The North of England and South Wales (to a lesser extent) have ever been the home of the wire-hair, and nearly all the best specimens have come originally from one or the other of those districts.  There is no doubt that there was excellent stock in both places, and there is also no doubt that though at times this was used to the best advantage, there was a good deal of carelessness in mating, and a certain amount in recording the parentage of some of the terriers.  With regard to this latter point it is said that one gentleman who had quite a large kennel and several stud dogs, but who kept no books, used never to bother about remembering which particular dog he had put to a certain bitch, but generally satisfied himself as to the sire of a puppy when it came in from “walk” by just examining it and saying “Oh, that pup must be by owd Jock or Jim,” as the case might be, “’cos he’s so loike ’im,” and down he would go on the entry form accordingly.  However this may be, there is no doubt that the sire would be a wire-hair Fox-terrier, and, although the pedigree therefore may not have been quite right, the terrier was invariably pure bred.

In the early days the smooth was not crossed with the wire to anything like the extent that it was later, and this fact is probably the cause of the salvation of the variety.  The wire-hair has had more harm done to him by his being injudiciously crossed with the smooth than probably by anything else.

The greatest care must be exercised in the matter of coat before any such cross is effected.  The smooth that is crossed with the wire must have a really hard, and not too full coat, and, as there are very, very few smooths now being shown with anything like a proper coat for a terrier to possess, the very greatest caution is necessary.  Some few years back, almost incalculable harm was done to the variety by a considerable amount of crossing into a strain of smooths with terribly soft flannelly coats.  Good-looking terriers were produced, and therein lay the danger, but their coats were as bad as bad could be; and, though people were at first too prone to look over this very serious fault, they now seem to have recovered their senses, and thus, although much harm was done, any serious damage has been averted.  If a person has a full-coated wire-hair bitch he is too apt to put her to a smooth simply because it is a smooth, whom he thinks will neutralise the length of his bitch’s jacket, but this is absolute heresy, and must not be done unless the smooth has the very hardest of hair on him.  If it is done, the result is too horrible for words:  you get an elongated, smooth, full coat as soft as cotton wool, and sometimes as silkily wavy as a lady’s hair.  This is not a coat for any terrier to possess, and it is not a wire-hair terrier’s coat, which ought to be a hard, crinkly, peculiar-looking broken coat on top, with a dense undercoat underneath, and must never be mistakable for an elongated smooth terrier’s coat, which can never at any time be a protection from wind, water, or dirt, and is, in reality, the reverse.