FOX TERRIERS.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17701, 1 March 1923, Page 9

FOX TERRIERS.

ARE THEY* DISAPPEARING ? Fashidns in dogs, as we know, can change very quickly, but it seems to me Unit they do not always change for the better, writes James Ruffo in the "Daily Chronicle." To-day, for instance, the fox terrier, surely tb« smartest cf dogSj seems slowly to be uisappeoring. in tho old days for every three dogs that you saw in tho Loudon streets 1 at least two were fairly certain to be fox terriers —jolly little oeasties they we.ro, with a virilo bark and it koen sense of fun. Now—what do you find Y Last week I conducted an exploration on foot. I walked many miles through the streets; I visited the various parks j I even ventured into a mews or two. I eaw hundreds of dogs, but of therir number how luauy were fox terriers? A bare dozen. I suppose, and of these only two had any pretensions of good grooming. One of them, a vory old dog tjtiat must h*ve remembered yuecn Victoria's death, was monstrously fat; another was spotted in a lamentably incorrect pattern; a third had chosen his parents injudiciously. Aog those other dogs! True, therfl I were, a few aristrocrats about, but for the most part they seemed to mo to be a miserable lot. I would bo tho last person in the world to suggest that u mongrel cannot give as wnoleiioarted a love to his owner m tho Sriest-bred dog, but the dogs I saw seemed either to be sulky and shabby, or effeminate and scented and overfed, creatures who, to my old-fashioned mind, had no business to be seen at all. There were big dogs who looked as though tTwy ought to have been in the Zoo, and microscopic dogs—at least, I suppose they were dogs—who yapped and screamed like nothing so much as a parrot in the throes or indigestion. There wero great brown bundles of fat, and bony beasts wit3i a Bnorl. And thero wero two or three Belgian dog« with faces so utterly hideous that I was near to canicido. Now I do not profess to know much about pet-dogs, and I am. well aware that « largo city is no place for the sporting dog, but in the old days there wus no town dog to toueh the fox terrier. "Where, then, is my old friend P I am {honestly grieved at his loss.' He was such/ a gentleman compared with these post-war pets. You think I exaggerate, or am a soured old Victorian? It may be so, but I have an alternative, suggestion to,offer. One has to pick and choose one's friends, and it may be that the fox terriers "have been obliged to form a union of their own. "Clear the streets of these intruders," they may have said, "or w« nncrate to tho country." Yes. I thirifc that is what must have happened.