This will complete a Borders heritage trail dedicated to the Dandie Dinmont Terrier dog breed.
The fourth and final board in the Dandie Dinmont Heritage Trail will be unveiled at 12pm on Sunday outside Abbotsford’s visitor centre, with more than 20 Dandie Dinmont Terriers in attendance.
After the unveiling, there will be a walk around the Abbotsford estate with the terriers.
The Dandie Dinmont Terrier is one of the world’s rarest breeds and owes its survival to Sir Walter Scott and the success of his second novel, Guy Mannering.
The novel features a character called Dandie Dinmont, a local farmer with a pack of terriers christened either Mustard or Pepper after the dark grey or sandy colour of their coats.
This character may have been partly inspired by a Liddesdale farmer called James Davidson of Hindlee, a ‘man of the hills’ that Scott was amused to find had ‘an odd humour of having two names for twenty dogs’!
The popularity of this rustic, kindly character and his dogs among Scott’s readership sparked an equal enthusiasm for the terriers off the page and their numbers increased.
In 1823, Scott was gifted at least one Dandie from Hugh Scott of Harden and by 1824, he owned at least two spirited females.
Today, the Dandie Dinmont Terrier is the only dog breed in the world named after a character in a novel.
The Dandie Dinmont Heritage Trail has been worked on by breed enthusiasts for several years.
The trail will feature four boards with information on the history of the Dandie Dinmont – from its beginnings as a farm dog to being listed on the Kennel Club’s Native Vulnerable Breeds list.
Kenny Allan from the Dandie Dinmont Heritage Trail said: “A group of dedicated Dandie Dinmont enthusiasts has been working for several years now to establish a Dandie Dinmont Terrier Heritage Trail throughout the Borderlands of Scotland and England – the area where the Dandie originates from.
“The trail will take visitors on a ‘journey’ through the Scottish Borders to the places where the Dandie came from and will explain the important historic connections of the breed to such places as Kirk Yetholm, Rothbury, Oxnam Kirk, Abbotsford, Kelso, Selkirk, The Haining and Bowhill, to name but a few.”
The boards are site specific with information on the history and character of Dandies with Abbotsford’s board focused on Walter Scott’s history with the breed.
The Dandie Dinmont has fallen out of favour in recent years, with, on average, fewer than 100 puppies being born a year in the UK.
This decline has seen the breed placed on the Kennel Club’s Native Vulnerable Breeds list.
Enthusiasts are working to restore the popularity of Dandie Dinmonts through the heritage trail and public events such as the Dandie Derby.
