It would be hard not to regard some breed standards as the dog world’s version of the “telephone game.” Some breeds are so old that their earliest descriptions were passed along orally, translated across languages, filtered through club agendas, fashion, and regional preference, and only much later fixed into writing—by which time the original meaning may already have shifted.  In some breeds, today’s standard may bear little resemblance to the original.

We need not look any further than the Shih Tzu standard often described as an “original Chinese” or Peking Kennel Club standard—a poetic passage widely quoted by modern sources, though the underlying Chinese document has yet to be substantiated in accessible archival form. Nevertheless, it is a master class in metaphor, a poetic phrasing that draws heavily on China’s most auspicious animals—lion, dragon, phoenix, tiger—casting the Shih Tzu in the same symbolic company as imperial guardians and celestial beasts.

• The Head of a Lion: Representing courage and dignity.

• The Round Face of an Owl: Denoting a flat, wide, and expressive facial structure.

• The Lustrous Eyes of a Dragon: Large, dark, and full of “spirit.”

• The Oval Tongue of a Peony Petal: Describing a soft, pink, and perfectly shaped tongue.

• The Mouth of a Frog: Indicating a wide, square jaw.

• Teeth like Grains of Rice: Small, white, and neatly aligned.

• Ears like Palm Leaves: Large, heavy, and well-covered with long hair.

• The Torso of a Bear: A sturdy, compact, and powerful body.

• The Broad Back of a Tiger: Strong and level.

• The Tail of a Phoenix: Carried high and plumed over the back in a regal curve.

• The Legs of an Elephant: Short, thick, and sturdy.

• Toes like a Mountain Range: Well-arched and strong.

• A Yellow Coat like a Camel: Specifically referencing the highly prized gold/honey colors.

• The Movement of a Goldfish: Describing a smooth, fluid, and slightly undulating gait.

As an aside, in classical Chinese cosmology (closely linked with astronomy), the so-called Four Symbols or Four Auspicious Beasts are the Azure Dragon of the East, the Vermilion Bird of the South, the White Tiger of the West, and the Black Tortoise of the North. The animals appearing in the Shih Tzu description do not mirror this system directly. Instead, each creature supplies a legible and distinct virtue: lion and tiger for courage and authority, dragon and phoenix for imperial grandeur, bear and elephant for strength, owl and frog for head and mouth structure, camel for prized coloring, and fish for flowing movement. Taken together, the metaphors function as a concise visual code, presenting the Shih Tzu as a composite of auspicious traits rather than as a mere lapdog.

Breed histories and club records generally agree that the earliest traceable Shih Tzu breed standard in the West was developed in Britain in the early 1930s and formalized and circulated by the Shih Tzu Club during that decade, rather than derived from any surviving palace‑era Chinese document. In its own historical account, the club credits General Douglas Brownrigg and Lady Mona Brownrigg—who began importing dogs from China in 1928—as central figures in shaping this first standard under the Tibetan Lion Dog/Apso and Lion Dog Club, at a moment when Shih Tzu were being distinguished from other small “Oriental” breeds. By 1934, their imported “Tibetan Lion Dogs” had been recognized as a distinct breed within the club structure, the organization was renamed the Shih Tzu (Tibetan Lion Dog) Club, and the standard was issued, circulated, and later revised, including a post‑war review in 1948. Other expert accounts likewise note that Lady Brownrigg led or was central to the Tibetan Lion Dog Club and played a principal role in producing the first standard in the early–mid 1930s, with recognition by The Kennel Club and the adoption of the Shih Tzu name following soon after. Early materials from the American Shih Tzu Club similarly emphasize type and foundational imports and state that the British standard was used as a basis when the American Shih Tzu Club devised its own, effectively treating this Western kennel‑club period as the point at which formal, point‑by‑point standards began to solidify

Seen in that light, the Beijing-attributed description is best understood not as a lost official standard, but as a bridge – a Chinese-origin, metaphor-driven articulation of “lion dog” type that was circulated in early twentieth-century accounts and later repeated, sampled, and sometimes romanticized by Western writers. It occupies a different niche than the Brownriggs’ Green Street dining-room draft. It is less a checklist of points than a culturally rich snapshot of what the dog was meant to evoke. While it was never copied wholesale into the modern kennel-club template, it may have influenced how early fanciers imagined correctness before translating that imagery into the attributes, faults, and details of the show ring.

When we trade lions, dragons, and phoenixes for “broad skulls,” “well‑set eyes,” and “high‑set tail,” we unquestionably gain clarity, consistency, and something a judge can put a pencil to—but we lose a little of the imaginative world that first surrounded these dogs. The old Shih Tzu description reminds us that a breed was once understood as a bundle of symbols and stories as much as a list of angles and proportions, a “little lion dog” embedded in a particular culture’s idea of beauty, good fortune, and protection. Read that way, standards stop being just technical directives for grooming and gait; they become historical documents in their own right, charting how a people once imagined the ideal dog and how successive generations translated that vision into the more prosaic language of the modern ring.

Photo of Sleeping Shih Tzu by Adam Grabek