Dog days for British breeds

Imagine the scenario. You are a military man who retires at 40. Able-bodied, cushioned by a small army pension and the income from a rural estate in west Wales, you turn your back on soldiering. You remain through and through a sportsman. Across your peaceful acres foxes, badgers and otters carve their busy paths. In barns and hedgerows rats and rabbits run amok. How to rout out so much quarry? Only one way presents itself to the resourceful mid-Victorian landowner: breed your own terrier. It is 1848. Meet Captain John Tucker Edwardes.

Edwardes knew what he wanted: a sporting little dog, low to the ground, tenacious, brave and mostly white in colour — in every way a characteristically 19th-century British ideal. He threw into the melting-pot four breeds of terrier and a strain of corgi. The result? The Sealyham terrier, named after the Captain’s estate near Haverfordwest.

Once Sealyhams were among the world’s favourite dogs.