THE YORKSHIRE TERRIER

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3783, 17 July 1936, Page 3

THE YORKSHIRE TERRIER

VERMIN KILLER TRANSFORMED TO PIGMY ORNAMENT. Thfe deluded dictates of fashion over three parts of a century have turned a vermin killing terrier into a glass-case bantam. Although artificial to a degree the Yorkshire terrier still has sporting instincts if allowed natural freedom. What use as a terrier is an ornament weighing less than 51b, concealed by a long silky coat reaching down to the ground ? These modern pigmies, with extremes of manufactured mantle, are often hand fed so that their long whiskers may not be defiled by feeding off a plate, wear stockings on their hind feet to protect the precious coat if ever they get the urge to scratch themselves. The continuous use of oils or grease of some sort is necessary, and the jackets are rolled up in paper or ribbon so as to give them freedom when out of and sometime in, the show ring. Gay and debonair, according to show requirements, the coat should be long and straight as possible. It is customary to part the hair from the tip of the nose and to extend it uninterruptedly to the tip of the tail, which is docked, of medium length, carried straight out. Yorkshire terriers should have a compact body, small erect or semi-erect ears, me-dium-sized dark coloured eyes, with a small flat-topped skull. The correct colour of the coat is a dark steel blue, not silver blue, and it should extend from top of head only to the set on of the tail. There must be no tan intermingling with the blue. The fall of the hair on the head should be of rich tan, and so should that on the breast. Faulty colouring is very common in the breed, so are wavy and woolly coats, and the “silvers” so prevalent in Sydney and a few in Auckland, should not be countenanced although the Australian and New Zealand sunshine has a decided bleaching tendency.