Peru's Hairless Dogs Saved

This is Josh, one of a hairless breed of dogs that faced extinction in Peru. Don't you love his mohawk? His story is very interesting:

Its history is long and rather sad, especially after the Spanish conquest starting in 1532. Native pre-Incan civilisations used the dogs for hunting and as pets for company. They are represented on the ceramic pottery of the Chimu, Moche and Chancay cultures found on the coast.
They were sometimes mummified and buried along with people to help the departed find their way to the world of the dead or to continue serving their owners in the afterlife.
The Spanish brought giant war dogs to fight the natives and would often amuse themselves by setting off one such dog against a small pack of the smaller local breed. For centuries afterwards, it mostly ceased being a pet animal and would roam along the coast feeding on molluscs, often hunted by people simply for fun or for skins, believed to help with arthritis and used sometimes as thermal bags due to a popular myth that they retain heat.
As a result, the breed got to the 21st century on the brink of extinction, and that's when the government decided to safeguard it by ordering all archaeological sites along the coast to have at least a pair – after Huaca Pucllana's 1989 initiative. They are now also Peru's only own world-registered breed.

Via Arbroath