This small lapdog used to be known as the Bichon Tenerife, the Tenerife Dog or the Canary Islands Lap-dog. At one time it was also known simply as the Bichon, or as the Tenerife. Its modern name (which is an abbreviation of Bichon a Poil Fris) is often mispronounced as Beeshon Freese, instead of the correct Bee-shon Free-zay. The name Bichon is a contraction of Barbichon, which means ‘little Barbet’, the Barbet itself being an ancient form of water spaniel.
It may seem strange that such a sophisticated little dog should have originated in the Canary Islands off the north-west coast of Africa, but the history of those islands explains its presence there. When Spanish explorers first arrived on the islands in the 15th century, they saw many large dogs but no small ones. And yet, by the 16th century, the Bichon Tenerife was already a popular lapdog among the ladies of the Spanish court. The only explanation is that it was the Spanish who took their own lapdogs with them to the Canary Islands, left them there and then later took some of the dogs’ descendants back to mainland Spain. Doing this implies that, during their stay on the island between the 15th and 16th centuries, these little dogs underwent some kind of change that made them especially attractive, otherwise there would have been no point in returning them to the courts from which their ancestors originated.
Back in Spain, they remained popular among the nobility from the 16th to the early 19th century and appeared in some of the great paintings of the period, including several by Goya. They also found favour at the French court. Towards the end of the 19th century, however, this particular breed went out of fashion, and descended to the level of a circus and fairground performer. It was not until 1933 that it was taken seriously again, when French and Belgian enthusiasts came to its rescue, established a breed standard and changed its name from Bichon Tenerife to Bichon a Poil Fris, meaning ‘the bichon with a curly coat’. Since it was they who rescued it, they can be forgiven for registering the breed as Trench/Belgian’, rather than Spanish.
After World War II, the breed slowly increased in popularity, but it was not until it was taken up by American breeders in the late 1950s that its appeal became more widely appreciated. By the 1970s, it was recognized both by the AKC and by the Kennel Club in London and was destined to become a spectacular star of the show-ring.
This is a confident, lively, playful, outgoing, intelligent little dog that makes the ideal pet for anyone who is prepared to devote a great deal of time and effort to grooming the profuse, fluffy white coat, which is officially described as ‘fine, silky, with soft corkscrew curls’.
The Bichon Fris has three close relatives: The Maltese, the Bolognese and the Havanese (see separate entries). It differs from the other three in having a double coat.
Leave a Reply