Glen Of Emaal Terrier: The Breed

                   (AKC Terrier Group)
The Glen of Imaal Terrier is a rough-and-ready working terrier that is the least known of the four terrier breeds native to Ireland. Longer than tall and sporting a harsh coat of medium length, the Glen is very much a big dog on short legs. The Glen is the only terrier breed of Ireland not defined by a single color. Acceptable colors for the breed are various shades of wheaten, blue and brindle.

Glen Of Emaal AKC Breed Standards

General Appearance
The Glen of Imaal Terrier, named for the region in the Wicklow Mountains of Ireland where it was developed long ago, is a medium sized working terrier. Longer than tall and sporting a double coat of medium length, the Glen possesses great strength and should always convey the impression of maximum substance for size of dog. Unrefined to this day, the breed still possesses "antique" features once common to many early terrier types; its distinctive head with rose or half-prick ears, its bowed forequarters with turned out feet, its unique outline and topline are hallmarks of the breed and essential to the breed type.
Size, Proportion Substance
Height - The maximum height is 14 inches with a minimum of 12½ inches, measured at the highest point of the shoulder blades. Weight - Weight is approximately 35 pounds, bitches somewhat less; however, no Glen in good condition and otherwise well-balanced shall be penalized for being slightly outside the suggested weight. Length – The length of body, measured from sternum to buttocks, and height measured from the highest point of the shoulder blades to ground, to be in a ratio of approximately 5 (length) to 3 (height). The overall balance is more important than any single specification.
Head
Head - The head must be powerful and strong with no suggestion of coarseness. Impressive in size yet in balance with, and in proportion to, the overall size and symmetry of the dog. Eyes - Brown, medium size, round and set well apart. Light eyes should be penalized. Ears - Small, rose or half pricked when alert, thrown back when in repose. Set wide apart and well back on the top outer edge of the skull. Full drop or prick ears undesirable. Skull - Broad and slightly domed; tapering slightly towards the brow. Of fair length, distance from stop to occiput being approximately equal to distance between ears. Muzzle - Foreface of power, strong and well filled below the eyes, tapering toward the nose. Ratio of length of muzzle to length of skull is approximately three (muzzle) to five (skull.) Bottlehead or narrow foreface undesirable. Stop - Pronounced. Nose - Black. Teeth - Set in a strong jaw, sound, regular, and of good size. Full dentition. Scissors bite preferred; level mouth accepted.

Neck, Topline and Body
Neck - Very muscular and of moderate length. Topline - Straight, slightly rising to a very strong well-muscled loin with no drop-off at the croup. Body - Deep, long and fully muscled. Longer than high with the ideal ratio of body length to shoulder height approximately five (length) to three (height). Chest - Wide, strong and deep, extending below the elbows. Ribs - Well sprung with neither a flat nor a barrel appearance. Loin - Strong and well muscled. Tail - Docked to approximately half-length, in balance with the overall dog and long enough to allow a good handhold. Strong at root, well set on and carried gaily. Dogs with undocked tails not to be penalized.
Forequarters
Shoulder - Well laid back, broad and muscular. Forelegs - Short, bowed and well boned. Forearm should curve slightly around the chest. Upper arm (humerus) nearly equal in length to the shoulder blades (scapula). Feet to turn out slightly but perceptibly from pasterns. Feet - Compact and strong with rounded pads.
Hindquarters
Strong and well muscled, with ample bone and in balance with forequarters. Good bend of stifle and a well-defined second thigh. Hocks turn neither in nor out, are short, well let down and perpendicular from hock to ground. Feet - As front, except they should point forward.
Coat
Medium length, of harsh texture with a soft undercoat. The coat may be tidied to present a neat outline characteristic of a rough-and-ready working terrier. Over trimming of dogs is undesirable.

Color
Wheaten, blue or brindle. Wheaten includes all shades from cream to red wheaten. Blue may range from silver to deepest slate, but not black. Brindle may be any shades but is most commonly seen as blue brindle, a mixture of dark blue, light blue, and tan hairs in any combination or proportion.
Gait
The action should be free and even, covering the ground effortlessly with good reach in front and good drive behind. This is a working terrier, which must have the agility, freedom of movement and endurance to do the work for which it was developed.
Faults
Any departure from the foregoing points should be considered a fault and the seriousness with which the fault should be regarded should be in exact proportion to its degree.
Approved: June 11, 2001
Effective: September 1, 2001

Glen Of Emaal Health Issues

Generally very strong and healthy, Glens can live in excess of 15 years. A genetic test is available for progressive retinal atrophy, which results in blindness starting at about 6 years of age, and breeders are now using this test to evaluate potential breedings, though numbers affected are very low. Heart problems are virtually nonexistent, with only one recorded case. Skin allergies are occasionally seen and may be caused by diet or by allergies to flea or mite bites. After the age of 12 months, the breed generally does best on a low-protein diet.

Glen Of Emaal Temperament

Glen of Imaal terriers are energetic and tenacious, although on the docile and quiet side for a terrier. Bred to be mute to ground, they are disqualified from trials if they sound at the quarry.  Their deep and authoritative bark is similar to that of a larger dog, making them an excellent burglar deterrent.
However, like other terrier breeds, these dogs can be stubborn; they are highly intelligent and require an owner with common sense to train them.  They are typically fearless and loyal, and are superb with people, but can be aggressive if not properly trained, especially if provoked by other dogs.
As a working terrier, their main function is to silently draw badger or fox from the earth. They also can have an excellent nose and can be used to hunt vermin such as mink and rats. They can work well in water. They do have a high prey drive and need to be properly socialized with other animals particularly pets that they might mistake for prey, such as cats and rabbits.

Did You Know?

• The Glen of Imaal Terrier is AKC’s 153rd breed.
• There is a glen, Imaal, in the Wicklow mountains that has always been, and still is, celebrated for its terriers." This 19th-century reference is to the beguiling Irish breed we now know as the Glen of Imaal Terrier.
• The Glen of Imaal Terrier was initially bred to rid the home and farm of vermin, and hunt badger and fox; these rugged dogs also had a unique task for which they were expressly designed to perform (they were turnspit dogs).
• The turnspit was a large wheel paddled by the dog turning a spit over the hearth – a canine propelled rotisserie, if you will. The Glen’s highly individualized bowed front legs, well-padded loin and powerful hindquarters were ideally suited for this. For several hundred years, these hearty dogs performed their chores in this remote corner of Ireland unnoticed by all except those who treasured them.
• With the advent of dog shows in the latter half of the 19th century, the breed began to emerge into the public eye. There are documented reports of Glens at Irish dog shows as early as 1878.
• In 1934, the Glen of Imaal Terrier was given full recognition by the Irish Kennel Club. It was the third of four terrier breeds of Ireland to be so acknowledged. The Kennel Club of England followed suit in 1975.
• There are sporadic reports of Glens emigrating to America with their owners as early as 1930; however, the breed did not gain a foothold in America until the 1980’s when several dedicated breeders and fanciers imported foundation stock from Ireland and the United Kingdom. In 1986, these same pioneers founded the Glen of Imaal Terrier Club of America.

Glen Of Emaal History

There is a glen, Imaal, in the Wicklow mountains that has always been, and still is, celebrated for its terriers." This early 19th century reference is to the beguiling breed we now know as the Glen of Imaal Terrier. The breed is named for a valley in the Wicklow Mountains which dominate the northern part of County Wicklow, Ireland. It is one of Ireland’s lesser populated counties and the Wicklow Mountains are Ireland’s most remote region. Smack dab in the center of this hard-to-reach place is a lovely valley, the Glen of Imaal. This bit of geography speaks to a great extent about why our breed is and has been so little known, and why it developed along different lines from its three Irish cousins--the Kerry Blue, Soft Coated Wheaten, and Irish Terriers. Geographic isolation is very much a factor in the development of the Glen and virtually defines its history and evolution.

We are fortunate in our breed, largely because of the specificity of its place of origin, to know quite a bit about how this unique creature is likely to have come about. The road originates in the late 16th century, around 1570, when England’s Queen Elizabeth I faced what most every British monarch has faced--‘trouble’ in Ireland. In this instance, it was a bonafide rebellion. She had several problems in addressing it; she had no standing army and she had no funds to pay mercenary soldiers. Ever clever, she "hired" Flemish and Lowland soldiers to do her bidding and, for payment, she offered them tracts of Irish land in the largely barren Wicklow mountains. There was, however, one jewel in this otherwise thorny crown, and it was the Glen of Imaal. The soldiers did Elizabeth’s bidding effectively, happily accepted their payment, and proceeded to settle the Glen of Imaal and its environs. We know from several sources that they brought with them their dogs, and among them was a low slung, harsh-coated hound that looks not unlike today’s PBGV or the rare Basset Fauve de Bretagne. These dogs in turn mingled with native Irish canines--hounds and the emerging terrier types--and over time these settlers began to develop a race of terrier that would not only perform the traditional terrier tasks of ridding the house and larder of vermin and hunting fox and badger, but also to perform a most unique task. These proto-Glens were meant to be turnspit dogs. The turnspit was a large wheel, which either hung from the ceiling, or balanced on a trestle-like device on the floor, and to it was connected a pulley that was in turn connected to a rotisserie-like device over the hearth. The dog was put into the wheel, and when the dog began to paddle away, voila, dinner was cooked over the fire. Some controversy exists about the veracity of the turnspit portion of Glen-history and this is largely due to a fanciful artist’s rendering of a Glen in such a device published by the Irish Kennel Club in a book of the 1970’s. Indeed, the device depicted there could never have fit in the average Irish cottage of the day, but further research reveals that smaller devices were in common use throughout Ireland and deployed largely to churn butter. So for several centuries, these hardy dogs performed their unique tasks in this quiet and distant corner of Ireland largely unknown in the rest of Ireland, let alone the rest of the world.
Then in the mid-1800’s something happened that changed all of our lives--the first dog show in England. Within a decade, Ireland held its first dog shows and for the first time ever there was a class for Irish terriers. Now the dogs entered that day were not the smart red-coated breed we know today by that name, but rather any terrier bred in Ireland. In that motley class were early forms of all the four terrier breeds of Ireland we now know plus several others that either dead-ended or merged into other types. We are fortunate to have several documents that report on this event--it was held at Lisburn in 1870--and the dog that won the day was described as "not high on leg, longer than tall, not straight in front, turned-out feet, and a slatey-brindle color. The long and useful type of Irish terrier one associates with County Wicklow." His name was Stinger. However, Stinger and his like were not the first breed to organize and gain the coveted name of Irish Terrier. That turned out differently as you know. By 1922 a second Irish breed was recognized--the Kerry Blue, then known as the Irish Blue. In 1933 a band of folks organized, created the Glen of Imaal Terrier Club of Ireland, sought Irish Kennel Club recognition and were granted it a year later, 1934--the Glen becoming the third of the four Irish terrier breeds to be recognized. Our Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier cousins achieved the same goal three years later in 1937. Several Glen champions were quickly made up and the future looked bright. But soon came the war years and development of the breed virtually halted. By war’s end, the number of Glens in Ireland had once again dwindled to a precious few. It would be some forty years before another Irish champion would be made up.
It was in the United Kingdom that the first glimmers of hope began to shine and interest in the breed began to bubble-up. By the 1970’s there was a full-blown revival in the making which in turn re-seeded the dwindling stock in the breed’s native country. The breed received full-breed status in England in 1980 and has been competing in the Terrier Group there ever since. In the United States we know of several Glens arriving in the 1930’s when families emigrated from Ireland with their dogs, however there is no record of a litter being whelped in this country for the next thirty years. The breed did not gain a true foothold here until the early 1980’s when several breed pioneers imported foundation stock from the United Kingdom, Ireland and Finland, and shortly thereafter founded the Glen of Imaal Terrier Club of America.
Hardy and resilient to the point of stoicism, the Glen is very much a big dog on short legs, which speaks both to its conformation and its approach to life. A superb earthdog and loyal companion, the Glen of Imaal Terrier has been unaltered by fashion; the Glens of today are true descendants, in form and spirit, of the "celebrated" ancestors in County Wicklow.

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Glen of Imaal Terrier
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