Does your Podengo recognize dogs of similar breeds?

We first learned about Podengos when we took Brando to our Scottish vet in London, Brando looks like a Labrador. But he has a number of differences.  At 16kg/35lbs he is too small to be classed as a male Labrador.  Then there is his tail.  This  is bushy and he often carries it curled up over his back like a scorpion.  It has a white tip.  He has a white line down his forehead. He has white socks. He has a light patch of fairer hair, just behind his front legs. And he can arrange his powerful back legs in the most amazing positions, with the knees bent out sideways and the paws underneath his body. He runs much faster than a Labrador, too, and likes to hunt squirrels.

Normally scornful of all small dogs, Brando was very attracted to a furry dog with pricked up ears, a curly tail and a long body, that he met at the vet`s.  When we inquired his breed, we were told that he was a Podengo Pequeno.  The vet has a dog, very like Brando, whom he rescued from Crete, which also has some Podengo characteristics.

Then we realised that Vlekkie , the very friendly little Terrier with the long body that had befriended us in the Cape Verdes, was also a long-hair Podengo Pequeno. Maria, our Podengo Medio, who dismisses almost every small dog that approaches her with either one two or three barks, licks Podengos. She, who never approaches another dog, chased after a Podengo Pequeno puppy for 100 yards/ 90 metres to greet it, only for the Cape Verdean owner to tug it away.

In Portugal, Maria played with Podengo Medios. This was a very Podengo-only game, in which both dogs lie almost snout to snout.  One darts forward and the other dodges, backwards or sideways or even upwards.  She also plays with Brando, a special hunting game which involves bared teeth and very fast runs, straight at him, which he cleverly dodges at the last moment. Other breeds are not welcomed in this game and are chased away by Maria with one, two or three barks.

The only dogs that Maria will play with and chase or be chased by are English whippets and salukis.  Brando has played with a beagle, chasing him around a very tolerant owner`s London mansion over sofas whilst ruffling rugs.   I believe that podengos recognize other hounds, especially other podengos, of whatever size.  These are the only dogs that are fast enough to challenge them to a good race.  Maria even approaches English whippets and gives them a lick on the snout.  We just wish that there were more podengos in London.

A yacht owner imported three dogs from the Dominican Republic on his yacht, probably bypassing the UK`s tough controls which protect the islands from rabies. One of them a Podengo Medio approached Maria on the lawn of a yacht club and was friendly. But the smallest dog, a stray mongrel, came up and was very rude. For its pains it got rolled on the grass by Maria.  The Dominican Republic dog owner, who had not even seen this then threatened to kill Maria and to assault me.  I reckon that he imports other substances on his yacht - because he backed off when I was forced to threaten charges in the criminal court.

A French lady who lives near us in London has rescued dogs from Mauritius and Serbia.  She calls the Mauritian dog Doooglaz.  The Serbian is called Mona.  She is a small mutt with a short fawn coat and a long body.  Like many rescued dogs, she is terrified of humans and will hide behind her mistress` skirts if approached.

But when Maria, our Podengo Medio, met her, by chance, on a walk beside the Thames, they were immediately friendly.  This is most unusual, as Maria disdains smaller dogs and often barks at them, on the opposite  sidewalk.  

Mona has some features, which are recognizably derivative of the Podengo Pequeno.  Her forehead has a white stripe. She has powerful rear legs and can run fast. She sports white sox and has a curly tail, with a white tip, carried erect above her back.  Her ears are floppy rather than pricked-up but she does seem to me to have some podengo characteristics.  Maria clearly recognized this through smell.

But how did podengo strains get to Serbia, an Ottoman colony for centuries before starting the First World War? No Portuguese or Spanish galleons traded with this land-locked mountainous province. Well Serbia, then known as Moesia Superior, was also a Roman Province.  In fact, DNA from Roman legionnaires from there has been found in Lancashire, in north-west England.  So could the Romans also have taken their favorite hunting hounds from the Levant to this remote province?  Perhaps they also took them to the Mediterranean island of Crete, from which our Scottish vet was able to rescue a dog with some podengo characteristics?

We know that Roman galleys first brought podengos to the Iberian peninsula, where they have since flourished.  Perhaps they also took them to Adriatic or Black Sea ports, close to Serbia?  We shall never know.