Kerry blue terriers, Irish terriers, and soft-coated wheaten terriers are all multipurpose working dogs. They will also herd, if that’s what’s required of them.
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Kerry blues or “Irish blues” are actually the unoffiical national dog of Ireland. Irish patriot Mick Collins was a great patron of the breed.
These dogs had always been kept by the common people of Ireland. They were known to the average Irish family far more than dogs like wolfhounds, water spaniels, and setters. Those breeds were the dogs of the nobility, which in some epochs of Ireland’s history meant that these were were the dogs of the Anglo-Saxon colonizers.
It would make more sense for the Irish people to adopt a breed that was less associated with the nobility and more symbolic of the new Irish nation.
Mick Collins supported a resolution in Irish parliament to elevate his beloved blue terriers to this national symbol, and it is difficult to be sure if this resolution even appeared before the body. According to the Kerry Blue Terrier Foundation’s webite:
The Dail Eireann, (The new Irish Parliament), was formed for the “new state,” and there is record of Michael Collins sponsoring an Act of Oireachtas (Act of Parliament) to elevate the Irish Blue to the status of National Dog of Ireland, however there is no record of this act being heard or legislation passed. This is not to say that it was not heard, just that there are no official records, even after extensive research. Records of this period are sketchy to say the least, and sometimes distorted or destroyed by forces loyal to the old regime. But one would imagine that with the formation of a new “State” and all the ensuing and associated instability, the passing of legislation on a National Dog was not a priority. After the death of General Michael Collins no other person “championed” the breed in the Dail and the initiative was lost.
Many people think that the national dog of Ireland is the wolfhound. I am not sure where this comes from.
There have never been any official national dog of Ireland. The closest any breed has ever come to receiving this distinction is the Kerry blue terrier.
Maybe the resolution actually passed, but record of its passage didn’t survive.
So it is not technically inaccurate to call this breed the national dog of Ireland.
We just don’t know. Maybe the evidence will be more forthcoming.
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I hope you know by now that I always do a Kerry blue terrier post on St. Patrick’s Day.
Now you are getting into an area where I live. I have had Irish Terriers for over 35 years. I have three who are known as the Chew Crew. All of us who have any of the four terriers Ireland have a familiar connection. What is interesting is the Soft Coated Wheaten and the Kerry Blue where not actuality totally separate breeds until the first decade of 20th century. The Glenn of Imaal Terrier, or Turn Spit Terrier has always been the rarer of the four and in recent decades has been saved from extinction. There has always been an unfounded idea that the Irish Wolfhound is somehow connected to the Irish Terrier through breeding. I don’t know about this but I can tell you from first had experience that a house hold that has Irish Wolfhounds and Irish Terriers together has a canine personality match made in heaven.
I think of these terriers as something like Ireland’s feists.
The Glen of Imaal is the last surviving strain of turnspit. There used be many, many turnspits throughout Europe.
I suspect that the crook-legged dachshunds were actually turnspits or had that ancestry.
I think there is some poodle-type water dog behind the three long-legged Irish terrier breeds. All three can be used as retrievers.
Are the turnspits naturally crooked, or is it a result of putting them to work too early before the growth plates closed?
I believe they are natural. It’s natural in bassets.
And there is a feist breed in the US called the “bench-legged” feist, which also has bent legs.
Makes sense.
Just had to be a skeptic though since it’s easy to distort primary sources based on our modern interpretations.
All the terriers, long legged or not, were just Irish terriers in the past. The Kerry”, Wheat and Glennies are different tonings from the idea made by some kennel-people. These dogs are very close to each other. If you can find the Rawdon B. Lee -book (1894), where he writes about the Irish terriers:
“There is a glen, Imaal, in the Wicklow mountains that has always been, and still is, justly celebrated for its terriers. It would be hard to specify their colour in particular — the wheaten in all shades to that of bright red.”
Bridget I have always been amused by the narrative you hear at shows such as Westminster Dog show: One of the oldest, an ancient breed, the oldest of the…… etc. When the truth be told that for most breeds have not been around for in anything like their present form for much more the perhaps 300 years, with some notable exceptions mostly in the Mastiff, and Gaze hound area.
As for Rawdon B. Lee’s book:
A History and Description
of the
Modern Dogs
of
Great Britain and Ireland
(The Terriers)
Illustrated By
Arthur Wardle and R.H. Moore
London
Horace Cox [Publisher]
“Field” Office, Windsor House, Breams Buildings, E.C.
1894
It is available as a free PDF download here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=Ax9DAAAAIAAJ&pg=PR1&dq=Rawdon+B.+Lee+-book+%281894%29&hl=en&ei=OduDTebrMeOz0QHG6sm_CA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
If you have an iphone, iPod Touch, or iPad with the iBooks app loaded you can load these PDF books up there, This is what I do. I am not sure how this works on the newest Kindles.
Ken
The photo you see above was taken by Natalia Samaj in the Check Republic. Her adventure of hunting with her Kerry Bianco are written up on the Kerry Blue Terrier Foundation (KBTF) web site http://www.kerryblues.info/KB/HUNTING.HTML
Very good photos.
NB: It’s Check Republic is Czech Republic in English. I don’t know where we get it. It is čeština in Czech.