Now I have been corrected in my announcement that the Shih Tzu is the single breed of dog with the most wolf DNA, because in recent years it has come to light that this dog, the Shiba Inu, has an even stronger bloodline.
You may not have heard of this breed, but it is a hunting dog from Japan, so it also fits our international theme. It is not an enormous dog, and it is the smallest of the six breeds that were originally native to that country. It has a rather sad story though, because though prevalent enough to be featured in prehistoric carvings and other art, it has suffered much, at first through interbreeding with itself, which caused several genetic defects, including skin and eye problems, and then latterly attempting to breed other unsuitable dogs with it, perhaps to correct these. By the first quarter of the twentieth century it was feared that the original genetic balance had been totally destroyed.
However after the First World War efforts were made to find some that were less tainted, and by using other Shiba bloodlines, to breed them. By 1934 they had managed to combine the genetic structure of the three main strains and make the Shiba Inu. This work was almost lost during and immediately after the Second World War when many dogs simply starved, or were themselves eaten, and then there was a disastrous epidemic of canine distemper. However some managed to survive and one was adopted by an American soldier, who brought it home in the mid 1950s. This led to a lot of interest in the dog, but no real progress until the first American puppies were born over twenty years later. Then in 1992 the breed was recognised by the American version of our Kennel Club.
Today the breed has gained a fame in another way, through cryptocurrency, for one of the coins, the doge-coin, carries the image of one of these dogs. And even stranger than that, the name doge, or dogu, goes all the way back to Ancient Japan, where it was the name given to a range of little human, and animalian figures, including dogs, made out of clay and mud. We think they were used as either icons, or in rituals to cleanse or relieve illnesses, but we do not know, and probably never will.
Now this card harks back to those "Cut Outs" of cartophilic yore, like "Birds Eggs", because just like them there is a perforated line around the image (in this case the yellow shape), and the card can be folded, leaving the centre image proud and the backdrop bent away out of sight. They were issued as a kind of tie in with the video game "Nintendogs", in which virtual dogs could be trained, and groomed, but never cuddled, nor have that amazing smell of "wet dog" which entirely makes up for them spraying you with whatever it was they had just bathed in. It is a bit like slabbing for cards, where you can see, but never again touch, the item.
The first series was issued in 2005 and the second in 2007, but in between they issued these twenty "stand ups". Again there are also a range of collectable items, stickers, tattoos, and sweepstakes or competition cards which mostly said you had not won, but sometimes awarded a computer system with the game.