Shelillon

The Shelillon is a very small designer dog, a deliberate crossbreed between the Shetland Sheepdog, a small and sturdy farm dog from the Shetland islands off the coast of Scotland, and the Papillon, one of the oldest European toy breeds, and a companion to countless royal and noble personages through the ages. The Shetland Sheepdog is a small dog with an uncertain ancestry that was developed in a part of Scotland known as the Shetland Islands. Although this dog breed resembles the rough coated Collies we are most familiar with enough to have been referred to as both the Miniature Collie and the Shetland Collie, the Shetland Sheepdog is a distinct breed that was developed by combining many different dogs breeds.  Experts speculate that many of the breeds that contributed to the Shetland Sheepdog are still in existence today, including breeds such as the Scotch Collie, the Border Collie, the King Charles Spaniel, and the Icelandic Sheepdog, but that at least one ancestor, the mysterious Greenland Yakki, has gone extinct. In the 1800s increases in tourism brought with it an interest in these little dogs as companion animals and in order to reduce their size islanders introduced additional genetics which may include Corgis, Pomeranians, and Papillons, but when their overall size became unsuitably small, breeders reinfused the Shetland Sheepdog with Collie genetics. Although the Papillon breed has been a popular companion animal in Europe since at least the 1300s, they have an equally mysterious past, with various experts placing their origins in differing countries, most commonly Belgium, France, Italy, and Spain. Through most of their history, these little Spaniels were known by many names, including Continental Spaniels, Little Squirrel dogs, and Belgian Spaniels and were characterized by drop ears. At some point during the 1800s they developed the large erect ears that we frequently see today, and were given the name Papillon, the French word for butterfly, and those that retained the drop ears were given the label of Phalene, another French word, this time meaning moth, although they are still considered the same breed in both the United States and in the United Kingdom.