Greyhound - Saluki - Greyhound Zoom

Zoomies

follow this blog

31 followers

470 daily readers

rank of 22

E-mail Subscription

Receive an e-mail notification of new posts on this site:

Greyhound Saluki - Zoomies

Daisy's diary: An old dog and a strange story

March 13th 2010 20:15

He was a strange-looking greyhound, especially with those funny tufts of hair on his ears and elbows.

I just met a strange old greyhound in the park who had some weird ideas about history and the Lore of the Great Greyhounds.

The Lore, of course, is the great guide to our breed, passed on to all puppies by their mothers in the first weeks of life. It hasn't changed for generations. It teaches us about the grace and gentleness which are at the core of our physical beings. And it teaches us about the unconditional love we offer to all creatures, even less advanced ones like hoomans, and excepting only anything small, fluffy and moving.

This is at the heart of our spiritual being.

The Lore teaches about the greatest of all the Great Greyhounds, the First Greyhounds, the Mothers and Fathers of our breed who arrived on Earth in 1912 from parts unknown. They came in the company of the Great Hare, also known as The Uncatchable. GH installed himself on Earth's first Running Rail, gathered the Greyhounds and the hoomans around him, and said, "Catch me if you can."

"Okay!" said the Greyhounds.

"We'd rather watch and drink beer," said the hoomans.

And so the world as we know it came to be.

But the silly old Greyhound in the park had an entirely different story. The Great Hare, he said, was invented in 1912 by a hooman named Owen Patrick Smith and was not a being from the cosmos at all. What's more, he said Greyhounds are far more ancient than the Lore tells us, having been around for at least 3,000 years, and being closely related by blood to Salukis, Earth's most venerable dog breed.

Salukis, said the old Grey, have been around for about 8,000 years, are possibly the first dog breed to diverge from wolves, and generally consider themselves the best-looking creatures in the known universe. They are also rumoured to be able to run just as fast as greyhounds but, like hoomans, they refuse to chase the Great Hare. They don't drink beer, though.

What a strange story. I don't believe it, of course, and I have never even seen a Saluki. I guess they are just a product of the old dog's vivid imagination, or a wandering old mind. Still, the picture he painted made me wonder what a real Saluki might look like.

The old guy didn't quite look like a Greyhound, in fact, and with that slightly distant and faintly superior manner, he didn't quite act like one either.

Thinking about it, I really like the old guy's story. Wouldn't it be nice if his version were right.

Vote

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Greyhound, Saluki, Dog Diaries, Daisy, History

Email this Post to a Friend

Are greyhounds the fastest dog?

June 29th 2008 08:33

The aristocratic saluki

Picture: Wikipedia.com

Greyhounds can reach speeds of about 70 kmh (45 mph) and are clearly the fastest dog breed on Earth. Aren't they?

Maybe not. It is possible that the aristocratic saluki is faster. I call salukis aristocratic because they are not only perhaps the fastest breed, they are probably the oldest.

And if the chap pictured above isn't an aristocrat, I don't know what is.

The question of which is the faster breed remains unanswered for the droll reason that salukis are not interested in chasing things such as mechanical hares and therefore will not race greyhounds on a track. If you think this is further proof of aristocratic nature, I agree with you.

Salukis do show an interest, however, in chasing gazelles. This, indeed, is what they were bred for. And as gazelles are known to reach speeds of 80kmh, a reasonable case can be made for the saluki's superiority.

Their history is fascinating. The breed could be 9,000 years old, with excavations from the Sumerian empire (7,000 to 6,000 BC) having unearthed carvings of dogs with a striking resemblance to the saluki. A study published in the May 21, 2004 issue of Science confirms the saluki's antiquity through DNA analysis identifying it as one of the earliest breeds to diverge from wolves.

Salukis appear on Egyptian tombs from 2100 BC. The dogs were so esteemed that they were often mummified like the bodies of the Pharaohs themselves. Numerous saluki remains have been found in the ancient tombs of the Upper Nile region.

The name saluki comes from the name of the ancient Arabian city of Saluq. For about 2,000 years, nomadic Bedouin tribesmen have been breeding salukis and their origins are strongly tied to that lifestyle. Their native habitat is thought to stretch from the Sahara to the Caspian Sea and this geographic diversity has also led to marked variation in the breed's colour and size.

The saluki has also been known as a gazelle hound, royal dog of Egypt, Persian greyhound and tazi. There is evidence of the breed in Belgium during the Middle Ages, but their popularity in Europe became most evident in the late 1800s in England. The Saluki or Gazelle Hound Club was formed in England in 1923 and the Saluki Club of America was formed four years later.

In 1919, the National Geographic Society's The Book of Dogs had this to say about salukis: "This ancient race is one of the most peculiar, most beautiful, and most puzzling of dogs. His graven image comes to us as one of the earliest of man's essays in art, and is so easily recognizable that there is no doubt possible as to the archaic artist's model."

Indeed, but it seems that even the National Geographic Society can't answer the big question: is the saluki faster than the greyhound? Personally, I think we should accept the saluki's disdainful indifference. When you've been around as long as they have, they don't have to prove anything.

Sources: Wikipedia.com, Wisdompanel.com, Classicsaluki.com

Vote