Taiwan Dog Information & Dog Breed Facts

The Taiwan Dog is considered to be the descendant of ancient breeds who are also referred to as ‘semi-wild dogs’ that accompanied Taiwan’s aboriginals across the Taiwan Strait from mainland Asia thousands of years ago and is now regarded as a rare breed. Some experts even claim that the dogs existed on the island before humans, maybe even as far as 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. However, besides the mixes of the ancient breed, more contemporary breeds such as the German Shepherd, the Akita, and the Pit Bull also played an important role at various points in Taiwan’s history.

Furthermore, these dogs were not completely domesticated by humans, but they did live among them and worked with them in regards to hunting. A man called Chen Ming-Nan is perhaps the dog’s greatest advocate in Taiwan, his fascination with the dogs goes back decades. He spent years combing Taiwan’s aboriginal villages in search of the purest Formosan Mountain dogs. Chen claims that these dogs evolved to have superior physicality, athleticism, loyalty, and empathy because of how they survived in the harsh mountain wilderness of Taiwan’s interior and worked side by side with aboriginal hunters. He sees these dogs as being an extremely useful part of society, for example, their work in the mountain rescue team, but more importantly, in his view, these native dogs are their natural treasure which is why he expresses gratitude to his ancestors for leaving them with this very good breed. Moreover, for thirty years Chen owned the Formosan Mountain Dog Conservation Centre, which housed and bred such dogs. He has been sought out by researchers from around the world for his expertise, and his standards have formed the basis of what is now known as the Taiwan Dog.

However, to go back in time a little bit, in the late 19th-century cross-breeding was very frequent during the Japanese rule of the island as they imported a few of their native breeds, such as the Akita Inu, Shiba Inu, and Shikoku Inu, as well as some European breed, including the German Shepherd, which altogether greatly affected the population of the Taiwan Dogs. Also, during WWII, Taiwanese Aborigines were in constant conflict with the Japanese who invaded their lands, so they were conducting attacks on Japanese military bases, during which they killed many of their military dogs, mostly German Shepherds. For revenge, the Japanese slaughtered every Taiwan Dog they saw. In this long period of time, for the first time, the population of purebred Taiwan dogs dwindled to the point to which it was outnumbered by foreign dog breeds. Like that wasn’t enough, another disaster struck the breed’s population with the arrival of the Chinese after the Chinese government, led by the Nationalist Party occupied Taiwan. Soon afterward, at the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the government officials and members of this party all retreated with their families to Taiwan and other democratic enclaves after the loss to the Soviet-supported Communist Party of China. Unfortunately, they brought with them their traditional dog eating culture, which further reduced the already crippled population of the Taiwan Dog. In fact, according to Dr. Sung Yung-yi, this was the most devastating blow to the population of Taiwanese Native Dogs that has almost led to their extinction. Although, in the 1970s, it was Dr. Sung Yung-yi, who worked very hard to bring the breed back. A group of breed admires from the National Taiwan University helped him and begun an impressive task of saving the breed. At the same time, Dr. Sung Yung-yi also organized efforts to save the ‘Formosan Sika deer’, a traditional source of food for these dogs, but due to difficulties in finding a purebred the project was almost canceled. However, they found out that the purebred dogs can still be found only in the mountainous regions of Taiwan. They’ve mounted a four years long search operation throughout 29 aboriginal villages in the mountains and they found 160 Taiwan Dogs, of which only 46 they believed to be purebreds. Dr. Sung Yung-yi gave one of the dogs he found to his son, Chen (mentioned above), who eventually continued his work of saving the Taiwan Dog breed. In 1986, Chen acquired a few purebred dogs from Taiwanese mountain villages and started a national breeding program, which helped in growing the awareness of these dogs and saved them from extinction.

Inspired by the hard work of these people, many others on the island showed a renewed interest in the breed and some of them even became breeders. In recent years a lot more new breeders appeared in Taiwan and today the breed’s numbers are growing and becoming increasingly popular not just in Taiwan, but in other parts of the world as well. The Taiwan Dog is recognized by several clubs, including the FCI and AKC, as a stock breed in order to continue the breed conservation.