It’s a pity that terms used by our predecessors aren’t a greater part of dog lexicon today because many of them were so darn descriptive.  To wit: If you’ve ever held a coconut in your hands, you’ll instantly remember the hairy texture of its shell. Dog veterans “back in the day” used the matting of a coconut shell to describe the best coat a Wire Fox Terrier could have: Stiff hair which had at their base, shorter, finer hair making up the undercoat, and a dense, wiry textured outer coat made up of hairs growing so close together that even when parted by one’s fingers, skin couldn’t be seen.  Such coats appear to be broken because individuals hairs are dense and wiry, and tend to twist within each strand just like coconut matting. For obvious reasons, such coats were described as “coconut matting.”

Fox Terrier by John D Benson is available for purchase here.