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Sometimes referred to as the "Dutch pug," the pug dog's origins actually lie in China, and although it superficially resembles some of the smaller bulldog breeds, its closest relatives are the Pekingese, the Tibetan spaniel, the Japanese Chin and the Shih Tzu. The pug was used in the creation of the smaller bulldog breeds and was crossed into the larger bulldog to reduce its size. However, it is not a small breed of bulldog or a "miniature mastiff," as is often claimed. The pug is ancestral to the Brussels griffon and its variants and probably played a role in making the English toy spaniel a brachycephalic breed. The pug's history is actually quite long, because it comes from East Asia, one of the early centers for dog domestication.

In the Gobi Desert, remains of small dogs with shortened faces and soft coats were discovered in an ancient kitchen midden used by early humans. The kitchen midden is where these early humans put their wastes. This area would certainly have attracted scavengers, including dogs. The remains of these small scavenging dogs have been dated to ten thousand years ago. This find is rather significant in that it shows that small dogs were the norm in the early days of domestication. Further, it suggests that reduction in size was an early adaptation of the scavenging canids that eventually became modern domestic dogs. They differ very much from the wolf, and they also differ from various pariah dogs that are currently found throughout East Asia. Analysis of the pug's mitochondrial DNA, the DNA all organisms receive from their mothers and can be used to determine exact evolutionary relationships, and the analysis of the mitochondrial DNA from the kitchen midden dogs shows that the pug and its East Asian relatives are direct descendants of these early dogs.

East Asia is now thought to be the first place where dogs were domesticated. A Swedish team of biochemists observed the mitochondrial DNA of a wide variety of dog breeds and found the greatest amount of diversity in the East Asian dog breeds bred in the West and the regular domestic dogs found in East Asia. These findings suggest that dogs like the pug are among the oldest forms of domestic dog.

The first depictions of dogs of the exact pug typewith short hair, curled tails, and flattened facesappeared during the Shang or Yin Dynasty (ca 1600 BCE- ca 1100 BCE). These dogs were called "Lo-tze" or "foo dog." Dogs of the shih tzu and Pekingese or Tibetan spaniel (the original pekes looked

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