The Sharpie dog, also known as the "Dali Dog" or "Chinese Fighting Dog", is a rare dog breed in the world.
The Dali Shapi dog has become one of the three most famous dogs in China alongside the thin dog and the Tibetan mastiff, and is one of the ten pure Chinese dog breeds recognized by the international dog community so far, and it is also one of the fewest surviving dog breeds in the world.
Was the Sharpie once a mighty fighting dog?
It is said that the ancient Dali area was a suburb of Guangfo, and there was a dog fighting custom in the local area hundreds of years ago, attracting surrounding people and river pirates to come to watch and bet. Therefore, different dog breeds from all over the world are bred here, and eventually the best fighting breed is recognized as the sharpie dog.
The "Nanhai County Chronicle" describes: the whole body of the Sharpie dog has the same coat color, yellow or yellowish brown, the nose and face are darker, the lower abdomen is slightly lighter, and there is no stray hair; the head is short, the mouth is extraordinarily broad like a hippopotamus, the forehead has deep transverse folds, the ears are small and upright or cover the ear holes; the chest is deep and wide, the spacing between the two forelimbs is very large, the elbows are slightly curved, the limbs and hooves are strong, and the tail cone is straight and vertical; the skin of the whole body is thick and tough, more wrinkled, especially the head, neck and shoulders, and the subcutaneous tissue is loose and elastic, so when the skin of the neck is pulled by hand, it can be extended to a ruler, and when it is released, it can be restored The whole body is covered with extremely short and sharp hairs like a brush, and the touch is pierced by the hand. The whole appearance looks ugly and powerful, and the enthusiast summarizes its appearance as: gourd head, tile mouth, clam shell ears, sharp brush bristle pepper tail.
It can be seen that the pure Big Lishapi dog is not the silly image that we later became familiar with.
Where does the Name of the Sharpie Dog come from?
There are many friends must be curious about the origin of the name of the Sharpie, in fact, from the name of the Sharpie, we can see that Chinese culture is a pragmatic culture, this pragmatism is displayed in all aspects, in the old Customs of China, people are used to name the pet dog at home when they use a certain feature of the dog or the behavior of the dog to name it.
For example, all kinds of thin dogs in the north, what stands out is a thin word, how fine is it? Skinny! Hubei's arrow-haired dog pays attention to a thick and hard dog hair; Guangxi's famous pen-tailed greyhound refers to the ash that this dog generally emits at the end of the tail, just like a brush dipped in ink.
The same is true of the Sharpie Dog, which is named after the tight, thick single layer of hair that is pinched by hand as if holding a hand of fine sand, with a unique texture. In fact, this name is also only later, the early Sharpie dog did not have a specific name, Sharpie this fur in Guangdong local name is also diverse: horse hair, sand hair, coat hair and so on.
What is the difference between "bone mouth" and "meat mouth"
A search on the Internet is all meaty-mouthed sharpie
In the 1960s and 1970s, the wind of dog fighting declined, and the Dali Sapie dog suddenly became a "useless thing", and its breeding slowly declined. At exactly that point in time, some Hong Kong merchants brought some of the Sharpie dogs to Hong Kong to breed, and soon became popular through Hong Kong.
With the popularity of Sharpie dogs in Europe and the United States, the market demand for Sharpie dogs is increasing, and in the United States at that time, even if it was only a similar appearance of mixed breed dogs, it could get a good price. Due to the long-term shortage of supply, this has given some of the breeders of Sharpie dogs an opportunity to take advantage of the use of dog breeds such as bulldogs and boxer dogs for "hybrid improvement", breeding hybrid Sharpies with more folds, and selling these dogs as purebred Sharpie dogs.
At that time, the people who made this hybrid dog said to the country that this was a new type of Sharpie dog bred by the Americans, but to foreign countries, they preached that this dog was the best and purest Sharpie, and the Americans, if they were the most precious, would incorporate the blood of this batch of Sharpie into the Sharpie breeding system in the United States.
Because this dog joined the bloodline of the European mastiff, the perfect inheritance of the mastiff's body odor characteristics, coupled with excessive inbreeding, resulting in the body odor of the Sharpie dog is not smelly, this problem directly destroyed the public's love for the Sharpie.
And excessively loose skin leads to a variety of complications for sharpies, which increases the cost of breeding. In the public mind, the Sharpie has become a stinking dog breed with difficult feeding. This hybrid improved Sharpie is also known as "Meat-billed Sharpie" or "Modified Sharpie". The mainland native Sharpie is known as the "Bone-billed Sharpie".
How to choose a good Sharpie?
Height and weight: Height and weight should meet the standard, too tall and too short, too light and too heavy should not be selected.
Head: The head should be larger than square, somewhat shaped like a hippopotamus head.
Snout: The snout should be thick and cylindrical. The tongue should be light blue and the face should have more wrinkles.
Ears: Ears should be small and thin, slightly downward, and cover the ear holes forward. The ear margin is curved, the ear tip is slightly rounded, the ear distance is wider, and there is a movement ability.
Eyes: The eyes are generally triangular and small. If it is apricot-shaped and deeply sunken in the eye socket, it is usually dark. If the body color is lighter, the eye color can also be lighter.
Neck: The neck is generally thick, the chest should be deep and wide, the back should be straight, the abdomen is not stored, and the body is cylindrical.
Nose: The nose should be large and wide, black. If the body color is lighter, the nose color is also allowed to be correspondingly lighter, in harmony with its body color.
Tail: The tail root is low, the root is thick and thin, like a pepper shape, usually maintains a sagging state, is upturned when excited, and sometimes curls on the side of the back.
Limbs: The limbs are thick and powerful, but the bones are slightly slender, muscular, with long hairs on the posterior side, the forelimbs are erect, the spacing is wide, and the fingers (toes) are separated, resembling tiger toes.
Skin: The skin is different from the general dog breed, the skin on the head and shoulders is more wrinkled than the posterior body, thick and loose, and elastic. Puppies have many wrinkles, which gradually decrease with age, and when they reach adulthood, only the head, face and forehusum remain more wrinkled, and the posterior body is gradually flattened.
Coat: The hair should be short and coarse, and not lodging. It is normal to have full neck and chest hair. Coat colors are allowed to be varied, with monochromatic and spotted, and are qualified as long as they look good and coordinated.
The redevelopment of the bone-billed sharpie
After the meat-billed Sharpie dominated the Sharpie market and occupied the name "Sharpie", the few breeders and players who really loved the ancient native breed of Sharpie retained part of the original Sharpie, known as bone-billed Sharpie.
This part of the bone mouth sharpi, because the image of the meat mouth sharpi is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, while bearing the meat mouth sharpi insult, but also to bear the doubts brought about by the skin volume is not as good as the meat mouth sharpi, because many people feel that the skin without wrinkles is impure.
To this day, due to the fact that there are too few breeding dogs preserved, bone-billed Sharpie is also facing the danger of close relatives, whether to choose to absorb genes similar to dog breeds (Guangxi Tengdog, Hubei Jianmao) to expand the dog breed gene pool, or choose to merge with meat-mouthed Sharpie, I believe everyone has their own views.