The Spanish-Cuban Mountain Dog: the legend of the Sierra

That's the very rare Spanish-Cuban Mountain Dog -that is, the now very rare Spanish-Cuban Mountain Dog. In the beginning of the 20th century they were very common in the mountainous regions of Eastern Andalusia and in the Cuban Sierra Maestra. They were rustic energetic little balls of fluff and true multi-purpose dogs: they were excellent goat herders, watch dogs, chicken hunters and lap dogs, being the laps of their equally rustic owners their favourite workplace. They were very intelligent and most likely that was the cause of the stagnation and ulterior almost complete disappearance of the breed: they were quite successful at outsmarting their owners -who eventually noticed and took drastic measures: by the middle of the century almost all SCMDs had been substituted by German Shepherds. Yet quite a bit of their genetic inheritance survived: in the increasingly popular Havanese. This photo was taken in the Sierra Nevada (near Granada) some time around 1915.