Every "Weird" Extinct Dog Breed Explained

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Turnspit dog. The turnspit dog existed in Britain from the 16th century until the mid-1800s, bred for one of the most specific jobs ever assigned to a dog. It ran inside a wooden wheel mounted beside the kitchen fireplace, its movement turning the roasting spit through a system of chains and pulleys. Small, long-bodied, and short-legged, it was built to fit the wheel and endure hours of work in intense heat. Households kept two dogs and rotated them through shifts. They were considered kitchen equipment rather than companions. When mechanical spit turners arrived in the early 1800s, the breed became redundant overnight and disappeared within a single generation. Irish Wolfhound. The original Irish Wolfhound of antiquity was a different animal from the modern breed that carries its name. Ancient Irish and Roman texts describe a dog of extraordinary size used to hunt wolves, elk, and wild boar across Ireland, and to fight in Roman arenas. They were given as diplomatic gifts between kings and emperors. By the 17th century, so many had been exported and Ireland's wolf population had been hunted to extinction, the original working type collapsed entirely. The breed effectively vanished by the early 1800s.

[00:01:07]The modern Irish Wolfhound was reconstructed in the 1860s by a Scottish army officer named Captain George Graham using Deerhound, Great Dane, and Borzoi crosses. What exists today is a careful reconstruction, not a direct continuation. Tesem. The Tesem is the oldest named dog type in history, known entirely through ancient Egyptian art rather than physical remains. It appears consistently in tomb paintings and carvings going back over 5,000 years.

[00:01:33]Lean, prick-eared, deep-chested, with a tightly curled tail. Whether it represents a true standardized breed or simply the Egyptian artistic convention for depicting a dog remains debated. It was used for hunting in desert terrain and appears alongside hunters in painted scenes across multiple dynasties. Most researchers believe it is an ancestor of the Greyhound, Saluki, and Basenji, all of which share its physical profile. As trade expanded and outside dogs entered Egypt, the Tesem dissolved into the broader canine population. Talbot Hound.

[00:02:03]The Talbot Hound was a large, white scent hound that dominated medieval hunting culture in England and France for centuries. Heavy, slow, and possessed of an extraordinary nose, it was used to track deer and boar across vast estates rather than run them down at speed. William the Conqueror reportedly brought it to England in 1066 as part of Norman hunting culture. Its image appeared in heraldry, hunting manuscripts, and the names of English pubs. The Talbot remains one of the most common pub names in England today. By the 18th century, it had vanished as a distinct breed, absorbed through crossbreeding into the Beagle and Bloodhound, both of which carry its legacy in their noses. Molossus. The Molossus came from the ancient Greek region of Epirus and became the most militarily significant dog in the ancient world. Greek and Roman armies used it in warfare, outfitting it with spiked collars and armor. Alexander the Great received one as a gift. Roman writers, including Virgil, recommended it as the ideal estate guardian. What it precisely looked like is unknown. No skeleton has been definitively identified, but ancient sculpture depicts a broad-skulled, deep-chested dog resembling a mastiff. When Roman trade networks collapsed, the breed as a distinct population dispersed across Europe through dogs left behind by retreating legions, becoming the genetic foundation of the mastiff, Rottweiler, Saint Bernard, Great Dane, and Boxer.

[00:03:22]King's White Hound. The King's White Hound, known in French as the Chien Blanc du Roi, was the exclusive hunting dog of the French royal court from the 14th century onward. Maintained in the royal kennels at Barberie and later Saint-Germain-en-Laye, it was a large, entirely white scent hound used specifically for stag hunting by the kings of France. Access to the breed was controlled by the crown.

[00:03:44]Ownership outside the royal hunt was essentially prohibited. When the French Revolution dismantled the monarchy and the royal hunting establishment in 1789, the kennel was dissolved and the dogs dispersed without a breeding program to maintain them. The breed disappeared within a decade, a direct casualty of a political revolution rather than changing utility or neglect. Paisley Terrier. The Paisley Terrier was developed in the Scottish town of Paisley, near Glasgow, in the mid-19th century as a show variant of the Skye Terrier, bred specifically for the extraordinary length and silkiness of its coat. It was taken further in the direction of coat quality than any practical terrier had gone before, producing a dog whose floor-length, center-parted hair impressed show judges but impressed working hunters considerably less. In refining the coat, breeders had produced a skull too narrow and a body too delicate for real terrier work. When the Yorkshire Terrier arrived in the 1870s, offering comparable beauty in a more robust package, buyers moved on immediately. The Paisley Terrier merged into the Yorkshire Terrier population and ceased to exist as a separate breed by the early 20th century. Techichi. The Techichi was a small, mute companion dog kept by the Toltec civilization of central Mexico from at least the 9th century CE and later by the Aztecs. It could not bark, which made it useful for ritual purposes and for moving through homes and temples without noise. It was kept in large numbers, fed on a diet of corn, and used in religious ceremonies, sometimes sacrificed and buried with the dead to guide souls through the underworld.

[00:05:16]Spanish conquistadors documented the dogs after arriving in Mexico in the 16th century, but showed little interest in preserving them. Through crossbreeding with European dogs brought by colonizers, the Techichi was absorbed within a few generations. Most researchers consider it the primary ancestor of the modern Chihuahua, which inherited its small size and large ears, if not its silence. Braque du Puy. The Braque du Puy was a French pointing dog developed in the early 19th century by the Dupuy family of hunters in the Poitou region. Bred to be the fastest gun dog ever produced, it was tall, impossibly lean, and narrow-headed, built more like a greyhound than a pointing breed, and its supporters claimed no other dog could cover ground at its pace. Its critics pointed out that speed without trainability was functionally useless on a hunt, and the Braque du Puy was notoriously independent and difficult to control.

[00:06:07]When British pointing and setter breeds arrived in France, offering both athleticism and cooperation, French hunters chose them without hesitation.

[00:06:16]The Braque du Puy disappeared by the early 20th century, a cautionary story about optimizing for a single quality at the expense of everything else.

[00:06:24]Rastreador Brasileiro. The Rastreador Brasileiro was a Brazilian scent hound developed in the mid-20th century by Osvaldo Aranha Filho specifically to hunt jaguar in the dense terrain of the Brazilian interior. It combined the tracking ability of American hound breeds with the heat tolerance and physical durability needed for South American conditions, and it was formally recognized by the Brazilian Kennel Club in 1967. Recognition lasted less than five years. A catastrophic outbreak of tick fever and distemper swept through the breed population in the late 1960s and early 1970s, killing the majority of registered dogs before any quarantine or preservation response could be organized. By 1973, the Brazilian Kennel Club delisted the breed due to insufficient surviving numbers. It is one of the very few dog breeds whose extinction can be attributed to a single disease event rather than to gradual neglect or changing circumstances. Hare Indian Dog. The Hare Indian Dog was a small, slender dog kept by the Hare people of the Mackenzie River region in what is now Canada's Northwest Territories. It was documented by the naturalist John Richardson during the Franklin Arctic expeditions of the 1820s, who described it as unlike any dog he had encountered, fine-boned, large-eared, and producing sounds closer to a howl than a bark. It was used to chase hare and caribou by speed across open tundra, working more like a sighthound than a traditional sled dog.

[00:07:51]As European settlement expanded and traders brought larger dogs into the region, the Hare Indian Dog interbred into the general mixed-breed population within decades. Richardson's sketches and written descriptions remain the primary record of a dog that went from first documentation to extinction in under 50 years. Salish Wool Dog. The Salish Wool Dog was kept by the Coast Salish peoples of the Pacific Northwest in what is now British Columbia and Washington state, and it was maintained for a purpose almost unique among dog breeds anywhere in the world. Its fur was shorn like a sheep's and woven into blankets. The dogs were small, white, and heavily coated, and they were kept on islands or in separate enclosures to prevent them from crossbreeding with the villages' hunting dogs. The wool blankets they produced were among the most valued trade items in the region.

[00:08:37]When the Hudson's Bay Company introduced cheap wool blankets through trade in the early 19th century, the economic reason to maintain the dogs collapsed almost immediately. Crossbreeding followed, and by the mid-1800s, the Salish Wool Dog had effectively disappeared. European explorers had documented it carefully enough that its existence is well established, but no living dog survived to carry the breed forward. St. John's Water Dog. The St. John's Water Dog was developed by fishermen in Newfoundland, Canada, probably from crosses between English and Portuguese settlers' dogs and local working animals. Compact and athletic, with a short, water-resistant coat and an otter-like tail, it retrieved nets and fish from the icy North Atlantic and was considered the most cooperative and trainable working dog in the fishing communities. English sportsmen importing them in the early 1800s used them as the foundation for the Labrador Retriever, the Golden Retriever, and the Flat-Coated Retriever. Back in Newfoundland, a combination of dog taxes and sheep quarantine laws made keeping dogs economically unsustainable for fishermen. The last two known individuals, both elderly males, were photographed in the early 1980s. Every Labrador Retriever alive today descends from a dog that no longer exists.

[00:09:48]Mexican Lap Dog. The Mexican Lap Dog was a small companion dog documented by European travelers in colonial Mexico during the 17th and 18th centuries, described as tiny, nearly hairless, and extraordinarily gentle in temperament.

[00:10:02]It was kept by the indigenous nobility and by wealthy colonial families as a status companion, carried in sleeves and kept close to the body for warmth.

[00:10:10]Unlike the Techichi, which had ceremonial and ritual significance, the Mexican lapdog appears to have been bred purely for companionship, one of the earliest purely decorative breeds in the Americas. As colonial society reshaped Mexican culture and European dog breeds arrived in greater numbers, the Mexican lapdog interbred and faded without any organized effort to maintain it. Its exact relationship to the Chihuahua and the Techichi is unclear, but it likely represents a separate parallel development in the miniaturization of Mexican dogs during the colonial period.

[00:10:40]Grand Fauve de Bretagne. The Grand Fauve de Bretagne was a large French scenthound from Brittany, used for centuries to hunt wolf and wild boar through the dense bocage landscape of northwestern France. Fauve means fawn-colored, and the breed was distinguished by its rough, tawny coat and its exceptional nose, capable of following a cold trail over difficult terrain for hours. It was maintained in large packs by Breton nobility throughout the medieval and early modern periods. When wolf populations across France were exterminated during the 18th and 19th centuries, the primary quarry the breed had been optimized for simply ceased to exist. Without wolves to justify their upkeep, the large packs were dissolved. The breed declined steadily through the 19th century and was extinct by the early 20th. A smaller relative, the Petit Basset Griffon Vendéen, survived and is still bred today, carrying some of the same Breton Hound heritage in a more manageable package. Cordoba Fighting Dog. The Cordoba Fighting Dog was developed in Cordoba, Argentina in the late 19th century from crosses between Mastiffs, Bull Terriers, Boxers, and Bulldogs, bred specifically for dog fighting, which was a widespread and legal entertainment in Argentina at the time.

[00:11:49]It was large, powerful, and possessed of such intense inter-dog aggression that it was nearly impossible to keep multiple animals together without serious injury. That same aggression that made it devastating in the fighting pit made it completely unworkable as a pack hunting dog. Antonio Nores Martínez, the creator of the Argentine Dogo, used the Cordoba Fighting Dog as his foundation breed in the 1920s, crossing it with 10 other breeds specifically to dilute the extreme aggression while retaining the physical power. The Cordoba Fighting Dog itself was not maintained once the Dogo project absorbed its best qualities, and dog fighting's gradual criminalization removed the incentive to continue breeding it. It is remembered today primarily as the raw material from which the Argentine Dogo was built. Belgian Mastiff. The Belgian Mastiff, known in Flemish as the Mastin Belge, was a large, powerful draft and guard dog used extensively in Belgium from the medieval period through the early 20th century to pull carts loaded with milk, goods, and small artillery. Belgium had a strong tradition of dog carting. It was economical and practical in a densely populated country with narrow urban streets where horses were expensive to maintain. The Belgian Mastiff was the backbone of that tradition, used by farmers, milkmen, and small traders across the country. When motorized vehicles and municipal regulations against dog carting began displacing working dogs in the early 1900s, the practical need for the breed evaporated.

[00:13:07]The First World War, which devastated Belgium's civilian infrastructure and animal populations, accelerated the collapse. By the 1920s, the breed had essentially disappeared, and no organized effort was made to revive it before the remaining dogs were gone.

[00:13:20]Argentine Polar Dog. The Argentine Polar Dog was a sled dog breed maintained by Argentina's military for use in Antarctic operations from 1954 until 1994. It was developed from crosses between Greenland Dogs and Siberian Huskies, selected for cold tolerance, endurance, and suitability for Antarctic terrain. Argentina used the dogs as working sled teams at its Antarctic research stations, where they provided transportation over ice in conditions that made mechanical vehicles unreliable. In 1994, the Antarctic Treaty's Protocol on Environmental Protection came into force, prohibiting the presence of non-native species on the continent out of concern that dogs might escape and interact with seal populations. All sled dogs were required to be removed from Antarctica permanently. Argentina's Polar Dog program was dissolved, and the breed, which had existed only within that specific military-scientific context without any civilian breeding population to sustain it, disappeared with the program. It is one of the only breeds in history made extinct by an international environmental treaty.