Page 4 - Sloughi Review - Issue 1

THE SLOUGHI REVIEW 04

FOREWORD

BY JACK MCGUFFIN

Having been asked to write a few The Sloughi’s reception in the U.S. has
introductory words for this premiere issue undoubtedly been burdened with no small
of Sloughi Review, I’m struck by the amount of controversy and confusion
realization that 45 years have now passed during these years, as some have rather
since the Sloughi was first accompanied to vigorously promoted the notion that it is
the shores of the U.S., as our late friends not a distinct breed at all, but instead a
Kate and Carl Rodarty returned home to somewhat differentiated type-variation of
California with Tagiurie el Sian; forced to the diverse population of dogs we know as
flee Libya’s political environment after Saluki.
residing there for more than a decade.
These same critics have similarly cast the
Lacking any prospective mate in the U.S. at Azawakh breed (and others), which
the time, Tagiurie left us no descendants, appeared in the U.S. later than the Sloughi,
while his litter sister, Djameela (‘Damiela’ albeit with some of the same advocates
in the Dutch stud book), having gone to being among their earliest patrons here.
Holland upon exiting Libya and later being "They are all the same breed" has been a
bred to Sahib de la Ruine, became an mantra which still echoes in the literature
influential brood bitch whose name and anecdotal commentary of the last few
appears in the background of pedigrees decades. With more recent advances in
internationally. science and an accompanying greater
understanding of the breed and its history
The breed’s history in the U.S. has since and genetics, that misguided claim would
been well documented and today remains now seem to be dissipating from the
inseparably intertwined with its histories rhetoric of most of its proponents, while
in North Africa and Europe, and it is surely some resulting remnants of that notion
a privilege to have been in a place and time and confusion remain embedded in some
in which to witness and be part of the pedigrees both here and abroad.
breed’s beginnings and growth here in the
Western Hemisphere.