T he way I look at it, there is the standard — and then there is everything else.
Opinions and interpretations are just that.
As a breeder, exhibitor and judge, with more than 4 decades of experience with salukis — I know the standard and I have opinions and interpretations. These are mine — and I am well aware that some people agree with some of them and some people disagree. I welcome debate and discussion — that’s how everyone learns. In the end, though, there is still just the standard.
I do think context is important to understanding. If you don’t, then skip ahead a few paragraphs. In terms of the standard, salukis were a “discovered” breed — though discovery is a terrible word, Eurocentric and imperious, that I don’t like any more than I like the description of North America being discovered by Columbus. Of course salukis were carefully developed over time, just as any other breed, by the nomadic bedouin tribes across what we call the Middle East and beyond. The standard, though, was written by English men and women, and some Europeans, centuries later, when enough of these Arabian dogs had been imported and then cultivated, a bit like hot house flowers, and their owners, from among the aristocracy and foreign service, wanted to show them and show them off.
So already, the standard is millenia and many thousands of miles and whole cultures removed from the origins of the breed. By social convention not invention, the saluki standard had to describe a set of dogs that had been imported from across the territories of the Empire, from perhaps as broad a swath as North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula to Iran and Afghanistan and even India. This is worth stopping to think about; In comparison, understand that the standard for the West Highland White Terrier, in about as many words, articulates a very specific ideal dog from a relatively tiny region of rugged Scotland. It’s like comparing a kernel of corn to a crop of corn.
In my opinion, there are different ways to look at this: One is that the saluki standard is deliberately vague and open so that everything from one end of the spectrum to the other would easily fit in and another is that the framers of the saluki standard were writing their standard the same way that the Westie framers were — except instead of one dog on their pedestal the saluki fancy was looking at several and they didn’t all look the same! I prefer the latter. The first interpretation means just about anything goes, the other requires some understanding of and respect for what was imported, of type, and husbandry. The reason I believe this is that if you go back in time, the Westie and the Scottie — two breeds we understand now to be distinctly different — shared many of the same forefathers (i.e. were basically indistinguishable). They are distinct because they were carefully bred to be distinct.
The salukis that were cultivated by bedouins in rugged Afghanistan would, by nature and design, be different and distinct from salukis cultivated by bedouins in the desert of Egypt — much in the same way the Westie and Scottie are different and distinct. Hence my belief that the saluki standard describes a set of several distinct dogs, all of which fell into the category of treasured and skilled hunters of the nomadic tribes. If I have confidence in this opinion, it is because the same history applies to the Arabian horse — where there are, still to this day, long established lines of very distinct types of horses from Morocco to Afghanistan.
Again, stop to think about the context. The standard for the West Highland was written contemporaneously to the cultivation of the breed. The standard for the saluki was written millenia after the breed was originally cultivated. So perhaps the saluki standard is more like a description of a branched family of like dogs – perhaps like a description of all retrievers for example – and so serves a somewhat different purpose and relation to the dogs we call salukis. Just imagine if your task was to write a standard that covered, say, all of the spaniels of Great Britain – it would be much less specific than the standard for the Sussex.
We weren’t there when distinct types of salukis were established. We can only judge by what has endured.
Good husbandry meant breeding the distinct types carefully and distinctly — not mashing them up — so that salukis bred in the 1960 still looked like the very ones that had been “discovered” and imported 50 years earlier — and that dogs bred in 2020 still looked like the ones bred in 1960! I can look at an image of Ch Sarona of Kelb, a foundational dog in modern saluki pedigrees, imported from Syria, and see that ideal in my bitch Kyra. I have included in Lily’s photo gallery an image of her standing in front of one of the great saluki bitches, Ch Burydown Asphodel Alanya — and to me it is perfectly clear that careful breeding, over decades, by many caring and devoted hands, produced such strikingly similar heads and expressions.
So let’s get to the standard itself. Personally, as an outgrowth of what I explained above, I focus first on the general appearance section of the standard, which perversely, comes at the end of it, and specifically on what I call “the couplets” (the italics are all mine), prompted by the word “coupled” that the framers used, I think, very deliberately to get people thinking along paired lines.
“The whole appearance of this breed should give an impression of grace and symmetry and of great speed and endurance coupled with strength and activity to enable it to kill gazelle or other quarry over deep sand or rocky mountains. The expression should be dignified and gentle with deep, faithful, far-seeing eyes.”
Grace and Symmetry. Great Speed and Endurance. Strength and Activity. And then: Dignified and Gentle. I don’t think the words themselves need me to explain them (though people struggle with the word activity. I think it means intellect. Salukis are smart hunters and employ strategy and teamwork along with strength to do their job). The way I read these couplets is that salukis have to strike a chord, be two, or several things all at once, not simply one note, not the note in between, the flattened mish-mash. And they do describe the common thread between every example of every great saluki I have seen, the salukis I will never forget, of every distinct type and color, feathered or smooth.
The main misread of the standard, in my opinion, is focusing on the word moderate, a word that does appear several times in the standard. I think you would be mistaken to believe that the value that first drew the original, passionate importers of salukis to England and Europe was the dog’s moderation. These were exotic, racy, rare, creatures. Seeing them run at great speed, over marathon distances, persevering over sandy and rocky terrain, turning on a dime, taking down game in the company of Arab horses and bejeweled falcons, must have been breathtaking, like seeing the hunter spirit of the wind. And then being next to them, in a bedouin’s tent, the saluki staring at you with those far-seeing eyes, sitting rather upright, crossing their legs just so — must have felt like an introduction to an elegant supermodel, waiting for her cigarette to be lit (though being an athlete, she’d probably wouldn’t smoke!)
Where the word moderate comes into play in the standard is to warn folks of the extremes — moderately narrow means narrow but not too narrow, moderately long means long but not too long. The word is being used to qualify measurements, not as the measure itself.
I often hear the complaint that the saluki standard is too bare, insufficient. I disagree. Perhaps only a few words are really necessary if you trust them. There are no disqualifications in the saluki standard. In my opinion, this does not mean that anything goes. When the standard calls for eyes that are “large and oval, not prominent” that is precisely the eye you want. If the framers had wanted to include round eyes, they would have written “oval or round” — they didn’t. Our standard states shoulders should be sloping and well laid back so upright shoulders are never ever correct. A topline that slopes from front to back is never ever correct in a saluki. Take the words that were used in the standard seriously.