The Lakeland Terrier
 Tripwire Kennels |
 Tripwire Kennels |
Males should be 14 and a half inches tall and weigh about 17 pounds. Females can be as much as one inch less than males. Their coat is two-ply or double. The outer coat is hard and wiry in texture, and the undercoat is close to the skin and soft and should never overpower the wiry outer coat. Their colors can be blue, black, liver, red and wheaten. In saddle marked dogs, the saddle covers the back of the neck, back, sides and up the tail. A saddle may be blue, black, liver or varying shades of grizzle.
The color of the dogs did not matter to their owners-they bred mainly for gameness at first. The color was quite secondary as long as the dogs were game enough to withstand the punishment given by the foxes in their rocky mountain lairs. later came the packs of hounds, but there was not a single pack in the Lake District that did not have one or two game old terriers that had continually shown their courage with fox or otter.
The Lakeland Terrier was originally bred in Cumberland. It is believed that the ancestors of the Lakeland are similar to those of the Border Terrier. There is evidence that the Lakeland is an offshoot of the breed that became known later as the Bedlington, which is closely related to the Dandie Dinmont.
The Lakeland was kept by farmers in the mountain districts who would form a hunt with a couple of hounds and these terriers. Their work was to destroy the foxes found raiding the sheepfolds. This was not actually a sport, it was a very practical matter.
