to the
homepage of:
Seraphim’s
Angel
This
is Angel… She is a Wire Fox Terrier
She was
born
Her AKC
Registered Name is: Birchhurst Heaven Sent
This
picture was taken in 1996 when she was competing in
AKC conformation shows.
Angel's
website is intended to entertain and help educate visitors about the wild &
wonderful world of the Wirehaired Fox Terrier.
(Using your mouse to
click on the underlined words – hyperlinks – will take you
to a different website that
will go into more depth into that particular topic.)
Angel’s Dislikes: 1.
Strangers 2.
Squirrels (When she can’t chase them) 3.
Thunderstorms 4.
Vacuum Cleaners 5.
Princess (One of her daughters) 6.
Being Crated 7.
8.
Toenail Clipping 9.
Princess (This deserves repeating) 10. Anything that gets
between her & her toy
Angel
Today
You
might have noticed that her colors have faded.
Well, when she was showing her grooming was accomplished by “stripping”
her coat. This means that the fur is
plucked out just a few strands at a time.
It doesn’t hurt, it’s just sorta like what
happens when they shed. In this process,
the outer coat develops a coarse, wiry texture that has deep coloration. As you might guess, this takes much time,
effort & patience, especially on the part of the dog. We haven’t stripped her coat for some time
now. She gets groomed now by
clipping. This allows the soft fuzzy
undercoat to become much more pronounced so that the colors that were provided
by the coarse top coat fade away. The
benefit of being easier on both the groomer and the dog is countered by the
potential problems associated with clipping.
Their skin can develop problems such as rashes, bacterial infections and
skin funguses. More on “Foxy” health
later.
Princess
& The Cowgirl
Angel
was moving around the country competing in shows when she met an irresistible
young boy doggie. She was smitten and
soon they fell into each other’s paws.
On a brisk November evening in 1996 we had a blessed event. Even though we had prepared a wonderful
whelping box,
Angel
decided that cuddling in her dad’s lap was the best place to try to
deliver. Once the process started she
was assisted to the correct accommodations and six hours later we had six
beautiful puppies (three boys & three girls.)
After a
lot of tender loving care, all three boys and one of the girls were adopted by
loving families. That left two of the
girls. The Cowgirl was named almost
immediately after she was born. She
developed an attitude from the beginning that this was her house and we had
just been keeping it ready for her birth.
She was the first to open her eyes, the first to wag her tail, the first
to walk, the first to climb out of the whelping box and the first to eat puppy
food. Of course she stayed.
The
Cowgirl’s favorite playmate was named by our nephew. Instead of being adventurous, like The
Cowgirl, she preferred to be waited upon.
She was a fastidious little girl, avoiding any of the messiness her
siblings created. He decided that she
was just a little Princess. The name
stuck. The Cowgirl practically demanded
that Princess stay and keep her company.
We had many terrier people tell us we were crazy to have three wires in
the same household, especially three girls.
Now why would they say that?
The
adventure was just beginning!
Ready
for some more wire fox terrier trivia?
The fox terriers come in two distinct types. They are very much the same in many ways; the
energy level, the mischievousness, the stubbornness, the intense concentration
and the ability to love faithfully. They
are different in the type of coat they wear.
Wire Fox
Terriers have a thicker, coarse, wavy coat while the Smooth Fox
Terriers have a smooth, shorter, less dense coat. It was once thought that these two were
variations of the same breed, but most dog scholars now agree that they have
two completely separate origins. It used
to be commonplace to crossbreed between the two, but that practice has long
since been abandoned. AKC first recognized
the fox terrier (with two varieties) in 1885 but 100 years later, in 1985, they
were separated into two individual breeds.
Traveling
back to 19th Century England, we find that the fox terriers were
used for the purpose that their name implies.
During the aristocratic social occasion known as the fox hunt, English Fox Hounds
would chase the poor beleaguered creature around the countryside, followed
close at hand by the horse riding “hunters.”
Every once in a while, the fox found a hole or a burrow that the hounds
were too large to penetrate. Then they
called up the terriers and these plucky dogs would follow the fox into the hole
& flush it out. Mind you, this could
be a very hazardous occupation. The fox
didn’t want to get caught, and could be very argumentative about it, not to
mention the possibility of finding more dangerous creatures lurking in those
holes. Then there were the occasional
cave-ins….
Aside
from running about the countryside for the sport of the rich, fox terriers
earned their way on the farms and in the villages by dispatching various types
of rodents & pests. They are very
quick and agile with an unrivaled single-mindedness. They would catch the nuisance in their
powerful jaws and destroy it with the patented “terrier shake,” throwing their
head from side to side until they felt satisfied with their success. Angel has inherited that tendency as all of
her plush squeaky toys have met that ultimate fate with not a single one
surviving the encounter, usually within the first three minutes.
Okay, so
now you think you know a little about Wire Fox Terriers. Not really... not if you are thinking of
going out and getting one for your very own.
To be able to make the life altering decision of inviting a force of
nature like a foxy into your home you should do a lot of research first.
“Pet” Peeve:
In fact,
any decision that involves bringing a living, breathing being into your home
requires a lot of thought and consideration.
ALL dogs are social animals and crave positive contact with their
“pack.” We’ve seen friends and neighbors
that brought dogs home only to relegate them to a solitary existence as a yard
ornament, chained up outside; their only contact with their “pack” is at
feeding time or when their owner feels like it on a Saturday stroll through the
park. Cats can be ignored because they
will ignore you right back. Dogs that
are ignored will lose their spirit and self-esteem. Behavior problems that most dogs develop
don’t happen out of abuse, but because of neglect.
End
of “Pet” Peeve.
Now that
we have that out of the way, let’s get breed specific. Not all foxys
behave the same. There are foxys that will tolerate, even sometimes like being around
small children and other animals. There
are some foxys that will cuddle on the couch with you
for hours at a time and never require a lot of attention or exercise; not many,
but they do exist. Generally speaking
there are some common traits that seem to run in this particular breed that can
help you when you are looking to narrow your search when looking for an ideal
companion. There are a couple of places
on the web that we feel give the best analysis of what to expect of a
foxy.
The
first is a site by Michele Welton who has a place
called “Your Purebred Puppy, Advice You Can Trust.” The page that discusses Fox Terriers is “Smooth Fox
Terriers, Wire Fox Terriers: What’s good about ‘em; What’s bad about ‘em.”
Another
is a page put up by the American
Fox Terrier Rescue. Since these
people see many of the “throw away” dogs, they have valuable information that
might save a foxy from being placed improperly.
Their page is aptly called “Is A Fox Terrier Right
For Me?”.
The
final site we recommend is very well written by a long time owner of foxys and is on the Wirefoxterrier.com
website. It is also named accordingly “Do I Want a WFT?”. PLEASE! Before you consider bringing a foxy into your
life, read these words of wisdom. It may
save you a lot of trouble and some foxy a heartbreaking experience.
Final
bit of Wire Fox Terrier trivia: the WFT
has won the Westminster Kennel
Club Dog Show more times than any other breed. First you should know that the Westminster
Dog Show, the most prestigious dog show in the United States and the second
longest running sporting event in U.S. history (the Kentucky Derby is first by
a year,) has been in existence since 1877.
The Wire
Fox Terrier has won an amazing 13 times!
The closest runner-up is the Scottish Terrier with 7 wins.
I really don’t have an argument as to why foxys
have won so many times except that the judges might give them extra points for
behaving in the arena. That takes an
extraordinary amount of self-control, something that is not in abundance with this breed.
Soon we’ll have stories & more pictures of Angel, Princess
& The Cowgirl
The
Fights (mostly Angel & Princess)
Displays
of Intellect (problem solving, cause & effect, etc.)
Allergies
(Princess)
Other
Health Issues (Angel’s seizure disorder, her recent surgery, etc.)
Dietary
Information
Training
(or lack of interest in)
More WFT
Trivia!
All this
& more as soon as Dave figures out how to create additional pages.
(he’s a novice, you know)
Website
created 1/16/03 by Dave because
Angel
doesn’t type very well.
Angel
says: “Be patient, Dave is just
starting to
learn HTML”
Last
updated
still
doesn’t know what he’s doing!
He
needs to learn how to make second
and third
pages w/links.
Every
attempt was made to ensure accuracy
both
historically and otherwise by reading
a whole
lot of books. A bibliography is
available
by
e-mailing Angel
All
rights reserved for content and
original
photographs
Use of
graphics is permitted for the purpose
of
personal web sites and cannot be used
for
commercial sites nor repackaged for
sale
(under agreement with originating
authority)
Our thanks
to those sites that permitted the use of their graphics
Please
respect their conditions for use.
E-mail Angel
Please leave
a message in my Guestbook
so we know you
visited.
Thanks!!
Here are
some
interesting
links:
Sadly, Pepper
passed away
this year. His site is still
active. We miss him.
The strange adventures
of P.I. Frank Chase & Max
Here’s an Angel graphic if you would
like to put a link to her on
your site: