Breed Priorities – The Irish Terrier

By Nikki Riggsbee

The Irish Terrier carries the nickname “Daredevil” for his spirited and game character, showing fire and animation. The standard is clear on this and other points, and the parent club has an excellent guide to judging the breed available for download on their website. I was looking forward to consistency in Irish Terrier survey results.

There was some agreement, but I thought there might be more. Some of it may be due to fewer participants contributing than most other surveys. With smaller numbers, outliers can skew the results more than if there were larger numbers. This may have affected the Irish Terrier results.

There were fewer participants because, as one person put it, this is a breed with a small population. There are fewer breeders and fewer Irish Terriers. It is well above 100 in ranking by registration statistics and is on AKC’s Low Entry Breed List.

The very few AKC breeder-judges plus the parent club mentors were invited to take the survey on their breed’s priorities. There was a total of eighteen and twelve agreed to participate while two declined; eleven surveys were received. The experts who contributed their input averaged nearly thirty-two years in the breed. Those who were judges have been doing so for seventeen years on average.

Irish Terrier Virtues

The survey included a list of virtues taken from the Irish Terrier standard for the experts to prioritize. The list below is in sequence by the average of the ranks, with 1 being the most important.

1. Eyes dark brown, small, intense expression
2. Head long…foreface and skull approximately equal in length
3. Built on lines of speed with a graceful, racing outline
4. Skull flat, with stop hardly noticeable in profile
5. Showing fire and animation
6. Shoulders fine, long, sloping well into the back
7. Back strong and straight
8. Body moderately long
9. Ears small, V-shaped, set well on head, dropping forward toward outside corner of eye
10. Teeth strong and even, white and sound; and neither overshot nor undershot
11. Hindquarters strong, muscular, stifles moderately bent
12. Legs moderately long, well set from shoulders, straight, plenty of bone and muscle
13. Coat dense, wiry, having broken appearance, lying fairly close to body
14. Neck of fair length
15. Stern docked, set on rather high
16. Height at shoulders approximately 18”

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Posted by Alex on Dec 19 2020. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.