The terrier grabbed the otter and held tight even after the animal plunged into the sea. There is a story of a working Cairn in Britain whose job was to help clear otters from seaside rock formations. The Cairn’s stick-to-itiveness is legendary. For the average pet owner today that means that you’d better protect, or give up on, your garden. Their front paws are well-padded and larger than their rear ones, traits that gave them an advantage when digging in their pursuit of rodents.

They tend to be southpaws, but that’s not the only odd Cairn foot fact. This was essential for their original purpose, which was to wriggle into burrows and rocky passages after critters. Ideally they should weigh no more than 13 or 14 pounds. These are prime real estate for mice, rats, and other small vermin, and the dogs were developed to go in and flush them out. The word cairn refers to a stack of stones, formed either naturally or by human hands, that are used as road markers and memorials. One 1937 book put it this way: “The Cairn is a cave-dog-an innate barbarian, truculent, fearless.” “I call them scruffy little Toto dogs,” notes a longtime fancier. Nothing's refined about them and that is a point of pride among Cairn people. Originally used for the unglamorous job of clearing vermin from farms, the best-known Cairn ever was a movie star, playing the role of the mischievous canine sidekick in the timeless Hollywood classic, “ The Wizard of Oz. Many people know Toto, but we bet there’s a lot about this breed that will come as a surprise, even to die-hard fans of the Emerald City. The Cairn Terrier is one of several related breeds that emerged on the wild, windswept British Isle of Skye and in the Scottish Highlands as early as the 1600s.

I Toto by Willard Carroll