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Desdemona is part of new breed of dogs, the American hairless terrier. The dogs have no eyelashes, but they do have whiskers.
Spotsylvania breeder Pam Voit holds 'Linus,' the alpha male from the newest litter of American hairless terriers.
Gracie, a new mom, wears a sweater to stay warm. The American hairless terrier sometimes needs sunscreen in the summer, too. |
IT ALL STARTED with an allergy.
Pam Voit loved dogs, and she used to raise Great Danes.
"Then one day I was wondering why I could not breathe at all," she said.
The Spotsylvania resident and her husband had developed an allergy to the dogs they bred.
Voit loved dogs, and she didn't want to give them up. But she liked breathing more.
So she looked for a compromise. She decided to raise hairless dogs.
The first breed Voit tried was the Chinese crested. But she didn't really enjoy them.
One day while looking in a book about Chinese cresteds, Voit saw a picture of a relatively new breed--the American hairless terrier.
And she fell in love.
She got in touch with the founder of the breed, Edwin Scott, in Louisiana and began breeding her own dogs soon after.
Voit currently has eight American hairless terriers for breeding and a brand-new litter of puppies.
She sells the puppies to people as far away as Canada, and she gets excited about the service her dogs provide--letting people with severe allergies own dogs.
Voit empathizes with the people who come to her house checking to see whether they are allergic to her dogs. She lets them come in and see how they react to the dogs.
Sometimes people cry. They're so happy to be able to have a dog for the first time in their lives.
She knows what it's like to not be able to have dogs. Not only did she have to give up her Great Danes as an adult, but as a child she couldn't have a dog because her brother had asthma.
Part of her passion for dogs comes from not having one as a child, and Voit wants to give other children the opportunity to have a dog.
"I just think it's important for children to have dogs. It gives them something to love other than themselves," she said. "It gives them something to take care of and be best buddies with, and I think that's so important for kids."
The breed has a bevy of other benefits, according to Voit. The dogs are cleaner than other breeds and they have fewer fleas and ticks. Also, because they don't have hair they don't shed.
The only downfall of the breed is that they have to wear sweaters in the winter. Without fur, they have trouble staying warm when it gets cold.
But to Voit, this hurdle is simple to overcome.
"It's easy enough to get little sweaters for them and keep them warm," she said.
The dogs are small; their average size is between 7 and 12 pounds.
Their skin is similar to human skin, and they are vulnerable to sunburn. A little suntan lotion prevents the burn.
The dogs are unusual, and Voit gets stopped with questions wherever she takes them.
"We do attract a lot of attention when we go places," she said.
But she loves to tell people about the dogs, and she generates a lot of interest in the breed, which is not well-known because it hasn't been around long.
The first American hairless terrier was a fluke. In 1972, Edwin Scott saw the first hairless terrier in a friend's litter of rat-terrier puppies and was intrigued.
His friend didn't know what to do with the hairless dog.
Scott and his wife, who live in Trout, La., offered to take the dog.
"It was like a little rat, just naked," he said in a recent interview. "We fell in love with the little thing."
He loved it so much that he wanted to breed more of them.
"We figured that if we loved that dog that much that somebody else would love it, too, so we just kept trying to breed it," he said.
He did some research, and was told that the hairless dog was a freak accident, impossible to reproduce.
Scott ignored the advice and kept trying.
Eight years later, he was rewarded with his first litter of American hairless terriers.
He put a lot of time and money into the dogs, but he wouldn't have done it any other way.
"I'm broke, but I'm doing what I love," Scott said.
He was soon ready to introduce the breed to the world. In 1984, Scott unveiled the dogs at a show in Baltimore.
It was there that Jeri Singleton of Annapolis, Md., discovered the breed.
"I was just completely delighted with them," she said.
She bought a female from a breeder in North Carolina, and when it came time to breed her, Singleton knew whom to contact--Pam Voit.
"Pam's great, she's reputable, she's a hard worker and she cares about the dog," Singleton said. "She's working for the betterment of the breed."
