I think pekes are totally screwed. You cannot talk sense to 90 percent of their breeders. Trust me. You can show them old photos until the cows come home, but they still think the dogs that came from China looked like this dog.
This is one breed were most of its fanciers operate in a kind of vacuum-type paradigm in which evidence and logic are sacrificed for approval.
If you want to see what I mean. Look at the comments on this video.
Not only do I hate song, you can’t tell me that this dog is a “beautiful mover.”
At the eyes of the dog in the second video both face in the same direction. Still, it did look like a Tribble with a face. Fuzzy caterpillars come to mind during the ‘movement’ section.
The dog in the second video is better off than the one in Pedigree Dogs Exposed.
I’ve met bulldog people who are very reasonable.
I have yet to meet a Peke fancier who is.
The reason why is simple.
The Empress Dowage Cixi had a standard for her dogs, which is unusual because it’s very exaggerated.
Let the Lion Dog be small; let it wear the swelling cape of dignity around its neck; let it display the billowing standard of pomp above its back.
Let its face be black; let its forefront be shaggy; let its forehead be straight and low.
Let its eyes be large and luminous; let its ears be set like the sails of war junk; let its nose be like that of the monkey god of the Hindus.
Let its forelegs be bent; so that it shall not desire to wander far, or leave the Imperial precincts.
Let its body be shaped like that of a hunting lion spying for its prey.
Let its feet be tufted with plentiful hair that its footfall may be soundless and for its standard of pomp let it rival the whick of the Tibetans’ yak, which is flourished to protect the imperial litter from flying insects.
Let it be lively that it may afford entertainment by its gambols; let it be timid that it may not involve itself in danger; let it be domestic in its habits that it may live in amity with the other beasts, fishes or birds that find protection in the Imperial Palace.
And for its color, let it be that of the lion – a golden sable, to be carried in the sleeve of a yellow robe; or the colour of a red bear, or a black and white bear, or striped like a dragon, so that there may be dogs appropriate to every costume in the Imperial wardrobe.
Let it venerate its ancestors and deposit offerings in the canine cemetery of the Forbidden City on each new moon.
Let it comport itself with dignity; let it learn to bite the foreign devils instantly.
Let it be dainty in its food so that it shall be known as an Imperial dog by its fastidiousness; sharks fins and curlew livers and the breasts of quails, on these may it be fed; and for drink give it the tea that is brewed from the spring buds of the shrub that groweth in the province of Hankow, or the milk of the antelopes that pasture in the Imperial parks.
Thus shall it preserve its integrity and self-respect; and for the day of sickness let it be anointed with the clarified fat of the legs of a sacred leopard, and give it to drink a throstle’s eggshell full of the juice of the custard apple in which has been dissolved three pinches of shredded rhinoceros horn, and apply it to piebald leeches.
So shall it remain – but if it dies, remember thou too art mortal.
Where does it say, “so much hair it looks like a wig on a roomba?” I don’t get the fascination with all that hair, and I *have* hairy dogs.
I don’t get the whole thing with the eyes sticking out farther than the muzzle does.
The hair thing, at least, is *mostly* harmless. But those bulging eyes are just bad for the dog. Period.
I know of someone who has a pug and a boxer. They normally get along great. That is, until one day that they did have a little spat, and the pug’s right eye was knocked out of socket!
Let it venerate its ancestors and deposit offerings in the canine cemetery of the Forbidden City on each new moon.
I admit I giggled when I read this; I make a point of not letting my dog not deposit her offerings on anyone’s property, let alone a cemetery.
All the sane ones moved over to the Tibetan Spaniels, I guess.
I’ve read where they talk about how old Pekingese did not have the proper ‘modern’ body ( http://www.thepekingeseclubofamerica.com/The%20Pekingese%20and%20The%20Happa%20Dog,%20with%20photos.pdf ), but the ‘Hapa Dogs’ did, and crossing the two is what brought us to this current form.
The Peke Club is a prime example of what I think of as ‘The Kennel Blind Leading the Blind’. All the excuses that an ethical breeder submits to the fancies of the show ring in order to get objective critiques of the quality of their dog go out the window when the ‘third party critiques’ come from wackadoos who have hijacked the club.
All you can do when that happens is secede from the club (and accept your resulting pariah status in ‘respectable’ breeder circles). Not following the herd is punished severely in the dog world, to the detriment of the dogs themselves.
I puked a little in my mouth, watching that deformed puppy gradually get enveloped in more and more hair, then finally waddle a little.
“Full Frontal” for a registered name and “Dick” for a call name.
Classy.
I’m casually foul-mouthed, but NAMES ARE IMPORTANT.
“puking in my mouth” is exactly the reaction I had.
It wasn’t too long ago that Chinese culture insisted on binding the feet of women. Why would we take their horrific breed “standard” for the Peke and continue to advance such animal abuse?
The foot-binding practice is exactly what I thought of when I read this Chinese standard for the peke several years ago.
The practice comes from a very paternalistic and male-chauvinist mindset.
Foot-binding was seen as a sign of prosperity for Chinese families. If you could disfgure your wife, it meant that you had enough money that she didn’t have to work.
I’m sure similar logic was at play when they started distorting the Peke.
When I had my first Golden (quite a while ago!) we often trained at a local schoolyard. There was a Peke who lived in an adjoining home, and when he saw us he would scramble under the fence and join us. he was a delightful little dog, could run and play with the big dogs. Not much on retrieving, though.
That sort of Peke seems to have gone the way of the classic Cocker Spaniel. There was a time when there were Dual Champion Cockers– true Sporting Dogs.
But people are so often lured by excess and exaggeration; they can’t tell where “any more” becomes “too much”.