Happiness is a bald puppy

By Catherine Bremer

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Freckles speckle his pink wrinkly skin. Ginger whiskers sprout only between his veiny ears, beneath his gummy chops and at the end of a rat-like tail.

In a park full of fluffy labradors and spaniels, passers-by stare as Juan, a hairless Mexican Xoloitzcuintle dog, cavorts about then springs effortlessly into his owner's arms, his glabrous skin gleaming with body lotion.

"People don't know what they are. They ask us what's wrong with them. They say 'why are your dogs bald?' and suggest cures," said breeder Ana Maria Rivera, who owns Juan and 40 other Xoloitzcuintles (pronounced sho-lo-itz-CWINT-leh).

"One person came up to me and said I should rub on engine oil to help the fur grow back," she said, shaking her head.

Lovers of fluffy pooches may recoil at their clammy skin, but for a growing number of people, Xolos (pronounced SHO-los) are the ultimate cool pet: a 3,500-year old breed that has defied unlucky genes, Aztec cooking pots and sacrificial daggers to come back from the brink of extinction.

Emotionally fragile, with delicate skin that burns easily and poor teeth that mean they prefer chewing carrots to bones, Xoloitzcuintles had nearly died out by the 1950s, when just a hundred or so were kept by Mexican artists and intellectuals.

But a breeding program has boosted their numbers to several thousand today, spread between their native Mexico, the United States and Europe.

Twentieth Century painters Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo were among the art set who turned Xolos into an in-vogue curiosity, letting them frolic in their gardens and feature in their art.

But aficionados of the mainly blue-black or slate-gray dogs -- which love digging and climbing trees -- now range well beyond eccentrics.

"They're like Ferraris. I don't want any other dog," beamed Jorge Luis Gallardo, a bank executive out walking a pair of jet black Xolos, both shiny with sunscreen.

"I love them because they are truly Mexican. There's a lot of our indigenous spirit in them. People killed them, they ate them and sacrificed them, but like us, they survived."

BED WARMERS

The first domestic dog in the Americas, and related to the Peruvian Hairless and the Chinese Crested Dog, Xoloitzcuintles were kept as pets in Aztec times.

Comforted by the heat of their hairless bodies, the Aztecs used them as bed warmers and cuddled them like hot water bottles to ease arthritis, stomach cramps and fever.

But they also believed the dogs could guide human souls to the afterlife. Xolos were killed with a dagger to the heart when their masters died and placed in the coffin.