Pekalier

The Pekalier is a fairly rare hybrid dog. In order to understand his origins, we can look at the history of his parent breeds in order to understand more about the Pekalier. The Pekingese is a dog of great legend. The Chinese tell a tale of a lion who fell in love with a marmoset monkey. The lion asked Buddha to make him smaller so that he could marry his love while allowing him to retain the bravery of the lion's personality. Buddha agreed, and the pair produced a line of dogs known as the Fu Lin dogs. These dogs would become imperial favorites. In fact, during the Opium Wars of the 1800s, British soldiers happened upon the Pekingese in the imperial palace as they stormed the building. Taking the dogs as a war prize, the soldiers introduced the dogs to the British royalty, who developed a fondness for the breed just as Chinese royalty had. While we do not know exactly how the breed was brought to the United States, we do know that the first Pekingese was registered with the American Kennel Club by 1910. The breed remains rather popular today. The Cavalier King Charles Spaniel was also a favorite of English nobility. Mary, Queen of Scots had her Cavalier King Charles walk with her as she went to her death by execution in the 1600s. King Charles II, for whom the breed was named, had at least two or three of the dogs with him at all times, even when he went to the House of Parliament. After Charles II's death, the dog's popularity fell off. However, in the 1920s, American Roswell Eldridge began searching England for dogs resembling the Cavalier King Charles. In 1928, after five years of searching and offering twenty-five pounds to the person who would give him the best male and female pair, a woman named Mostyn Walker claimed the prize and gave her pair to Eldridge's family (he had died only a month before). The Cavalier was finally imported to the United States in the 1940s, and in 1995, the first Cavalier King Charles Spaniel was registered with the American Kennel Club.