- The Glen of Imaal Terrier – A Brief but Action-Packed History
was drawn up in Ireland. A sparse document of 147 words, it nevertheless became the prototype and launching pad for subsequent breed standards over the years. Several Glen champions were quickly made up but soon came World War II and development of the breed virtually halted. By war’s end, the number of Glens in Ireland may have been fewer than a dozen. Not a single Glen champion was made up in Ireland from 1939 through 1972. Fortunately, this was not the case in the United Kingdom where interest in the breed began to bubble-up in the 1950s and 1960s. By the 1970s there was a full-blown revival in the making, which in turn reseeded the dwindling stock in the breed’s native country. The breed received full-breed status in England in 1980 and has been competing in the Terrier Group there ever since, though CCs have only been awarded since 2008. In the US we know of several early Glen arrivals in the 1930s when individuals emigrated from Ireland with their Glens. In the 1960s, the Kelly family of the Bronx, with the assistance of the late, great terrier authority, Tom Gately, imported a pair of Glens from Ireland, news of which made the New York Times. But the breed did not gain a true foothold here until the early 1980s when several breed pio- neers imported foundation stock from the UK, Ireland and Finland—Finland has been and still is a major center of activity in the breed—and shortly thereafter founded the Glen of Imaal Terrier Club of America. The American Kennel Club invited us to enter the Miscellaneous Class effective September 1, 2001. We became fully recognized on October 1, 2004. Glens first competed in regular classes that same weekend at the four shows that comprise “Montgomery week- end.” The first American champion, a bitch, was made up that very same weekend. Courageous and indomitable, the Glen has survived two near-extinctions to come down to us unaltered by fashion. Glen breeders and fanciers have every intention of keeping them that way. Judges can play a monumental role in sup- port of that mission.
mon usage of a much smaller, canine-propelled treadmill contraption that was hooked up to a butter churn. This makes for a far more plausible scenario since the traditional diet of the average Irish peasant consisted of potatoes and dairy. Regardless of the details, the Glen may be unique among canines in that it helped prepare the family meals. So, for several centuries, these unique dogs performed their unique tasks in this quiet and distant corner of Ireland, large- ly unknown to the rest of Ireland, let alone the rest of the world. Then in the late 1800’s something happened that changed all of our lives—the first dog show in England. Within a decade, Ireland held its first dog show and for the first time ever there was a class for Irish terriers. Now, that’s capital “I” on Irish but lower case “t” on terrier, for the dogs entered that day were not the smart red-coated breed that was then known as the Irish Red, and we know today as the Irish Terrier, but rather any terrier bred in Ireland. Oh, the poor judge. In that motley class were early forms of all the Terrier breeds of Ireland we now know plus several others that either dead-ended or merged into other types. We are fortunate to have several accounts of the ‘Irish Terrier’ entry for that show—it was held at Lisburn in 1870—and the dog that won was described in one account as “not high on leg, longer than tall, not straight in front, turned-out feet, and a slatey-brindle color. The long and useful type of Irish terrier one associates with County Wicklow.” The dog’s name was Stinger—so not only do we know that there was a Glen pre- sent, we actually know his name. But Stinger and his like were not the first breed to organize and gain from the Irish Kennel Club the coveted name of Irish Terrier. That turned out differently as we know. By the 1920s a second Irish terrier breed was recognized—the Kerry Blue, and then, in 1933 a band of folks organized, created the Glen of Imaal Terrier Club of Ireland, sought Irish Kennel club recognition, and were granted it a year later—1934—the Glen becoming the third of the four Irish terrier breeds to be so recognized. Our Soft Coated Wheaten friends achieved the same goal three years later in 1937. It was in that year of breed recogni- tion,1934, that the first standard for the Glen of Imaal Terrier
120 • S HOW S IGHT M AGAZINE • D ECEMBER 2010
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