Meet the breed that’s often misidentified as a Puggle (which isn’t a breed at all) or a Pug; it’s the Petit Brabançon, also known as the smooth-coated Brussels Griffon. At this point, classifying the dog gets tricky for reasons shared in the next paragraph.

Most international kennel clubs accept three distinct varieties of the Brussels Griffon –  the Griffon Bruxellois (or Brussels Griffon), the Griffon Belge (Belgian Griffon), and the Petit Brabancon.  Some kennel clubs, however,  recognize all three as distinct breeds, and others recognize them all as varieties of one breed. Except for the coat, the AKC breed standard acknowledges no difference between the smooth-coated Brussels Griffon and the rough coat.  Regardless of how they are categorized, they all descend from a small rough-coated dog called a “Smousje” found in the Brussels area for hundreds of years (the dog depicted by Jan Van Eyck painting, The Arnolfini Marriage, is thought to be a Smousje).

And then there is the matter of its appropriate group. The breed takes its place in the toy group at AKC dog shows, as it does at FCI shows where it appears in Group 9:  Companions and Toy Dogs. Some purists, however, staunchly maintain that the Brussels Griffon is almost certainly a member of the Pinscher/Schnauzer family. There is no doubt that far from being an “accessory,” these little dogs earned their keep by being capable ratters, as well as vociferous guards over carriages. To be more accurate, at the time they guarded horse and carriage, they were known as the Griffon de’Ecurie. Carriage men had introduced new blood to the Smousje so often that at one point, they ended up with an entirely different dog, the Griffon de’Ecurie. With the addition of blood-lines from the Ruby King Charles Spaniel and the Pug in the 19th century, yet another type emerged so different from its original form that it, too, started to go by different names. Smooth-coated dogs became known as the Petit Brabancon (after the Belgian national anthem, La Brabonconne), and the rough-coated dogs named after the Belgian capital of Brussels became known as the Griffon Bruxellois, or Brussels Griffon. Rough coated dogs that weren’t black and tan and red were known as Griffon Belges, or simply Belgian Griffons.

In 1883, “Topsy” and “Foxine” became the first Griffon Bruxellois registered at L.O.S.H. (The St.Hubert stud book).

Image: Photo of Dutch, Int., Belgian & German Ch. Gaystock Le Pas de Tout, Imp.UK by Hans Bleeker – own work