Unlike last year’s Westminster Best in Show Peke, GCH PalaceGarden Malachy, this year’s top winning footstool doesn’t stand a chance at taking home the big prize. Malachy was the #2 All Breed dog in 2011 with 50 BIS wins, as well as #2 in 2010 with 63. GCH Windmere’s Dusting of White at Pevyne, the top winning Pekingese of 2012, has amassed only 11 BIS wins and finished the year as the #20 All Breed dog. Oh how the tiny have fallen, metaphorically if not physically, given that Pekes can’t actually fall very far as most of them have trouble seeing over a Roomba.
Of course, it wasn’t always that way, even though they are a toy breed Pekes once had straight legs and could perform physical acts like walking without the need for an ice pack and oxygen supplementation. Here’s a video from 1964 which shows Pekes actually “racing” (read: jogging) and not dying:
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Although the dogs in the video are considerably more furbound than the original Pekes that were smuggled out of China before the turn of the 20th century, the ones in the video pale in comparison to the undead-toupée-mounds that had risen to prominence in the show ring during that same decade.
CH Ah Cum (M) was smuggled out of China in 1896 and is considered the father of the Pekingese breed in the West.
GCH CH Windemere’s Dusting Of White At Pevyne (M) was bred by J Thoms/C Koch and is owned by J Sanchez/C Sanchez/J Thoms/C Koch. He’s the number #1 Pekingese dog in the country.
It didn’t take a hundred and ten years to transform the Pekingese, the majority of the malformation was accomplished in half that time. Under the control of Mary de Pledge, the Caversham kennel in England steadily morphed the breed starting in the 1920s until her death in the late 1960s. She bred for profuse coats and bracycephalic faces.
1960 Westminster BIS Pekingese Ch Chik T’Sun, not to be confused with a Tribble.
But it was the Caversham dynasty that would rise to the greatest heights by the 1950s and 60s because the kennel produced not only the breed’s biggest winners and record holders of the 20th century, but sires that literally became pillars of the breed. With the use of Alderbourne and Caversham sires, we began to see major improvements with better heads and much more coat than ever before. A glamour factor was emerging. Those combined characteristics flourished when breeders began to linebreed to the Caversham dogs.
By the time the Caversham kennel was hitting a high, it had captured the interest and imagination of Pekingese breeders worldwide. But the name ‘Caversham’ went even further and became emblazoned overseas into the psyche of the entire American dog show world when Ch. Chik T’Sun of Caversham (pronounced “Chick Sun”) came onto the scene. Chik T’Sun made a huge mark as Top Dog All Breeds in America back in the late 1950s and early 60s, having won 169 group firsts and 126 Best in Shows. Many American judges today remember the dog and comment on his showmanship and accomplishments in his day. His show record was a phenomenon at the time since there weren’t nearly as many shows in America then as there are today, and few dogs traveled by air or out of their geographic area as they do now.
The change in the breed was profound. Compare this American show Peke featured in Life Magazine from 1946 with the British Bred and imported Chik T’Sun who was born in 1954. You can see just how terminally shortened the muzzle has gotten and how much more profuse the coat is. The skin that normally would glove the snout has no underlying depth of face to cover and is thus bunched in a skin roll which hangs over the top of the nose and even obstructs the eyes.
The British effort was rewarded in America and Chik T’Sun won every show in sight and was the first Pekingese to win Best in Show at Westminster in 1960. The animal was such a radical transformation from what most people considered a canine form and appeared so alien to the American sensibility that Life Magazine ran a feature of the dog which included a full body x-ray to reveal what was under all that hair.
Peke Inside, an X-ray 85% life-size, shows Chik T’Sun’s deep chest, well-sprung ribs, massive head, and other superlative bone conformation that has helped him become a great champion.
The X-ray above shows what almost everybody who has seen a Pekingese wants to know: what is underneath all the hair. In this case it is a particularly superb structure of bones. This dog us a 5-year-old Pekingese from Atlanta, International Champion Chik T’Sun of Caversham. In a few days at New York City’s almighty Westminster dog show, a judge will probe Chik’s profuse coat trying to tell by feel instead of X-ray just how close his skeletal make-up comes to Pekingese perfection.
The judge’s skilled fingers will search the short, bowed forelegs, the massive skull, the broad “lionlike” chest to see if they measure up to official Pekingese standards. After this digital diagnosis the judge will investigate Chik for some of the more visible Peke requirements–a quaint and courageous expression, large lustrous eyes, a long, soft coat. If, when it is all over, Chik should be singled out from the 2,500 other prize dogs, the judge who does it will have plenty of precedent going for him. For over the past three years, Chik T’Sun has won “best in show” 126 different times, breaking the old record held by the great boxter, Bang Away.
The relentless pursuit of blue ribbons has not been easy for Chik. He has had to travel–75,000 miles on the grueling show circuit. He has submitted to interminable brushings by his handler and forced feedings to keep up his weight. Because of the danger to his protruding eyes he cannot play with children or other dogs. He is never permitted to take a walk on bare ground–a twig might catch in his coat and tear it. He cannot even take a bath–his hair would mat.
After Westminster life will change abruptly for Champion Chik. Win or lose, he will be retired to stud by his owners, Mr. and Mrs. C.C. Venable. Only then, for the first time in his life, will Chik be allowed to carry out what the American Kennel Club considers the life purpose of a Pekingese–”to give understanding, companionship, and loyalty to his owner.”
It boggles the mind to read all the laudatory praise for that X-ray when even a layman can tell you that there’s nothing lion-like about that dog, rather there is a shrunken and rotated skull and invisible muzzle sitting on an overly long neck supported by crippled front legs (just look at how much lower the front is than the rear), and a wonky spine.
The insatiable desire for more coat and less muzzle didn’t stop in the 1960s, the Peke would once again win Best in Show at Westminster in the 1980s. After winning the top honor in 1979 with her Irish Water Spaniel, Canadian Anne E. Snelling won the prize again in 1982 with a Pekingese bitch named Ch. St. Aubrey Dragonora of Elsdon.
1990 Westminster BIS Ch. Wendessa Crown Prince
In 1990, yet another Peke was the toast of the town when Ch. Wendessa Crown Prince took the top honors.
Of course, last year at Westminster 2012, the powers that be once again anointed a British import Peke that brought even more extreme distortion to the breed by crowning Palacegarden Malachy Best in Show. This was a rather clear backlash at the negative publicity that the sport of dog showing has been accumulating in recent years. Palacegarden is of note as the kennel whose entry to the famed Crufts competition was disqualified last year by failing the UK Kennel Club’s new vet check scheme. A Peke won BIS at Crufts in 2003, but the success of Pedigree Dogs Exposed has shifted the tide against such obviously monstrous dogs in the UK.
The tide appears to have reached the US, as Malachy’s win last year brought more scorn than praise from the media and public. Most writers tried to find creative and pejorative comparisons for the dog calling it a dwarf wookie, a troll doll, a mop, a living mullet, a lint trap, hairball, and of course my favorite, a Tribble. And we all know how it ended with the Tribbles… you can only indulge the madness for so long until you finally get rid of them all. There’s no place in a humane and educated world for such a distorted, tortured, and useless animal as the modern show Peke. Let’s just hope the coming purge doesn’t take all purebred dogs down with the Pekes.
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Jess
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retrieverman
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“A quiant and courageous expression” haha what the hell that gave me a good laugh.
Pick-in-kneeses is war dogs.
retrieverman recently posted..Grouchy cat weighs in on the waitress tip controversy
Bravo in writing about “The Trouble With Tribbles!” I’ve never ever EVER understood the love affair people have with brachycephalic breeds. In truth it can’t really be love, so much as a fascination with the bizarre and freakish.
That’s all well and good when visiting a modern art museum, but Itreating living creatures as genetic lumps of clay to be molded any which way, like sculptures, with disregard to health consequences, belies a disturbing sense of ego above humane treatment.
I have a co worker who owns a Peke. Her dog is fortunate to be of the relatively healthier proportions, but I still am always amazed when she comes to my desk, points at the picture of my kelpie, and laughingly says how her dog is so much more beautiful than mine; my dog, med sized, with his large erect ears, long nose and legs and effortless coyote-gait, all in all a far more natural specimen.
We must be incredibly bored in first world countries to find such favor with these little freak show pooches, as to have lost sight of what made the natural forms of various animals so successful. I fear the blind eyes people have turned function about as well as the Caversham dogs’ noses.
A brachycephalic mammal triggers our instinctive response to our own brachycephalic faces. The long predator head of a Siberian husky, Dobermann, German Shepherd or many sighthounds triggers a different response. Many popular dog breeds, Labs, Golden Retrievers, Australian Shepherds for example have somewhat shortened faces so that when looked at straight on they have a more “human” look to them.
Cats have much more human faces than wild dogs with the short muzzles and forward facing eyes.
I’ve heard this before but I don’t really buy it. If there is such an instinctive human attraction to brachycephalic head shapes in carnivores, why then are there are so many people (myself included) who find them absolutely hideous? It seems you either adore them or despise them so clearly only certain people are attracted to them.
Good point. Personally I do not find human infants particularly attractive, nor am I more likely to purchase an item that has a yellow smiley face on the price tag. But a lot of people are and studies with babies have shown that presenting a baby with a messed up smiley face can cause it to show dislike to that image.
Holistic Face Processing in Newborns, 3-Month-Old Infants, and Adults: Evidence From the Composite Face Effect
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01520.x/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false
Either our early conditioning was altered by experience or there are some innate differences in our instinctive programming. As a person who owns a boarding kennel and who raises large dogs with predator faces I see a great many people who react negatively to long faced dogs and are irrationally (from my point of view) attracted to the “cute little” smashed faced dogs.
When it comes to behavior there is probably some genetic variation just as there is genetic variation in physical attributes. In addition human behavior has tendencies but is plastic and experience can alter it significantly.
My point is that learning to dismiss the smiley faced dogs as abnormal is a learned response. Early positive experience with more or less normal dogs may have a big component. Many of the people I talk to who want a “smiley faced” dog are adults who have never had a dog and are attracted to the idea of a cute baby substitute or a large impressive Bulldog or Mastiff.
All you have to do is go to something like “Puppy Finder” and look at the ads for available puppies. Most experienced breeders post ads that show full face views – often only of the head. Puppies have shorter muzzles, proportionally larger rounder eyed faces and look more like a human infant.
Experience has taught breeders that the full faced cute look is a real stimulus to dog purchase.
People breeding dogs for function such as herding, field trials and other athletic purposes are more likely to show side views of the entire dog in their ads.
Excellent points & definitely food for thought! I didn’t have dogs growing up, but I was a nature lover who reveled in David Attenborough documentaries. So I have always been attracted to wolves & wolf-like dogs. When I did get into dogs, it was primarily working dogs like K9s, hunting sighthounds, & now working livestock guardians, so functionality & athleticism is what appears beautiful to me.
And I’ve never liked kids. Even as a very small child I didn’t seek out the company of other kids. I always preferred my pet cats, or even my imaginary animal friends (2 horses, a deer, & a cage full of birds, lol), & I played with stuffed animals much more than any of my dolls.
Yeah, I’ve long known of the theoretical instinct trigger. I’m just long disgusted by man’s inability to look past that at the realities.
Then again, some people DID make the jump from admiring flat faces to actually sticking dogs in baby buggies. TRULY we must be bored with ourselves, or lonely. Something unstable is going on here.
The labs and goldens and Aussies wiht shorter muzzles tend to be show dogs. I find the “make-it-a-teddy-bear” phenomenon to be out of control among show dogs. Another phenom is “extend and elongate”; longer necks, legs and in some cases sloping toplines: Great Danes come to mind ( although not with the topline as much), English Springer Spaniels, the setters, etc.
I find it fascinating, from a psychological perspective, that Peke fanciers call what they are currently producing “improvement”.
Also, I generally cannot tell if a Peke is coming or going. They are literally buttfaces.
Comments on the radiograph of the peke skeleton. Prequel: I taught veterinary gross anatomy for 15 or so years at UPenn and human anatomy for 2 years or so at Howard University Medical School and I really am a expert anatomist.
The neck is not abnormally long for a dog with the trunk length of that dog. However the skull is truly shortened and deformed leaving the impression of an abnormally long neck. Almost all mammals have only 7 neck vertebrae and in my experience there is relatively little proportional variation in dogs of the individual vertebrae length to depth. The apparent differences in neck length are mostly due to the amount of musculature on the neck as well as how far forward or rearwards on the trunk the forelimbs are placed. Dogs lack collar bones (clavicles) to anchor the shoulder to the front of the breast bone, so muscle tone has a major effect on how far back on the trunk the forelimbs are set. Lack of condition and illness cause the shoulders to ride forwards making the neck look shorter, for example.
The thin necked dogs, such as Dobes, Greyhounds and many other sighthounds have a lot less muscle mass to the neck.
The radius and ulna of the forelimbs are terribly deformed. This is however common with the leg shortening chondrodysplasia gene when it is present in two doses (homozygous). Dogs with a single dose of the gene have somewhat shortened limbs but the bones do not curve.
The rib cage is actually NOT particularly deep. The pelvis is abnormally rotated in relation to the long axis of the spine and the placement of the sacrum is abnormal. This structural situation may be selected for in dogs that are bred to carry the tail curled over the back.
It took natural selection around 15 million years to shorten the heads of lemurs into the heads of anthropoid primates. Compared to these barchycephalic dogs our muzzles are strongly rotated downwards which structurally allows our airways to be maintained. Also of course the soft tissue mass has been slowly reduced over time so that we do not end up with a lack of open passageways for air to pass through.
Turning dogs into fashionable biosculptures seems to be a response similar to our selection of extremes in human fashion. The selection of dogs to have baby human faces is detrimental to dogs although it may be happening because people do not understand the instinctive reactions that are the basis of our behavior.
A close-up of Ah Cum’s face in life (rather than stuffed; the quality of the mount isn’t that great imo):
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v485/Pietoro/Dog%20Breed%20Historical%20Pictures/Pekingese/1899_Pekingese_Head.jpg
Weak-in-the knees
The Pekingese
If you please
You can hear him wheeze.
retrieverman recently posted..Golden squirrel dog
Great insight as always. I’d love it if you did an article on the American Bully breed
I second that one!
My fav for the market value of brachy faces is SJ Gould’s essay on the Evolution of Mickey Mouse. See: http://athclassic.allthingshuman.net/images/PDFs/mickey.pdf
Gould was drawing on observations by Konrad Lorenz, Studies in Animal and Human Behavior, vol. II, 1971. Methuen & Co. Ltd.
Interesting observation, and certainly on point. The funny thing is, the included picture does more for the argument than Gould’s sciency (hey, let’s throw some math in here) write up. The original Mickey was rather creepy compared to the “Hey Kids!” version they have morphed him into, that’s for sure. And yes, he’s been clearly dumbed down and made almost entirely unoffensive. I’ll note that he’s also become rather invisible too… despite being the face of Disney and probably one of the most recognized characters in the world, what really have they done with him in 30 years? Heck, 70 years! Fantasia was 1940.
They made a mediocre videogame with him and the ‘original’ Mickey a while ago (Epic Mickey). I honestly think Kingdom Hearts game series is the most popular thing he’s been in in a long time.