Peke-Italian

A Peke-Italian is a hybrid of a two delightful toy breeds that is not yet recognized by the American Kennel Club. The parents are the Pekingese and Italian Greyhound. The Peke-Italian’s Pekingese parent comes from ancient China and was once treasured for its power to banish evil spirits from its owners’ homes. Much of the Pekingese’s history is unknown because of incomplete breeding records throughout the centuries; however, historians do know that Pekingese were introduced to the outside world in the mid-1800s. In fact, the Dowager Empress Cixi, China’s defacto ruler in the 1860s, began gifting Pekingese to foreign officials and diplomats around this time. It was at this point in history that the Pekingese migrated to Europe and North American and were taken in as a pets and companion animals. The breed was recognized shortly after it arrived in the United States by the AKC in 1909. The Peke-Italian’s other parent breed, the Italian Greyhound, originated in the Mediterranean region about 2000 years ago where it lived as a house dog for centuries. In the 16^th century Western European traders adopted these dogs and migrated the breed West to the United Kingdom where they became very popular. Italian Greyhounds faced extinction in the country after World Ward I, but American breeders took on the task of resurrecting the breed, achieving AKC recognition in the late 1880s.