Miscelaneous Press Cuttings about The Afghan Hound
During our research we often uncover some odd/interesting press cuttings, so we decided to have a section where we can collect them all tgether. Some of them may be somewhat fanciful or the minimum facts were "embelished" by the author or publication. We'll pass some comments as appropriate
1, Press Items 1914 - 1927
The 1914 item is reasonable, the Afghan hound had not really "arrived' in teh UK at that time, just an occasional hound was seen. By the time of the 1927 article, the breed had arrived en mass (about 20 plus hounds) several years earlier and was regularly exhibited at Crufts and other big shows. The reference to "exhibited by a lady who''s husband is a resident of Kabul", is almost certainly a reference to Major and Mrs Amps (Ghazni), allthough Major Amps had long since finished his tour of duty in Afghanistan (including building the British Legation building in Kabul), but he was frequently out of the country (eg Hong Kong where he had a engineering/construction business). Interesting that both articles referenced the difficulty of obtaining and exporting Afghan hounds, which is true. The comment in 1917 item about "genuine specimens" is intersting too. Some of the early (1890's - 1920) supposed "Afghan hound/sheepdog etc,were very untypical specimens. See this example from the early afghan hounds section as an example of untypical.
2. 1946, 1962 Noah's Ark
One of the fanciful legacy stories about the Afghan hound is that he was the breed of dog chosen to go on Noah's Ark. When you see clippings and adverts like the below, you can understand why such myths/stories occured in the first place, and prevailed for so long. Fun story, not true of course
3. 1879 Report on Native hounds in Afghanistan
A good summary of the various breeds/types encountered back in those days. Also interesting to know how unwilling the natives asre to sell a good hound. The report describes the "Persian Greyhound", a name given mainly to the Saluki but also, in those early days, ascribed to the Afghan hound. From the description we can't be sure whether the writer is describing an Afghan or a Saluki, although we are inclined to believe the description is of the Afghan hound.
4. 1884 As desirable as Mrs Langtrys Chinese Boy
A fuller article , the source of the above snippet can be found here
5. 1957 Arthur Frederick Jones, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
As a researcher, I am used to reading all sorts of stories about the supposed antiquity of the Afghan hound. A lot of these stories started out in the 1800's and survived for a long time.. The example above is of a fairly "modern" re-gurgetation of a story long since proven to be wrong, see link below (The Myth Of The Sinai Penninsula). Jones was a respected writer on canines, but this goes to show even those with a reputation for canine knowledge relied upon legacy writings and helped proliferate myths/legends/stories for decades.
Related Content
The "myth" of the Sinai Penninsula (by Steve Tillotson, November 2013)
Legacy Writings (by Steve Tillotson 2012)
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