This extraordinary book published in 1984 has just been reedited. Only the standards have been replaced by those of 2000. Based on an exceptional documentation collected after years of research, this book is still the only one to relate in 380 pages the long and complete history of the sighthounds.
This wonderful, illustrated book represents the sum of the current knowledge on the Sighthounds. It lays down a new theory on the origin of the graoids, and sets the basis for the renewal to perform to assure their welfare and their future.
This book was the first in Europe to show the nature of these animals. One should not mistake the Sighthounds with any other wild or domestic species. Actually, all their anatomical, morphological, physiological, psychical and ethological characteristics make of them an original species, created by nature at the tertiary area, millions of years ago. But for more than a century, ignorance, laissez-faire, and administration, have combined in the Western World to assimilate the Sighthounds to the canine breeds, and therefore incorporating them into the system of dog fancy. This system fits the canine species at its current evolutional stage, but threatens the future of the Sighthound type (graoids).What will it take to erase this mistake? The history, which literally means the “search of truth”, evokes the presence of Sighthounds in the Sahara, when the desert was still a lively savannah. It also deals with their evolution in Egypt, in the Mediterranean countries, in the Middle East and in China.
History also tells us how, before the Christian era, when Sighthounds were still unknown in the Western World, the Celts discovered them in the Balkans and in Asia Minor, and introduced them into the Atlantic regions. Can History help normalising the situation of the Sighthounds? This could be possible thanks to the progress realised in the field of dating. You will also find a very rare text, Flavius Arrien’s “Treaty of Hunting.” Written by a Roman general, this text represents the oldest, known reference to the Sighthounds.Finally, in the annex of this book, you will find the 2000 updating of the Sighthounds standards.
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