Had not Sir Walter Scott written "Guy Mannering," there would never have been a breed of dogs named Dandie Dinmont Terriers. He, therefore, must be credited with being the author of the name of a Terrier that had existed long before, and not of the breed. Had the great novelist given us a description of the Terrier of the time when he created Dandie Dinmont as a character, what a lot of petty cavillings it would have saved! That Sir Walter Scott himself possessed a brace of these Terriers admits of no doubt, as in one of his Notes he says: "The race of Pepper and Mustard are in the highest estimation at the present day, not only for vermin-killing, but for intelligence and fidelity. Those who, like the author, possess a brace of them, consider them as very desirable companions." Elsewhere, too, there is ample evidence to show that these Terriers were hard biters, capable of tackling the fiercest ground vermin.

Enthusiasts in the past have claimed too much for the dog - idealised him, in fact; and strong desire has created good qualities as inherent and never wanting in the breed, but which are not always found. It is a mistake to claim for every Dandie Dinmont Terrier all the best attributes of his family. As a variety there is no dog gamer, and with gameness he generally possesses considerable intelligence and tractability; but every fancier has known Dandie Dinmont Terriers of the bluest blood that were worth very little, although, speaking broadly, as a Terrier he is unexcelled. A good specimen has all the courage and perseverance of the Bull-terrier, and is under far better control, and, in comparison with his cousin the Bedlington, his temper alone gives him the palm.

A point much insisted on by some of the most ardent admirers of the breed is absolute purity of descent from Dandie Dinmont's dogs. There is abundance of proof that the very great bulk of our Dandie Dinmont Terriers have at least a large proportion of the blood of Mr. Davidson's Terriers in them; but to suppose that they have been kept absolutely free from crosses, whether occurring by accident or design, is to take up with the improbable.

A gentleman who, when a boy, was on the most intimate terms with Hugh Purvis, one of the few who had dogs direct from Charlieshope, and assisted in keeping up the old breed, wrote to the late Mr. Hugh Dalziel that Purvis more than once used a brindled Bull-terrier to his Dandie Dinmont Terrier bitches.

In speaking of dogs, the term "purity" must be used with limitation; there is no breed which we can prove to be absolutely purely bred for any great length of time. What we term pure breeds have been brought to their present state of high development by careful selection and judicious crossings; and it should be quite sufficient for us to know that there are hundreds of the variety now living that are to all intents and purposes pure bred, in so far as they have at least more or less of the blood of Dandie Dinmont's Mustards and Peppers, and have the recognised characteristics of the breed so fixed in themselves as to be depended on to reproduce the same with almost absolute faithfulness.

At the date when the First Edition of this work was issued, nearly all published facts relating to the history of the breed had appeared in contributions to the controversies on the subject raised from time to time in newspapers, and notably in the Field and the Country. Since that date Mr. Charles Cook has produced his monograph "The Dandie Dinmont Terrier: Its History and Characteristics," in which the subject, in all its phases, is comprehensively and lucidly treated. Mr. Cook had the advantage of consulting the kennel registry and other papers of the late Mr. E. Bradshaw Smith, of Blackwood House, Ecclefechan, who was a breeder of these Terriers for over forty years, and did more, probably, than any other man to preserve the breed pure as it came from James Davidson, of Hindlee, popularly ascribed to be the original of Sir Walter Scott's Dandie Dinmont, of Charlieshope. Sir Walter Scott himself, however, tells us in his Notes to "Guy Mannering " that the character of Dandie Dinmont was drawn from no individual. A dozen, at least, of stout Liddesdale yeomen with whom he had been acquainted, and whose hospitality he had shared in his rambles through that wild country, at a time when it was totally inaccessible, save in the manner described by the author, might lay claim to be the prototype of the rough but faithful, hospitable, and generous farmer. Hindlee, it may be stated, was a wild farm situate on the very edge of the Teviotdale Mountains, and bordering close on Liddesdale. As Mr. E. B. Smith took up the breed within twenty years of the death of Mr. Davidson, whose Terriers the novel of "Guy Mannering" had made famous, he would have no difficulty in obtaining pure descendants of the original Peppers and Mustards to form the foundations of his kennels.

The class of Terrier kept by Davidson was common to the Border districts, and was in the hands of some families of the nomadic gipsies, famous among them being the Allans of Holystone, near Rothbury. One of these, known as "Piper" Allan, born at Bellingham, Northumberland, in 1704, was celebrated for his Terriers; and Mr. Cook, who thoroughly investigated the matter, seems to establish, without much doubt, that these were the source, or one of the main sources, of the Terriers we now call Dandie Dinmonts.

Mr. Cook suggests, as a plausible theory, that the gipsy tribes had brought with them from the Continent, on first settling in Britain, foreign Terriers of the Dachshund type. This theory might account for the size and shape of the Dandie Dinmont Terrier; but a perusal of the older sporting writers will show that the theory is not needed. We find the short or crooked-legged, rough-haired Terrier described by many of them, and in such terms that it needs no stretch of imagination to conceive those animals to be the progenitors of the present Dandie Dinmont Terrier.