“REMARKABLY, THROUGH ALL THEIR TRAVELS,HAVANESE TYPE HAS REMAINED VIRTUALLY UNCHANGED FROM THAT OF THE DOGS PAINTED IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.”
on the other hand, appeared to leave them au natural and called them the white Cuban, although they were as often found in parti-colors and shades of fawn. By the mid-eighteenth century, they were downright trendy in Eu- rope. Queen Victoria owned two and Charles Dickens had one, beloved of his seven children and named Tim. They were exhibited in the early Eu- ropean dog shows and type was well- established. In Cuba, meanwhile, the times were changing. The aristocracy of the sugar barons was dying out and a new class was emerging, the bour- geoisie and the Little Dog of Havana, adaptable as always, became a family
dog extraordinaire. It is a position he has held there for the past 150 years. With the advent of the Cuban revolu- tion, the class of Cubans who owned Havanese were the first to leave. A handful of them found their way to this country and by the end of the 70s, a gene pool was being rebuilt. All the Havanese in the world today, save those from the “iron curtain” countries and those remaining in Cuba, stem from those 11 little immi- grants. Remarkably, through all their travels, Havanese type has remained virtually unchanged from that of the dogs painted in the 18th century. To preserve it now and for the future is the challenge.
Portrait of Federico II Gonzaga by Titian
T op N otch T oys , O ctober 2019 • 57
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