Skye-fall

There is a ceremony in Edinburgh this afternoon to mark the 143rd anniversary of Greyfriars Bobby - a Skye Terrier who supposedly spent 14 yrs guarding the grave of his owner until he himself died on 14th January 1872.

Bobby is commemorated in Edinburgh with this statue.

They are described as "a low, hardy terrier" but,  in reality, the modern Skye is anything but hardy. The breed barely exists outside of the show-ring and there, sadly, the set of the dogs' ears is way more important that its ability to be useful on a smallholding on the windswept Isle of Skye.

Today, the Skye Terrier is one of the most inbred, most endangered native UK breeds, dead on average by just 11 years old (terrible for a terrier). It is blighted by several different cancers, auto-immune disease, renal dysplasia, Skye Terrier hepatitis and back problems (the last no huge surprise given the show-ring selection for a dog with short legs and a long back). It also has a high-maintenance coat - not always the case historically.

© Michal Maňas

Registrations in the UK? Only seventeen Skye pups were registered in 2013, prompting a huge panic and much talk about how to increase numbers.  More puppies were born in 2014, but the breed cannot survive much longer without something way more radical than the few existing breeders trying to produce more pups from their inbred stock and the Kennel Club trying to extol the breed's  dubious virtues to puppy buyers.

What breeders and the KC should be doing of course is planning a careful outcross - if, that is, there is truly enough appetite to stop this breed sliding into oblivion.

And that's because it is ethically unacceptable to continue to breed Skye Terriers without an injection of new blood when there's such a high propensity for suffering.

Are there any enlightened breeders planning an outcross for this breed - perhaps to its more hardy, more moderate cousin the Cairn Terrier?

Please let me know.