Orchard Hill Kennels – Foundation for the Pekingese Breed

by Amy Fernandez

Breed histories are routinely embellished and occa- sionally fabricated to enhance marketing appeal. Of course, for the Pekingese, the truth was more than sufficient to make the world sit up and take notice from the moment those first specimens arrived in England in 1860. Ancient, exotic, and perpetually linked to roy- alty from China’s Imperial Palace and Queen Victoria to Amer- ica’s equivalent, J.P. Morgan and Alice Roosevelt, everything about the Pekingese riveted public attention. Within four years of AKC recognition in1906 it ranked among the top ten in popu- larity, hovering there until the ‘50s. A few things happened in those years to keep it in the spotlight.

When the Pekingese Club of America was founded in 1909, its membership roster was a short list of high society luminaries. George Bindley Davidson wasn’t exaggerating in his 1957 book when he remarked, “The Pekingese was truly the dog of the mil- lionaires.” The club’s first specialty in 1911 drew 95 entries. Fort Knox probably got some extra shelf space when those trinkets and prizes were distributed. In less than a decade, specialty entries averaged 150-200. That was when 300-400 dog entries were typ- ical for all breed shows. By 1920, PCA entries were so enormous it became one of the first clubs to host two annual shows. The breed was popular; the club was drowning in money. There was only one problem and it was pretty substantial, none of that trans- lated into serious breeding.

Among others, Arthur Fredrick Jones was alarmed by the num- ber of high profile kennels that campaigned imported winners that ultimately had no influence on the American gene pool. “Breed development meant little to them and when they stopped winning the so-called big ones quietly disappeared from dog show circles,” he wrote. The standard procedure was to purchase Britain’s current top winners, campaign them to new records over here, then say- onara. That routine wasn’t confined to Pekingese, but like every- thing else going on in the breed they took it to a new level. And it just went on and on as Davidson noted, “In the 1920s more and more top winning Pekingese were exported to the U.S. where they attained top honors and did much to dictate American type.” How- ever, he wrote, “Little attention was paid to breeding and it re- mained in the hands of the English to provide America with serious breeding stock.” It was still going strong when longtime PCA secretary Iris de la Torre Bueno took over the breed’s Gazette column and made it a running theme for years.

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Posted by Alex on Sep 23 2016. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.