Bone of contention Tales that wag the dog
Greyfriars Bobby
The Skye terrier, famed for visiting his master’s grave in Edinburgh for 14 years, was the lesser-known Dandie Dinmont terrier, say researchers. Crufts judges Mike Macbeth and Paul Keevil wrote in The Dandie Dinmont Terrier: The True Story of Scotland’s Forgotten Breed
that when Bobby was born in 1855, Syke terriers were kept mainly in the Isle of Skye, 255 miles from Edinburgh. Queen Victoria collie “myth”
Queen Victoria is often blamed for having “spoilt” the collie breed by her patronage, raising them from working shepherd dogs into the show ring. The Border Collie Museum claims her collies were pets but were not show collies. Dogs came from modern wolf
A study published in 2014 in PLOS Genetics
concluded that they were descended from an extinct species of wolf.