From here to.... Sunset Boulevard

A day of bitter chill  but bright sunshine illuminated the winter landscape and brought to mind a curious connection.

This old mansion hunkered down on the bosky valley slope holds a small place in history - canine history that is. Its  name, Sealyham, was the one bestowed upon the chunky white terrier that was bred into being here in the mid 19th century. The lord of the manor, Captain John Tucker Edwardes, retired from soldiering at the age of 40 and devoted himself to hunting innocent small animals (fox, badger, otter, polecat) on the estate. Dissatisfied with the dogs available to him he set about devising one for the purpose and, by  combining several types of terrier that belonged to his landowner chums: the Cheshire, the Bull, the West Highland, some smooth-haired this and some wire-haired that,  a smidgen of Corgi and arguably a dash of Dandie Dinmont, he came up with the  Sealyham,  a chunky white pooch low enough to the ground to pursue its quarry into their dens and burrows, and with  jaws tenacious enough to wrench them from their lairs to the satisfaction of the land-owner and his game-keeper.

The Sealyham terrier looked appealing enough to become popular with  a wider span of dog lovers than the local landed gentry.  By the mid-20th century they could seen on the streets of Hollywood in the company of, among others, Alfred Hitchcock, whose own ascent from an Essex greengrocery to a Bel Air mansion matched his dogs'  trajectory.
(One of them actually plays a significant part in Rear Window)

Sad to say the Sealyham breed has fallen out of favour since its star-studded heyday and some reports suggest that the remaining dogs can be numbered only in few tens.

There's a series of photos  of Hitchcock and his dogs  to be scrolled through here  and I recommend doing so. I particularly like number 3.. 

It sure was a long leap from the Pembrokeshire undergrowth to Sunset Boulevard.