West Highland White Terrier archive tees, sweatshirts and hoodies

White was a safety measure. The account attached to the breed is that Colonel Edward Malcolm of Poltalloch, in Argyll, lost a dark-coated terrier to a mistaken shot and afterwards bred only white ones, so that a dog working among rock and heather could never be confused with a fox. Whether or not the story is exact in every detail, the reasoning is sound and the colour has been fixed since the nineteenth century. The job was fox, otter and vermin in hard ground, and the character matches it: independent, opinionated, entirely satisfied with its own judgement, and prepared to dig on very little evidence. The archive plate leaves the harsh outer coat rough rather than smoothing it, setting the dark eyes and nose against the white, which is the whole point of the breed.