248 DOGS AND ALL ABOUT THEM

'fancy' or show sense. Still, it should be long enough to hang as a thatch over the soft, woolly real coat of the animal. and keep it dry so that a good shake or two will throw off most of the water ; while the under coat should be so thick and naturally oily that the dog can swim through a fairsized river and not get wet, or be able to sit out through a drenching rain guarding something of his master's and be none the worse. This under coat I, at least, have never seen a judge look for, but for the working terrier it is most important. The size of the dog is perhaps best indicated by weight. The dog should not weigh more than i8 lb., nor the bitch more than i6 lb.

" There is among judges, I find-with all respect I say itan undue regard for weight and what is called strength, also for grooming, which means brushing or plucking out all the long hair to gratify the judge. One might as well judge of Sandow's strength, not by his performances, but by the kind of wax he puts on his moustache !

" The West Highland Terrier of the old sort-I do not, of course, speak of bench dogs-earned their living following fox, badger, or otter wherever these went underground, between, over, or under rocks that no man could get at to move, and some of such size that a hundred men could not move them. (And oh ! the beauty of their note when they came across the right scent !) I want my readers to understand this, and not to think of a Highland fox-cairn as if it were an English foxearth dug in sand ; nor of badger work as if it were a question of locating the badger and then digging him out. No ; the badger makes his home amongst rocks, the small ones perhaps two or three tons in weight, and probably he has his ' hinner end ' against one of three or four hundred tons-no digging him out-and, moreover, the passages between the rocks must be taken as they are ; no scratching them a little wider. So if your dog's ribs are a trifle too big he may crush one or two through the narrow slit and then stick. He will never be able to pull himself back-at least, until starvation has so

WEST HIGHLAND WHITE TERRIER 249

reduced him that he will probably be unable, if set free, to win (as we say in Scotland) his way back to the open.

" I remember a tale of one of my father's terriers who got so lost. The keepers went daily to the cairn hoping against hope. At last one day a pair of bright eyes were seen at the bottom of a hole. They did not disappear when the dog's name was called. A brilliant idea seized one of the keepers. The dog evidently could not get up, so a rabbit skin was folded into a small parcel round a stone and let down by a string. The dog at once seized the situation-and the skin-held on, was drawn up, and fainted on reaching the mouth of the hole. He was carried home tenderly and nursed ; he recovered."

Referring to the characteristics of this terrier, Colonel Malcolm continues:-" Attention to breeding as to colour has undoubtedly increased the whiteness, but, other points being good, a dog of the West Highland White Terrier breed is not to be rejected if he shows his descent by a slight degree of pale red or yellow on his back or his ears. I know an old Argyllshire family who consider that to improve their terriers they ought all to have browny yellow ears. Neither again, except for the show bench, is there the slightest objection to half drop ears-i.e., the points of one or both ears just falling over.

" Unfortunately, the show bench has a great tendency to spoil all breeds from too much attention being given to what is evident-and ears are grand things for judges to pin their faith to ; also, they greatly admire a fine long face and what is called-but wrongly called-a strong jaw, meaning by that an ugly, heavy face. I have often pointed out that the tiger, the cat, the otter, all animals remarkable for their strength of jaw, have exceedingly short faces, but their bite is cruelly hard. And what, again, could be daintier than the face of a fox ?

" The terrier of the West Highlands of Scotland has come down to the present day, built on what I may perhaps call the fox lines, and it is a type evolved by work-hard and deadly