Here in Colorado, there’s a group of peaks in the San Juan Mountains called the Cimarrón Range. There are also villages in New Mexico and Kansas that go by that name, as well as blue jeans, a Colombian musical group, and a pure-agave tequila distilled for a dry profile. Our post, however, is about the Cimarrón Uruguayo. Even though the breed is descended from dogs introduced to the country by Spanish and Portuguese conquerors, it is Uruguay’s only native dog, and it is not only the mascot of the National Army, but it is the National Dog of Uruguay.

Cimarrón” is a Spanish word  “wild, untamed or undomesticated,” and in Uruguay, Cimarrón refers to anything that’s wild as opposed to domesticated. It was apt. The dogs were abandoned by the people who first brought them, and they bred amongst themselves. They became feral, and as is nature’s way, only the fittest survived; evidently, the dogs were very fit because according to historical documents, tens of thousands of the dogs were reportedly roaming the country. By the 18th century, attacks on livestock lead to the dogs being hunted, and indeed, the government paid a bounty for each dog that was killed.

Some farmers and ranchers (especially in the Cerro Largo area),  however, actually captured and tamed the dogs, and with time, these dogs became estate guards and herded livestock eventually developing into the Cimarron Uruguayo as it’s known today.

Fast forward to the 20th century, and the Cimarrón Uruguayo was shown at a dog show for the first time in 1969.  Twenty years after that, the Kennel Club of Uruguay officially recognized the Cimarrón Uruguayo, and with the Cimarrón breeders association, the club helped draft the first standard of the breed.  The United Kennel Club recognized the breed in 2006, and in 2017, the FCI followed suit.  Today, the Uruguayan kennel club has registered more than 4,500 Cimarróns.

Image shared by Line Haithabu of Germany: “Bamba CU Semper fi” – Gizmo, photo by Cécile Framboise