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.

Filatelia canina

El sello cubano es
el mejor del universo.
Le das la vuelta y ¿qué ves?

Lleva salsa en el reverso.

Cagna scapigliata

August is almost over and I'm back to work -in still unbearably hot Granada. The worst thing is that my owners won't allow me to go to the hairdresser and have a bit of fluff taken off. Sometimes I hate being a long-haired bitch.

Cuore di cane e calcio

Black'n white mongrel gets the Cup

World Cup in South Africa -remember: a former British dominion- and in a couple of hours England vs. Germany. We know everything about World War II, the hat-trick of Geoff Hurst at the Old Wembley -including the most famous phantom goal ever and the role of linesman Tofik Bakhramov- and the views of Gary Lineker regarding the Mannschaft that always wins. But no one seems to think of the dog who actually won the World Cup, the black and white fellow renowned for his role in finding the stolen Jules Rimet Trophy in 1966: Pickles. Pickles, you were the real heroe! Your life wasn't easy after getting the Cup but you made the dream of an antire nation true. This is my modest tribute to you.

Canis salsicium

That's my friend Titus vom Schütthause. He's a purebred wire-haired sausage dog but most often he seems to think he's some sort of amphibious creature (he behaves like an otter). He is a short-legged elongated hound with a really good heart. Actually he treats me with excessive indulgence: when I am with him, he allows me to do everything I wish to do, I may even bite him or pull at his ears or his tail, he doesn't mind. But he is a chaser, a real hunter: If you are a mouse, a cat, a hare or a boar, well, then he'd be no good company for you.

Summer dog days

Cabo de Gata: probably not the hottest spot on Earth, still too warm for a young Havanese bitch! Sometimes I wish I were back in coole olde Germany.

Beatus canis qui procul felibus

That's my cat friend Mauzi. She's more a circumstance than a real friend but we manage not to harm each other -by discreetly avoiding each other. She doesn't understand canine body language. She somehow belongs to our house -but she behaves as if the house belonged to her. She was born in it, then their owners moved away; the house stood empty for a couple of years, then my owners bought it. As soon as she saw her birthhouse open, she moved in again. She's actually the neighbours' cat but she only goes back to their place when we aren't in town. She's an intelligent bloodthirsty mice-killing beast with sharp nails, she weighs well over twenty pounds and is sixteen years old and used to permanently occupy the lap of my owner long before I was even an embryo. What you see on the picture is not a dead cat: She can relax. Felix catus.

Hunde verboten: Speciesism on facebook

I joined facebook on April 21st, 2010. In the short biography for my facebook profile I wrote: "I'm losing all my friends; they have stopped replying to my emails, they don't pick up the phone anymore. I suspect they've all gone lost in facebook." Normally I don't meet my friends on The Net but in the park -but I was curious and had to write something. Three weeks later I'd got 100 (ONE HUNDRED!) friends, most of them luvly small furry creatures like myself. Ten days later we were 250, just three more days and I had hit the 500 friends mark (dogs and dog people are sociable beings and it looks as if there has been a snowball effect). This happened one week ago.

One week ago I was the luckiest dog on Earth because I just had reached the 500 facebook friends mark. Now I've got three warnings from the administrators of the site within the last three days because, in their opinion, I'm adding too many friends too fast: apparently my account has been flagged as "potentially abusive" for making an "inappropriate use of the site" and I've been summoned to significantly slow down my activities on facebook, or else my account will be permanently disabled. I'm not sending any more friendship requests nor messages or the like because I want to keep my account and my canine friends -but I'm not happy about this situation.

I guess all this has got to do with the speciesist views of facebook as well (I am a dog and most of my friends are dogs of course). I've been doing some research and have found out that pet accounts may be tolerated on the facebook but they are considered a violation of the site's rules, so they can be disabled by the administrators anytime without even warning the account's holder. I've even made another concession and changed my profile picture: now it shows me with my owner, she's a human being. I feel less independent -and a bit humiliated too- but I'm prepared to follow this stupid rule if it keeps me on the facebook -not so much for staying here at any price as for trying not to lose my friends. But, for now, I'm in a rather pessimistic mood.

My account has been flagged as "potentially abusive" for getting too many friends too fast -and I thought facebook was all about socialising on a global scale. The most annoying thing about this situation is that I'll still be in the hands of the administrators of the site, no matter how well I behave. From now on I'll misuse my blog as a means of backup, to keep a record of some of the contents of my endangered facebook account. It'll make me feel freer.

Il buono, il brutto, il cane

That's me in one of the windows of El Cortijo del Fraile (one of the locations of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"). I searched the terrain quite thoroughly -yet I couldn't find any traces from Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef or Eli Wallach.

El Cortijo del Fraile: that is where, "for three men, the Civil War wasn't hell -it was practice".

It was dry, hot and windy, I can tell you.

But a well behaved Bichon Havanais models like a pro under all circumstances.

God is a dog

With their most profound voice, philologists would say: "Well, God might not be a dog, but 'God' is definitely 'dog' when spelt backwards." But such a simple palindrome is not what I am thinking of when I write "God is a dog". I actually believe it. Because dogs are the Kings -and Queens- of Creation.

Things being as they are, it's elementary to assume that we were created after God's own image: that makes Him -or Her- a barking tetrapod.

Tajos perros

A veces tengo que sustituir a mi amiga Sara: cuando estoy haciendo de cancerbera tengo que parecer fiera como un león.

No os imagináis el calor que hace en la Puerta del Infierno.