ORIGINS
CHIHUAHUA
The most little dog of the world, the Chihuahua, have the name of an
area of the North Mexico.
This name was given after the discovery by American archaeologists, in 1850, near the city to Casa Grandes, of a palate built by an Aztec emperor of the name of Montezuma.
The ones affirm that the chihuahua is the fruit of crossings between techichis and tapeitzcuintles (Mexican naked dogs), the others think that it has also ancestors xoloitzcuintles and peels.
What one knows with certainty, it is that Toltecs, wandering people of Central America, fixed approximately 11 000 years ago in Mexico, had little dumb dogs with the long hair (techichis).
One found representations of these animals resembling the current chihuahuas on many engraved stones.
As for the Mexican naked dog, it could be originating in China, having followed the wandering tribes which crossed the Bering Strait to be lived on all the American continent.
When at the 14th century Toltec people were attacked and beaten by the Aztec people, these little dogs became the pets of the aristocracy and were the object of a real veneration. The small people appreciated them also much but for culinary reasons....
The Spanish conquest stopped this period (finally, not for all!) for the tiny animal but it would seem that survivors of the massacres caused by the conquistadors of Fernando Cortès were cross with other canine representatives of similar size.
It is at the 19th century that one finds the trace of these dogs in Sierra Madre , in the area of Chihuahua. The Mexican peasants selled this dogs at the North-American visitors and, in 1884, the first chihuahua was exposed in U.S.
In 1904, American Kennel Club recognized it but the variety with short hair was privileged since 1923 to the detriment of long the hair type which remained in the shade during still about thirty years.
The chihuahua began its European conquest with the United Kingdom with a mitigated success and arrived to France at the middle of the Fifties, without more success during a score of years.
Since, the breeding intensifies, the long hair type regained ground on the short hair. It is not rare, nowadays, to see more long hair than of hair runs in the shows. The bet on the future is not to rarefy the chihuahua with short hair, which would be a pity really, the two varieties being also cracking!