West Highland White Terrier breed guide

Alert and active, West Highland White Terriers show the traits of a plucky, self-reliant ratting terrier. AKC says that like all terriers they were bred to work alone and that independence can make training a challenge, though keen intelligence lets West Highland White Terriers take to patient, positive training.

With intelligence, energy and a can-do attitude, they excel in obedience, rally and agility.

West Highland White Terriers live 13 to 15 years. AKC says breeders screen for cardiac disease and patellar luxation.

Regular grooming is a must for a West Highland White Terrier. Stripping or plucking, the old dead hair is the traditional way to care for the terrier coat and the method needed for showing, while pet owners often have the coat clipped for neatness.

West Highland White Terriers love to romp and play and enjoy a nice walk. Since by nature they run after anything that moves, the breed does best in a fenced area or on a leash.

Nobles, landed gentry and poor farmers of the long-ago British Isles faced the same problem of rodents pillaging grain stores and carrying disease and the solution was a vast array of terriers adept at finding and dispatching rats.

The terriers of Scotland, including the West Highland White Terrier, Cairn, Skye, Scottish and Dandie Dinmont terriers, are thought to be branches of one family tree and one historian calls the West Highland White Terrier's forerunners cloaked within the mists of the Scottish hills.