Pyre for Champions

Fire broke out suddenly in a famed U. S. kennel one night last week. It raced along the stalls of yapping, shrieking dogs, licked up the entire section especially reserved for champion show dogs, and subsided. When the smoke had cleared, a bewildered kennel-master once more counted his charges. Seventeen answered his call. Twenty-eight were dead.

The kennel, well known to dogmen, was Welwire, at Shrewsbury, Mass. Its specialties are wire-haired fox and Welsh terriers. It had been the plaything of Dr. Homer Gage and his son, Homer Jr., until the latter died in 1925. Then Dr. & Mrs. Gage "endowed" it for the life of the present kennel-master in honor of their son.

At the time of the fire the kennel not only owned about $100,000 worth of dogs, but it had acquired an enviable reputation in the prize-ring. Its world champion wire-haireds. Brandy Snap, Wycollar Wonder, Wycollar Diamond Merchant and Welwire Wildflower, each valued at about $4,000, were among the top dogs in American Kennel Club lists.

Of these, only Brandy Snap was saved from the pyre of many champions last week. Others destroyed included Backside Bard, a wire-haired stud, Hafren Wizard, the last Welsh terrier bred by Homer Gage Jr., and Holmbury Reverie of Welwire, a wire-haired that had won "Best-in-Show" 14 times.

Dr. & Mrs. Gage were traveling in Europe last week and thus did not see their costly dogs, their son's memorial, reduced to ashes and cinders.

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