A NEW BOOK alleges that Scotland’s most famous dog has been misrepresented for over a century.
Greyfriars Bobby, famed companion of Jock Gray has long been thought of as a Skye Terrier however the new book suggests he was actually a Dandie Dinmont Terrier.
Two Crufts judges who have been researching the breed of the famed pooch are Mike Macbeth from Canada and Paul Keevil from England and have been working on the book since 2020.
They believe that due to the immense popularity of the Dandie Dinmont in Scotland at the time and the fact there were over fifty breeders in Edinburgh at the time of Bobby’s life, he would have been one of them.
The breed was developed in the Borders whereas Skye terriers tended to be confined to the Isle of Skye, 255 miles away without the benefit of a bridge or motorway.
All the early newspaper articles and sightings never suggest Bobby was a Skye terrier.
In fact, he was almost always referred to as a “Scotch Terrier”, a term used colloquially to describe the Dandie.
Speaking today, Mike Macbeth, president of the Canadian Dandie Dinmont Terrier Club said: “There have been so many competing stories about Greyfriar’s Bobby that the truth has faded like the mist on an Edinburgh morning.
“But the more I researched him for our book “The Dandie Dinmont Terrier, the True Story of Scotland’s Forgotten Breed”, the facts led to only one conclusion: that Greyfriar’s Bobby had to be a Dandie Dinmont Terrier.”
