Border Terrier
hunting and family dog
The photo, taken in 1915, is of a group of border terriers belonging to Willie Barton. The one on the far left was born in 1900.
No terrier breed is particularly old, although terrier breed clubs sometimes cite both the Middle Ages and the "ancient Greeks" as origins. The Border Terrier is no exception, appearing around 1860 but being indistinguishable from other wire-haired terriers, it was not accepted by the UK Kennel Club until 1920, having first been rejected in 1914.
John Robson founded the Border Hunt in Northumberland in 1857 together with John Dodd, probably engaged in professional predator hunting and breeding dogs suitable for this. They hunted with their dogs near Carter Fell, a place on the border between Scotland and England, which is probably why the breed was named Border Terrier. Foxes were and still are in the border areas the predator that most worries sheep farmers whose flocks roam relatively freely over many thousands of hectares of heather and heather-covered land, the fox takes the lambs. It was the grandchildren of these two gentlemen who later introduced the breed via the British Kennel Club.
In the 19th century, when fox hunting developed into a sport involving riders and packs of loose Foxhounds, the Border Terrier began to be used as part of this “hunt.” The dog was used to chase the fox out of the pot after riders and Foxhounds, a type of sniffer, had driven the fox into the pot. Fox hunting on horseback with loose dogs is now banned in the UK.
The picture was taken in 1927. Border terriers were also used when hunting otters.
It is often stated that the Border Terrier is "a pot-bellied dog that could follow a rider on horseback", which is more or less a myth. A small terrier would have a very hard time keeping up with high-legged Foxhounds and galloping horses for any length of time. In addition, the use of so-called Terrier Bags is fairly well documented, meaning that the terrier was put in a bag. In general, the Border Terrier has not been particularly popular among horse hunters, as statistics from the Border Terrier Club of Great Britain show. It was much more common to use Jack Russells and Fox Terriers.
The hunting orientation of all terriers has originally been smaller predators and vermin. Then its size has meant that it can pursue these underground, at least when it comes to foxes and badgers. Hence the somewhat strange name grythund, gryth is an environment not a characteristic or a type of game. It is about as if you were to call a Jämthund a “forest dog” or a Vorsteh a “mountain dog”. Dogs that hunt are hunting dogs and through breeding and training they are more or less adapted to different environments and game.
Terrier Bag
The Border Terrier is a hunting dog that has been used primarily for hunting smaller predators and vermin. Hunting ungulates with the breed is a relatively new phenomenon for the simple reason that this type of hunting is not conducted on heather-covered land with thousands of loose sheep. Hunting ungulates with the Border Terrier is associated with the breed being introduced in countries where this type of hunting is conducted. When the Border Terrier began to be released for hunting ungulates, no one probably knows. In countries where ungulate hunting is conducted, it has certainly been done in parallel with the breed being used for hunting badgers and foxes in pots. We know that the Border Terrier is today used for hunting ungulates in addition to our neighboring countries in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Germany. Sweden is probably the country where the most ungulates are hunted with the Border Terrier.