Happa/Lo-sze/Chinese Pugs – the Chinese origin

Near to all pictures of the Chinese predecessor of the Pug show a short-headed, round-eyed little dog with short, chondrodystrophic legs. It is often piebald, sometimes black with white signs and sometimes brindle. The fawn color is seen below in two Chinese Pugs. In one if them the tail is visible and it is a bobtail. In the paintings (that are older than the photos) the tail is slightly curved.

A piebald Chinese Pug from an imperial dog book
Tsou Yi-Kwei (1686-1766)
A Chinese Pug from an imperial dog book
Tsou Yi-Kwei (1686-1766)
Chinese Pugs from an imperial dog scroll, 1890.
Lo-sze and Happa dogs from an imperial dog scroll, 1890.
Two Happa dogs, left and right and a brindle Lo-sze dog, from an imperial dog scroll, 1890.

The two dogs below were owned by Mrs. Lancelot Carnegie and the person on the picture is her maid Shen Ah Nu. The photo was published in the book The Pekingese, 1912.

Ta-jen, a Happa dog, and Lit-zu a Pekingese, 1910s
Peking Pug, imported 1905
Lo-sze or Pug dog, 1914
Happa dog, 1915

Renée Willes writes about the photo below in the book Allt om mops that “the black Pug with white signs also came from China during the 1910s and the type of dog was called either Happa Dog or Peking Pug. The white signs were called the Chinese heritage by the breeders active around 1900 and they were seen as a good sign that it was the real deal in the lineage” (Willes 2006: 112, my translation from Swedish).

A black and white Chinese Pug, 1913.