But men kept their dogs in the evil pre-show days for work and not for points, and mighty indifferent were they whether an ear cocked up or lay flat to the cheek, whether the tail was exactly of fancy length, or how high to a hair's breadth it stood. These things are sine qua non on the modern show bench, but were not thought of in the cruel, hard fighting days of old.
In those days two things—and two things only—were imperatively necessary: pluck and capacity to get at the quarry. This entailed that the body in which the pluck was enshrined must be small and most active, to get at the innermost recesses of the lair, and that the body must be protected by the best possible teeth and jaws for fighting, on a strong and rather long neck and directed by a most capable brain. It is held that feet turned out a little are better for scrambling up rocks than perfectly straight Fox-terrier like feet. In addition, it was useful to have your dog of a colour easy to see when in motion, though no great weight was laid upon that point, as in the days before newspapers and trains men's eyes were good, as a rule. Still, the quantity of white in the existing terriers all through the west coast of Scotland shows that it must have been rather a favoured colour.
White West Highland Terriers were kept at Poltalloch sixty years ago, and so they were first shown as Poltalloch Terriers. Yet although they were kept in their purest strain in Argyllshire, they are still to be found all along the west coast of Scotland, good specimens belonging to Ross-shire, to Skye, and at Ballachulish on Loch Leven, so that it is a breed with a long pedigree and not an invented breed of the present day. Emphatically, they are not simply white coloured Scottish Terriers, and it is an error to judge them on Scottish Terrier lines. They are smaller than the average Scottie, more "foxy" in general conformation—straight limbed, rather long, rather low, and active in body, with a broad forehead, light muzzle and underjaw, and a bright, small intelligent eye. Colonel Malcolm, of Poltalloch, who is recognised as the great authority on the breed, lays stress upon the quality of the coat. "The outer coat," he says, "should be very soft on the forehead and get gradually harder towards the haunches, but the harsh coat beloved of the show bench is all nonsense, and is the easiest thing in the world to 'fake,' as anyone can try who will dip his own hair into the now fashionable 'anturic' baths. The outer coat should be distinctly long, but not long in the '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 fair-sized 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 18 lb., nor the bitch more than 16 lb.
"There is among judges, I find—with all respect I say it—an 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 fox-earth 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 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 dangerous work. It is only of late years that dogs have been bred for show. The so-called 'Scottish' Terrier, which at present rules the roost, dates from 1879 as a show dog.
"I therefore earnestly hope that no fancy will arise about these dogs which will make them less hardy, less wise, less companionable, less active, or less desperate fighters underground than they are at present. A young dog that I gave to a keeper got its stomach torn open in a fight. It came out of the cairn to its master to be helped. He put the entrails back to the best of his ability, and then the dog slipped out of his hands to finish the fight, and forced the fox out into the open! That is the spirit of the breed; but, alas, that cannot be exhibited on the show bench. They do say that a keeper of mine, when chaffed by the 'fancy' about the baby faces of his 'lot,' was driven to ask, 'Well, can any of you gentlemen oblige me with a cat, and I'll show you?' I did not hear him say it, so it may only be a tale.