THE DESERT AND THE ROSE 129 



submissive as always to the handling of their 

 owner. But mark the difference when the customer 

 approaches! Not that they snap, or run rudely 

 away — oh, no! A certain degree of courtesy is 

 unfailingly maintained. A hand is extended to, let 

 us say, the father of Cortes, who promptly executes 

 a graceful sidestep and the admiring stranger 

 grasps empty air. Again and again this manoeuvre 

 is repeated. In elusiveness the Chihuahua is not 

 to be excelled. "Dogs love me!" exclaims the 

 grieved visitor. "What is the trouble?" 



The "trouble" is that the legend of the Chihuahua 

 dog's origin bears truth on its very face. 



Years ago a Frenchman in the city of Chihuahua 

 experimented with a small unpedigreed terrier and 

 a prairie dog. Pleased with the result the French- 

 man continued on the same lines, finally evolving 

 the Chihuahua Dog. In support of this story are 

 several incontrovertible facts. The wild strain in 

 the blood is not to be denied, showing itself not 

 merely in the shyness born of the wild but in quali- 

 ties that partake of the psychic and to be mentioned 

 later. A friend who kept a pair of prairie dogs for 

 pets, and to whom my touch-me-not dogs took an 

 immediate fancy, pointed out Monte's predilection 

 for curling himself up at the back of my neck as 

 did his pets at home: the fact that every genuine 

 Chihuahua sits up by nature but with the fore- 

 paws hanging straight down, just as sit up his 

 kinsmen on the edge of their holes, the gentle cares- 

 sing ways of the two varieties of dogs — Jast but 

 not least the crooked forepaws, abnormally long 





