Several spellings exist for the name of this breed, including Hapa Dog, Happa Dog, and Hah-pah Dog. In Chinese ‘bah- bah’ means ‘small pet dog’.
This ancient oriental breed is essentially a short-haired Pekingese. Some authors refer to it as the ancestor of the Tibetan Spaniel, the Pug and the Pekingese, and one student of Chinese dogs comments that ‘the Chinese pug was evolved from a short-haired type of toy dog [the Ha-pa?], bred along with a long-haired type that subsequently developed into the Pekingese’. Whatever their precise relationship, it is clear that the four breeds the Ha-pa (short- haired, short-legged), the Pug (short-haired, longer-legged), the Pekingese (long-haired, short-legged) and the Tibetan Spaniel (long-haired, longer-legged) were closely related to one another. One author dismisses the Ha-pa as having the bad qualities of both the Pug and the Pekingese, but none of their good qualities. It appears to have vanished at some point during the 20th century, although nobody has specifically declared it extinct.
Assembling any detailed in. formation on this elusive dog is difficult. A report from Shantung in 1867 described a toy breed existing there which originated to the west (Western Foreign’) and which was `low, small, clean and cunning, with which you can play; it is called “ha-pa dog”‘. It is not clear how far west was being indicated and it is pointed out that Tibet would be too cold for a small, short-haired dog. A later statement suggests, rather surprisingly, that Turkey may have been the original source of the Ha- pa: ‘A small and alert lass are the Turkish dogs which nowadays are called “ha pa” dogs.
The first Ha-pa Dogs to be seen in the West were two that were imported from Peking by Mrs Lancelot Carnegie in 1906. It was stated rather vaguely that they had been ‘purloined from the Imperial Palace’. One was black-and-tan and the other fawnand-white. The following year, one of them was displayed at the first show organized by the Pekingese Club, when the little dog was led around the ring by a Chinese nurse in native costume. Amazingly, it is still on display in England a century later, now in the form of a preserved specimen at the Tring Zoological Museum in Hertfordshire. It was estimated that, in life, the animal weighed no more than 5-6 lb (2-3 kg) and was about 9 in (23 cm) in height.
In 1991 Juliette Cunliffe, a Tibetan dog expert on a visit to neighbouring Nepal, encountered a small, short-haired dog living in. a monastery near Pokhara, which the monks there m sisted was a Ha-pa Dog. Although its legs were too long and its face too porn’ ted for a typical Ha-pa, its existence suggests that the genetic influence of the original breed is still present in. the region.
Leave a Reply