SPORTING TERRIERS: THEIR FORM, THEIR FUNCTION AND THEIR FUTURE. By Colonel David Hancock.

This book is about sporting terriers, that much-loved, quintessentially British, quite admirable group of dogs, favoured for centuries by the more humble type of hunter. Sporting Terriers is not a manual covering training, grooming, nutrition and dog care; it is a celebration of terriers' contribution to the sporting scene, an examination of their form, their function and their future in an increasingly urban society. Painstakingly researched and brimming with information, it covers the emergent terrier breeds and foreign ones, as well as the long-established pedigree breeds of the show ring. If you do not want a book that merely lazily repeats all the old terrier breed myths and you are seeking something more challenging and thought-provoking, then this is the book for you.

The author of eight previous books on dogs, and over 750 articles published in national and international magazines, Colonel David Hancock MBE has studied dogs for over half a century in more than twenty countries. In 2009 he won the annual award of the Dog Writers' Association of America, having been a runner-up two years earlier. He judges emergent terrier breeds such as the Lucas, Sporting Lucas and Plummer Terriers as well as working gundog tests. David wrote the breed standards for several emergent breeds, has advised television production companies on recent documentaries on dogs, and was a contributor to the Bateson Report, an inquiry into pedigree dog breeding in the UK.