This Sealyham comes from W.E. Mason’s Dogs of All Nations (1915).
The dog reminds me more of some wire-haired “puddin'” Jack Russells I’ve seen than the modern dog called a Sealyham.
Mason’s text gives this description of the Sealyham:
Color: White with tan or brown patches, but such are not desirable.
Height: 10 in.
Weight: 16 lbs.
This dog was formerly known as the Border or Cowley terrier, and has within recent years become very popular on account of his workmanlike terrier qualifications. He should possess a long head with punishing jaw, and be endowed with abundant whiskers. His ears are carried like the fox terrier’s, eye small and dark, well sprung ribs, body fairly long, immense bone for his size, short on the leg and hard weather-resisting coat
Because of the similarities between this dog and the short-legged Jack Russells, I wonder if there might be a connection between these two breeds. Maybe short-legged JRT’s are actually derived from Sealyhams, or Sealyhams might be derived from short-legged hunt terriers that then became a standardized show breed.
Whatever it is, I do find it interesting that these two breeds have some similarities.
I don’t understand how nearly EVERY breed of terrier became bred for super-long hair and moustaches. It’s like the entire terrier show fancy up and decided to say ‘to hell with proper coat!’ all at once and start breeding for skirts and falls.
Form does not follow function in the show ring!
Well yeah, but it’s weird how it seemed to happen -at the same time- with all of the terriers at once, like a dog-fancier version of the Hundredth Monkey Effect.
LOL, I Googled ‘Terrier Champions 1960s’ to try and see if the beard fad had started by then, and I got this result: http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/81448437/Sports-Illustrated
Wow. 1960.
We’ve been saying this for years!
This criticism goes all the way back to early days of the fancy, and it is only now that the really accumulated differences are becoming noticed.
If you go back through the history of the Afghan in the west you see the same thing. Almost immediately breeding for more coat became the thing to do.
http://www.afghanhoundsinternational.net/afghaninfo/cruftswinners.htm
Sirdar of Ghazni was immensely popular as a sire and his heavy coat was one of the reasons.
What are the inbreeding coefficients like in Afghan hounds?
It depends. There are some specific strains, like the vdom dogs, that have a very high COI; I have seen peds from the vdom lines with a COI of 30-40%. Most are much lower than that, say less than ten percent on five generations. Even though there is technically a small founder population, there have been influxes of native blood here and there even up into the last couple of decades, especially in Europe, in countries where the registration rules are different.
Link to the article related to that cover:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1134314/index.htm
There were actually quite a number of articles related to dogs and shows.
While a lot of hair is really a detriment to terriers, I’m wondering myself about all those wire-haired stylings. I can understand how the stiffer hairs are beneficial in some small way (they come out easier if the prey grabs a mouthful, and the dog can get away without too much discomfort, or so I’m told…any other advantages to the wire coat?), but the extreme beards and mustaches on the likes of some terriers are almost off-putting.
I’ve said it before, but it’s no wonder some people don’t like certain breeds, is because all they’ve ever seen of them is in the show ring on the teevee. If that’s how a poodle, a variety of terriers, a Pekingese or a Yorkie (for example) are REALLY supposed to look, it’s easy to see why people are turned off specific breeds.
To maintain a true wire-coat is a bit of maintenance: http://blip.tv/file/1463907/
Just give me dogs that shed copious hair on their own!
Originally, the wire-haired terriers had much shorter coats overall. They were stripped, yea, but you didn’t need to shave them or strip them to the extent you do now, since the modern ones have loads more coat. Oftentimes, they have to be stripped down to pink skin, because their coats are so thick. But you HAVE to have loads more coat to get the flashy ‘furnishings’ like beards.
Just for interest, compare ‘Redline’ hunting Airedales with pictures of dogs from the early 1900s ( http://www.redline-airedale.com/geschichte.e.htm ). An ungroomed modern showline Airedale, however, looks like an Otterhound: http://www.woofwash.co.uk/images/airedale%20bess%20b4%20groom.png
Airedales have a lot of otterhound in them.
However, otterhounds don’t have “retrieving ability” as far as I know….
Well, yeah… but in the one Airedale book I read from 1914, the author was all like “That god we’ve finally bred out most of the wooly-haired dogs! Preserving type should be all downhill from here!” ( http://www.archive.org/details/airedaleterrier00buckrich )
I felt sorry for him when I read that, knowing how things ended up.
Let me tell you how I know Airedales.
They are run with a pack of hounds (Plotts or coonhounds) against bears. The hounds can follow the trails of the bears more easily, but the Airedale is there for another purpose. It is there to make sure the bear moves. They are very game dogs, as one would expect. The best are like giant Jack Russells.
I LOVE the look of those Airedales on the redline site! Thanks so much for posting that…those look like REAL dogs, not what I see trotting around the ring. Their homepage is quite a good read.
I find, that many of the ‘ruined’ working breeds still have enclaves of people who still breed the original type. More power to those folks, I say.
A hunter friend of mine has a Bedlington that he uses with ferrets. The first time I saw a picture of it I had no clue what it was, because he keeps it’s coat natural. It looked kind of like a mixed breed, which come to think of it might be why a lot of show dogs have the extreme grooming they do.
Whoops, that should read “Thank god”.