Full Cry Column
September 2003

Clint Stubbe (Northern Working Airedale Terrier Association correspondent)

Some months I am totally motivated to get the dogs out and work them at every opportunity I can, then there's this past month. Perhaps the heat has something to do with it. By unofficial accounts this has been the hottest driest summer in 110 years. There are currently 240 forest fires burning in this province. Pretty hard to think about getting the dogs out for much more than a swim to cool off when temperatures are up near 40 C. every day. The water buckets need constant filling when it's hot like this and I even like to spray the dogs down with a hose occasionally if for no other reason then to watch their antics after I release them. A trip down to the river brings welcome relief and the dogs really enjoy cooling off while fetching sticks and balls. I have been working the dogs a bit with a frozen bearhide on the odd cooler day. Just roping it up a tree or working it on the end of a rope. I thought I was going to lose a finger one time when I tossed the hide over the gate and the dogs tried to haul my hand, which was wrapped by a couple turns of rope through a small crack. For a small dog young Terra can sure tug especially with some help. Later in the year I will do some drags to get the dogs ready for bear season.

I don't have too much to report this month, as everyone else seems to be occupied with the joys of summer as well. Henry Johnson did send me a link to an interesting page with a Bio of Edwin Hautenville Richardson who published "My Forty Years With Dogs," in 1918. Richardson was the founder of the first British dog training school and a leading authority on war dogs in the 20th century. Among the breeds he used were Farm Collies and Airedale Terriers. This was near the heyday of the Airedale and around the same time that Walter Lingo was helping to popularize the Airedale Terrier with his Oorang kennels.
Originally the idea to use dogs came from the Red Cross who wanted to use ambulance dogs on the western front, but this idea was deemed unsuccessful early on, the French in fact banned the use of ambulance dogs within a few weeks of the war beginning. Lt-Col Richardson then started training sentry and patrol dogs around about autumn 1914 and found the Airedale to be well suited for this task, he also supplied the Belgian Army with some of these animals. In the winter of 1916 he trained and supplied two Airedales (Wolf and Prince) at the request of the Royal Artillery for use as message carriers, they both served with great success with the 56th Brigade RFA, 11th Div. at Wytschaete Ridge and prompted further investigation into the use of dogs as runners.
One dog handler Reid says: "The two dogs I took out are doing well, I should say exceptionally well. I have not the least hesitation in saying there is not a brace of better dogs in this or any other country as messenger dogs. Boxer, the Airedale, is running like an engine. The lurcher bitch, Flash beats him on his week's running by twenty minutes, which is not a lot considering the breeds. The General of the -------- Division said, that the Airedale was the best dog he had seen."

A BADEN AIREDALE PUP IN TRAINING

Keeper Dixon later reports on Boxer: "A staunch, reliable dog, ran steadily, and never let me down. Best time, three miles in ten minutes. On one occasion, he went over the top with the Kents. Released at 5 a.m., with important message. He jumped at me at 5:25 a.m. A tip-top performance, about four miles. A great dog!"

Today the Airedale has mostly fallen by the wayside in North America as a service dog. except for minor exceptions, one of these being Baden K9 kennels in Niagara Falls New York. At Baden Emmy McConnery trains and breeds German Shepherds, Dutch Shepherds, Belgian Malinois and Airedales for Personal/Home Protection/Guard and for Military, Federal, State, Commercial or Search and Rescue use. I contacted Emmy regarding use of Airedales as part of their training program for work in search and rescue and explosives detection and he sent me this email.

"We have over the past 12 years used the Airedale Terrier very much in the way it was used a hundred years ago. Having a strong interest in the Working Lines as apposed to sporting or show lines, it started with trying to duplicate working scenes in old photos. What seemed to be a simple task became a breeding project. We found as in other working breeds the Airedale Terrier lost health, and temperament with ability because of the show ring. After many dogs failing simple tests that once were never more than effortless for the breed, we found some strong lines in the hunting world. Some lines still produced the attitude and heart we sought after. We began a hit and miss breeding program to try to thin down the animal aggression and still maintain the heart of these dogs. We found that the Airedale Terrier loved to work and to man track. Bad weather, multiple surfaces nothing stopped him. Although some of the Oorang type males were 100 lbs. or more, which was an obvious contrast to most of the breed elsewhere, we sought a lighter 75-80 lb. male and 50- 60 lb. female. The protective instinct and cunning of these dogs is second to none. We have used this breed for S.A.R explosives and narcotics detection and as family guardians. In fact we refuse to register the dogs we now have to avoid them becoming part of other breeding programs. The Airedale Terrier if being shown should first have to prove his worth as a Working Terrier, in my opinion. Hunting, tracking, anything...before the ring. When the ring and type breeding comes first, the breed is doomed to destruction. In the case of this breed that would be a serious loss of kind. Unfortunately the number of type breeders far out weigh the working ones. For this reason I see the registries as an ending to those lines that are still working. By not registering my dogs it keeps them from being out bred. I am not pleased with this fact, but faced with it. The Airedale Terrier is not a good dog he is a great dog yet so many have brittle bones and weak nerves. Many of these are show champions, highly sought after for breeding. The sad truth is if you take the work out of the dog you remove the health and heart also. Papers it seems mean more than the dog to most. It is my hope to leave something for future generations of value. I see the registry as an ending to that so until the breed clubs take a stand the kennel clubs will just continue to take the money. Avoiding their responsibility to the well being of the breed. To follow behind a man tracking Airedale Terrier is one of life's special moments. I hope to provide those moments for as many as I can. Take Care. "

HANK - OWNED BY MIKE JOHNSON

I also am no fan of registries especially the CKC but registries are a useful tool to map and plan a breeding program and virtually all pup buyers demand to know "are they registered" whether any of the names on the paper mean anything to them or not. All too often registries seem to take on an air of self importance far beyond their role as a mere filers of paper. Closed registries based on a tiny gene pool certainly don't have the best interests of dogs or owners in mind. The canine diversity project on the web at http://www.canine-genetics.com/ has a lot of good arguments against these closed registries. I particularly liked J. Jeffrey Bragg's point of view and I quote from the web page.

"The present structure of The Canadian Kennel Clubs studbook registry (and others like it) embodies a fallacy which is directly responsible for the current genetic crisis in purebred dogs: the fallacy of breed purity. The ideal of the purified lineage is seen as an end in itself; accordingly, the studbook has been structured to reflect and to enforce that ideal rigidly and absolutely. This insistence on absolute breed purity arises from nineteenth-century notions of the "superior strain" which were supposedly exemplified by human aristocracies and thoroughbred horses; this same ideal, pushed to an illogical conclusion on the human plane, resulted in the now discredited "scientific racism" of the Nazis, who tried through selective human matings to breed an Aryan superman. The idea of the superior strain was that by "breeding the best to the best," employing sustained inbreeding and selection for "superior" qualities, one would develop a bloodline superior in every way to the unrefined, base stock, which was the best that nature could produce. Naturally the purified line must then be preserved from dilution and debasement by base-born stock. There is no support for this kind of racism in the findings of modern genetics -- in fact, quite the opposite: population groups that are numerically limited and closed to new genetic inflow are now thought practically certain to be genetically inferior. Certainly towards the close of the nineteenth century it became embarrassingly obvious that the human aristocracies of Europe were degenerating rapidly under their own version of the "closed studbook."
The ideal of breed purity as applied to purebred dogs has resulted at the end of the twentieth century in a subculture that holds "purebred" registered animal stock to be qualitatively superior to crossbred or "mongrel" stock. (The word "mongrel" is in fact part of the vocabulary of racism, being applied equally to canine stock of no recognizable breed, to animal crossbreeds and to persons of mixed race!) In this subculture -- presided over in Canada by the

HOLLEE - OWNED BY ROB STOKES

CKC -- it is thought to be of paramount importance that purebred stock be maintained unsullied by any genetic influence external to the supposedly superior strains that are produced by registered breeding in a closed studbook from a small group of foundation stock. New members of the CKC are required to subscribe to "Conditions of Membership" whereby they promise to have nothing to do with "dogs which are not purebred" (with the exception of family pets and boarders), "purebred" being specifically defined as referring only to dogs "registered individually or eligible for registration in records of the CKC." Litters which are made the subject of complaints that they may not be purebred are investigated and in many cases ceremoniously withdrawn from the registry by resolution of the Clubs Board of Directors. Whether you like the word or not, this is effectively a special variety of racism in concept and in practice.

Not all dog breeders are in agreement with the proposition that breed purity is more important than anything else, particularly when they are confronted with the problem of breeding dogs to demanding performance standards. Mostly such dissenters are obliged to carry on their breeding without the benefit of centralized pedigree record keeping and official certificates of registration -- for example, those who breed "Alaskan huskies", the high-performance racing sled-dogs that dominate both short and long distance dogsled racing, keep pedigree records and maintain sophisticated breeding programs, but only as individual breeders. Yet sometimes even participants in established purebred registries engage in a subtle kind of rebellion, quietly breeding according to their own judgment in defiance of formal restrictions. Thus the Racing Greyhound Club of Australia, when it recently subjected a broad sample of stock from its registry to DNA testing, is rumored to have discovered that many pedigrees failed to match DNA ancestry findings and that considerable interbreed crossing had apparently occurred. Similarly most Siberian Husky fanciers are aware that some CKC bloodlines may have received surreptitious infusions of genetic material from non-purebreds or from other breeds. In some circles one even gets the distinct impression that "its OK to crossbreed occasionally if you have a good reason for doing it and you manage it in such a way that no embarrassingly obvious mongrels are produced" -- i.e., "just don't get caught!" Thus the sanctity of breed purity may sometimes be less than inviolate in actual practice.
Population geneticists insist that limited populations under strong artificial selection, subjected to high levels of incest breeding - such as our own CKC purebreds -- simply cannot maintain genetic viability and vigor in the long term without the periodic introduction of new and unrelated genetic material. They are referring, moreover, to true outcrossing, the introduction of stock unrelated to the breeding line, not merely the use of a dog which might be from someone else's kennel but is derived from exactly the same foundation stock some generations back."

Some good common sense arguments but they are more than that they are scientifically sound arguments.

ONE OF ROB STOKE'S PET LYNX

I received a letter from Rob Stokes in Northern Utah looking for a stud dog for his young female Hollee out of Odon Corr's Jack/Nell. He wrote:
"I got Hollee mostly for a trap line dog. I spend all my spare time trapping or preparing to trap. And every winter I would come across great cat tracks and not have a dog, a hound just to take along trapping didn't seem right but an Airedale did. I have two uncles and a brother in-law that all have hounds, my brother in-law has a real nice redbone that we breed to one of my uncle's redbones and I think I might keep me a pup to run with hollee. On new years day my wife and I were checking some cat traps and cut the track to the lion in the picture, the only person I could get a hold of was Jess Peterson to bring his hounds. Anyway he came and ran the track and his son had a lion tag for that area. The lion weighed around 158 and was the best cat in our area that I heard of all winter. But back to Hollee I just want her to be an all around trap line/big game type dog to run with hounds or just accompany me on the trap line. Airedales are very rare in our area and maybe its like that everywhere but it shouldn't be they are great dogs for whatever your purpose. I would like to see more of them around. Can you use the pictures I emailed you or would you like some on paper? I found your articles on the web and read a bunch, I resubscribed to full cry anyway. I read you were chasing lynx? I raise a couple lynx in a big enclosure, I have always loved wild cats, mostly bobcats and lynx, they are amazing creatures. Thanks again for your time I'll send you a picture of the lynx as well. Rob"

Rob did send along some beautiful pictures and I put him in touch with Mike Johnson who lives fairly near to him and owns Hank (Sandhill Cove Henry / Hard Core Katie 8/11/99) and I think they may work something out. If you look at the feet of Rob's lynx it's easy to see how it is somtimes hard to distinguish lynx tracks from lion tracks in certain snow conditions.

Billy Harkins in Georgia also let me know that his Sallybelle is bred to his Steel and he should have pups by the time you read this.

AMIE STOKES WITH HOLLEE AND A NICE LION

Well that's it for this month, the quote of the month is: If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. - Henry David Thoreau

As Henry Johnson always said: "Until next month, let me hear from you Airedale people and don't forget to put your arms around those black and tan dogs with the beards and the moustaches and talk to them. They are people dogs and family members.
Respectfully submitted, Clint Stubbe, Northern Corresponding Secretary for the Working Airedale Terrier Association. No rules, regulations, officers, dues or formal affiliations. It's more a state of mind.