How the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Was Ruined from the beginning.
Really good post by terrierman.
The original toy spaniels were closer the Papilion and Phalene dogs than the English Toy Spaniels/King Charles Spaniels. The English variety was crossed with pugs and other flat-faced dog to create the variety, while the Papillion and Phalene were crossed with dogs like the Volpino (toy spitz) and Pomeranian (another toy spitz). (Volpinos are Italian toy spitz, while Pomeranians are extremely small German spitz. German spitzen were actually used to herd livestock and guard farms. The Keeshond or Wolfspitz is the only other German spitz to gain notoriety internationally. Queen Victoria discovered the Pomeranian as a 30 pound herding spitz from Eastern Germany and what is now Poland. It was soon decided to reduce the size of the 30 pounder to make it a 10 pound dog. Then the 10 pounder was reduced to a 3-5 pound dog. I am not sure of the exact ancestry of the Volpino, other than it is small spitz breed and its name is derived from the Italian word for fox.)
Terrierman is right. Small dogs are really old. Some of the oldest forms of domestic dog are actually quite small. The Gobi Desert Kitchen Midden Dog dates back to 10,000 year ago. This tiny dog was believed to be a scavenger, hanging out around kitchen middens (where humans dropped their garbage). This dog was small and brachycephalic (flat-faced), not unlike East Asian breeds like the Japanese Chin, the Pug, and the Pekingese. However, these modern breeds are much more extreme than that dog in terms of brachycephaly. In fact, the modern peke is more flat-faced than the first pekes imported to the West, which were stolen from the Imperial Palace following the Boxer Rebellion. (In fact, one of the first dogs imported to England was named “Looty,” and presented to Queen Victoria, whose role in messing up so many dog breeds would require several books! The rough collie is probably her most famous foul up. This intelligent Scottish herder was a loose-eyed collie that small farmers kept to manage sheep and cattle. Queen Victoria bought several dogs after buying Balmoral, and the breed became instantly popular. The breed was crossed with a borzoi to make its muzzle longer and more slender, a move that has resulted in the birth of collie pups that are unable to nurse.)
BTW, one study suggests that East Asia was the place where wolves were first domesticated to become dogs. This study is based on a genetic studies of worldwide dog mitochondrial DNA, and it found the greatest diversity of dog mitochondrial DNA in East Asian dog populations. Thus, this Midden Dog might be among the oldest forms of domestic dog.
