Can you identify this breed by the following description?
“A dog of medium size, rather heavily built, and long bodied in proportion to its height; ears large and erect; tail thick, drooping or carried nearly straight behind; hair nearly absent except for a few coarse vibrissae and generally a sparse coating on the tail, particularly near the tip sometimes a tuft on the crown.”
You probably perked up at words, “hair nearly absent,” and deduced that a hairless dog, say, the Xoloitzcuintli, was being described – and you’d be correct.
BIR Grupp 5 MEXIKANSK NAKENHUND Lokal Hero’s King Og Hart’s Istas shared under creative commons license
Would you guess, however, that those words were written in a journal by the explorer and naturalist, Francisco Hernandez, in the 1500s? Five hundred years later, and we still describe Xolos about the same way, and since the Xoloitzcuintli has been called, “the first dog of the Americas” because it was one of the earliest dogs to be domesticated by humans, we’d bet the description would be even older than that.
Clay and ceramic statues of dogs nearly identical to the present day Xolo have been unearthed from Mayan, Colima and Aztec tombs, and museum shows that specialize in these Aztec and Mayan artifacts are popular exhibits. That gets us to wondering: If someone were to stroll with their Xolo through an Aztec or Mayan exhibition – say, like the picture above – would anyone realize that the real marvel in the room is at the end of the leash? A living, breathing legacy of the Mayan and Aztec culture. The same breed that was honored and revered in those cultures is here among us today! Isn’t that spectacular? We think it’s time for us as purebred dog owners to not only appreciate the living legacy sitting by our sides, but to present them to the world as the “museum pieces with a pulse” that they are. So let’s have some fun. Share a picture of your breed, and include a snippet of their historical or cultural legacy that others may not know!
Image: World Dog Show 2011, photo credit: Nivi/Dreamstime