard, and not too full coat, and, as there are very, very few Smooth Fox Terrier 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 considerable amount of crossing into a strain of smooth with terribly soft flannelly coats. Good-looking terriers were produced, and therein lay the danger, but their coats were as bad as it could be; and, though people were at first too prone to look over this very serious fault, they now seem to have recovered their senses, and thus, although much harm was done, any serious damage has been averted.

If a person has a full coated Wire Fox Terrier bitch he is too apt to put her to a smooth simply because it is a smooth, whom he thinks will neutralize 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 as a lady’s hair. This is not a coat for any terrier to possess, and it is not a Wire Fox 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 Fox Terrier’s coat, which can never at any time be a protection from wind, water, or dirt, and is, in reality, the reverse.

The Wire Fox Terrier has had a great advertisement, for better or worse, in the extraordinarily prominent way he has been mentioned in connection with “faking” and trimming. Columns have been written on this subject, speeches of inordinate length have been delivered, motions and resolutions have been carried, rules have been promulgated and the one dog mentioned throughout in connection with all of them has been our poor old, much maligned wirehair. He has been the scapegoat, the subject of all this brilliancy and eloquence, and were he capable of understanding the language of the human, we may feel sure much amusement would be his.

There are several breeds that are more trimmed than the wirehair, and that might well be quoted before him in this connection. There is a vast difference between legitimate trimming, and what is called “faking”. All dogs with long or wirehair or rough coats naturally require more attention, and more grooming than those with short smooth coats.

For the purposes of health and cleanliness it is absolutely necessary that such animals should be frequently well groomed. There is no necessity, given a Wire Fox Terrier with a good and proper coat, to use anything but an ordinary close toothed comb, a good hard brush, and an occasional removal of long old hairs on the head, ears, neck, legs, and belly, with the finger and thumb.

The Kennel Club regulations for the preparation of dogs for exhibition are perfectly clear on this subject, and are worded most properly. They say that a dog “shall be disqualified if any part of his coat or hair has been cut, clipped, singed, or rasped down by any substance, or if any of the new or fast coat has been removed by pulling or plucking in any manner,” and that “no comb shall be used which has a cutting or rasping edge.” There is no law, therefore, against the removal of old coat by finger and thumb, and anyone who keeps long-haired dogs knows that it is essential to the dog’s health that there should be none.

It is in fact most necessary in certain cases, at certain times, to pull old coat out in this way. Several Wire Fox Terrier with good coats are apt to grow long hair very thickly round the neck and ears, and unless this is removed when it gets old, the neck and ears are liable to become infested with objectionable little slate-colored nits, which will never be found as long as the coat is kept down when necessary. Bitches in whelp and after whelping, although ordinarily good coated, seem to go all wrong in their coats unless properly attended to in this way, and here again, if you wish to keep your bitch free from skin trouble, it is a necessity, in those cases which need it, to use finger and thumb.

If the old hair is pulled out only when it is old, there is no difficulty about it, and no hurt whatever is occasioned to the dog, who does not in reality object at all. If, however, new or fast coat is pulled out it not only hurts the dog but it is also a very foolish thing to do, and the person guilty of such a thing fully merits disqualification.

Most of the nonsense that is heard about trimming emanates, of course, from the ignoramus; the knife, he says, is used on them all, a sharp razor is run over their coats, they are singed, they are cut, they are rasped(the latter is the favorite term). Anything like such a sweeping condemnation is quite inaccurate and most unfair. It is impossible to cut a hair without being detected by a good judge, and very few people ever do any such thing, at any rate for some months before the terrier is exhibited, for if they do, they know they are bound to be discovered, and, as a fact, are.

When the soft coated dogs are clipped they are operated on, say, two or three months before they are wanted, and the hair gets a chance to grow, but even then it is easily discernible, and anyone who, like the writer, has any experience of clipping dogs in order to cure them of that awful disease, follicular mange, knows what a sight the animal is when he grows his coat, and how terribly unnatural he looks.

The Wire Fox Terrier has never been in better state than he is today; he is, generally speaking, far ahead of his predecessors of twenty-five years ago, not only from a show point of view, but also in working qualities.

One has only to compare the old portraits of specimens of the variety with dogs of the present day to see this. A good many individual specimens of excellent merit, it is true, there were, but they do not seem to have been immortalized in this way. The portraits of those we do see are mostly representations of awful looking brutes, as bad in shoulders, and light of bone, as they could be; they appear also to have had very soft coats, somewhat akin to that we see on a Pomeranian nowadays, though it is true this latter fault may have been that of the artist, or probably amplified by him.

By Robert Leighton