The march of the tartan terriers

Scotland boasts five famously distinctive terrier breeds, all loyal, intelligent and amusing. Kate Green celebrates their heritage and appealing characters

- Kate Green

Skye terriers

Christian Landolt, a Swiss event rider, Olympic judge and hotelier, was after ‘something hairy’ when he travelled to Crufts in 2007 to seek inspiration for a dog to complement a menagerie that already included a Shetland pony, a lamb and a Leonberger (German mountain dog). The unmistakable silhouette of a Skye terrier already rang a bell; a telephone call to his grandmother confirmed that his great-grandfather, the renowned animal sculptor Edouard Marcel Sandoz, had owned three.

Mr Landolt immediately contacted the Skye Terrier Club (www.skyeterrierclub.org.uk), but it was a six-month wait for a puppy, Alice. ‘They’re very difficult to find—you have to be patient,’ he advises. Alice’s husband, Hugo, a dog with a rippling, smoky-silvery coat, was found in Finland. With their daughter, Elsie, they enjoy roaming the 12-acre gardens of Whatley Manor Hotel in the Cotswolds and the Swiss Alps, where Mr Landolt has a mountain home in Gstaad; they’re sophisticated flyers and they adore snow.

Skyes are the oldest of the Scottish terriers and have a romantic history, which suggests that their ancestors survived the shipwreck of a Spanish Armada man-of-war off the Scottish coast. Mary, Queen of Scots was reputedly comforted by one at her execution and everyone knows the mournful legend of Greyfriars Bobby. In 2013, Alice was immortalised, with her brother, Donald, in a sculpture at Armadale Castle on Skye, where a Lady Macdonald from centuries ago kept a kennel of these doorstopper-shaped dogs with silky ears.