Several photos of Xoloitzcuintli appear in a LIFE article entitled “Hairless Dogs Revived.”
The first of these is of a “mongrel” xolo, which the article contends possesses a “squat, awkward figure” :
By contrast, the “purebred” xolo “has graceful lines”:
The “mongrel” dog does remind me of Stitch, but from my understanding, the Mexicans now allow so-called mongrel dogs to be part of the xolo breed. After all, these dogs represented a landrace breed that continued to exist after the conquest. It just bred into the typical village-type dog– which is all that a xolo is. It is a natural, very rustic village-type dog. It just doesn’t have much of a pelt.
By the 1950’s, these dogs were national symbols of the Mexican identity and were being improved as a standardized breed. This seven-month-old puppy belonged to the Countess Lascelles de Premio Real, who was a prominent breeder of xoloitzcuintli. The article states the ears will become erect after the dog is a year old. Maybe.
And then no article about a breed would be complete without a photo of a bitch with puppies, here is Lampi with her ten-day- old puppies. I think this litter would have had to have had some coated individuals, but they are not featured– either they were removed so the photo could be taken or they were culled.
The ‘mongrel’ type was present in early (pre-breed club) Cresteds as well: http://tinyurl.com/3t4qvh8, http://tinyurl.com/3nzaolj, and the dog on the right in this picture of Gypsy Rose Lee and some of her dogs: http://tinyurl.com/42e9q8n
The short legs, thick body, and often roached back was present in many early Xolo, Pila, and Crested dogs. Once show breeding took over in the 60s, refinements and standardization removed such differences in structure within the breeds (though the Canadian and FCI Crested standards still state that there are ‘cobby’ and ‘deer type’ bodies allowed in Cresteds — the modern Crested represents a medium form of the two types, generally).
Overall, I think structure has improved immensely in both Xolos and Cresteds. But on the other hand, much of the early diversity in type has been lost (most would say for the better).
Also, it’s amusing to notice that the pottery dogs of the region tend to look more like the so-called ‘mongrelized’ type of Xolo.
I will bet that the ‘inferior’ squat-bodied type was probably just as common (if not moreso) during the time of the Aztecs as the more aesthetically-pleasing modern type, and has just as much right of being called ‘correct’.
One of the things that exists in many earlier attempts to “reconstruct” or “refine” dog breeds that were first bred by the Native Americans was the assumption that the only dogs in the Hemisphere before Columbus had to look like dingoes or Malamutes. I bet the xolo’s current form is a result of that assumption. It’s a hairless Mexican dingo or hairless “Carolina dog.”
But there were so many different very non-dingo-like breeds in the Americas. The people of the Andes even had a bearded alpaca livestock guardian dog, which looked a lot like a bearded collie or a poodle-type herder.
I’m sure the heavier boned dogs were around before Cortes and his merry band of pillagers showed up.
The breed then called “Mexican Hairless” was recognized by AKC up until sometime in the late 1950s or early 1960s, but after having had no litters and no applications for registry for some years, the breed was dropped from the registry. Then the Xoloitzcuintli was accepted as a “new breed” (with size varieties) quite recently. No doubt there is some interesting history behind the Xolo– both ancient and recent.