The Fox Terrier is one of the best known and most widely distributed of pure bred dogs. You may find one wherever the English language is spoken. Clubs have been formed in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and other European countries to promote the interests of the breed, which comes in two varieties, the smooth and the wire.

The Fox Terrier is an ancient breed of English origin. In 1790 Colonel Thornton's Pitch, a smooth coated white terrier with markings, was recorded both in print and on canvas. It is probable that the Smooth and the Wire sprang from widely different sources.

The Smooth antedated the Wire by some fifteen or twenty years in the show ring, and at first was classified among the sporting breeds. This was a tribute to his keen nose, remarkable eyesight, and staying powers in accomplishing his work of driving the fox from his hole or the drain in which he had taken refuge when too closely pursued by the hounds.

Wires were liberally crossed with Smooths in the earlier days of breeding in order to give to the Wire the predominating white pigmentation, the cleaner cut head and moere classical outline of the Smooth. For this reason no extended pedigree of a Wire Fox Terrier will be found without many Smooth ancestors. On the other hand, the Wire outcross appears only in the pedigrees of such of the modern Smooths as decend in the T-line, so called, from Dusky D'Orsay, bred by Mr. Francis Redmond in England in 1915 in a deliberate attempt, it is alleged, to improve the Smooth. It is believed that the T-line now exists only in Australia.

The practice of interbreeding the Smooth with the Wire and vice versa has been almost univerally discontinued for some years.

The original Fox Terrier Standard was so well drawn in 1876 by the Fox Terrier Club (England) that no change has been found necessary except the reducing of the weight of a male dog in show condition from twenty pounds to eighteen pounds.