Lundehund (Puffin dog, Maastad dog)
   A tough Breed from Vaeroy  .
 

“ The Puffin dog is the only genetically unaltered relic of the dog world”.  So wrote
the famous scientist Torbjorn Aasheim.  Most Norwegians know that the puffin
dog originated from Vaeroy, to be more exact, from the fishing village Måstad on
Vaeroy in Norway. No one is really sure when this wonderful breed first appeared.
There are many theories about the origin of this dog and this breed, but the most
common theory is that Lundehunds survived the ice age and are one
of the original breeds of dog.

The puffin dog is a small breed with a long, narrow muzzle.  It is likely a prehistoric
dog, possibly dating to the Ice Age and beyond.  Archaeological excavations at
Varanger have shown that domestic dogs from the Stone Age were very much like
today's puffin dog.  One of the more convincing details is the fact that today's puffin
dog and the Stone Age dog each have one less tooth than other dogs, while they have
6 or more toes on each foot.  It is believed that they sailed with the Vikings to other
countries and islands.  It is not unrealistic to believe the Corgis and Shelties may
have come from this breed.

Written reports confirm that the puffin dog was found at many locations along
the Norwegian coast.  Petter Dass told of the puffin dog at Lovunden.  The
Governor Schonnebol (1590) noted puffin dogs at Vaeroy and the Italian
Fransesco Negri (1666) observed such dogs from Finnmark.

A valuable work-dog
The puffin dog is a work-dog, used specially to capture puffins.  A good puffin
dog from the old days had the same monetary value as a good cow, thus giving us
an idea of exactly how important the puffin dogs were when they disappeared.  There
were of course puffin dogs on the island of Rost but at the turn of the century the local
government decided to assess a dog tax of 8 kroner.  In the course of a few years the
puffin dog disappeared from Rost in the same way it had disappeared earlier from
Lovunden, Sor-Fugloya and Finnmark.  The puffin dog survived solely in the
village of Mastad on Vaeroy.

Mastadhund
The puffin dog survived only in the small isolated village on Mastad on Vaeroy.
The dogs was as mentioned a work dog and in many ways just as valuable and
necessary to the people of Mastad as their boats and fishing equipment.  The
Mastad villagers had no other dog than the puffin dog.  Because of this the puffin
dog as a pure breed which had never been exposed to foreign diseases.  But even
at Mastad, the puffin dog would soon be threatened..
Extinction
In 1941, while the Great War raged in Europe, the people of Mastad were visited for
the first time by a foreign dog.  It was a catastrophe for the small Mastad dogs because
the foreign dog was carrying the distemper virus, which soon led to an epidemic.  By
the time the epidemic came to a close there was only one bitch left in the village.  The
bitch never bore puppies and for the first time Mastad was absent of the puffin dogs.

Luckily, only a few years earlier a few puffin dogs were sent to Eleonora Christie’s
kennel at Hamar, thus preserving the breed.  Following the war a total of 5 dogs
were sent north, back to Mastad.  It is only fate, which seems to have saved the
puffin dog.  Only a short time after Christie sent puffin dogs back to Mastad did
a disease break out in Hamar killing all of the puffin dogs except for the “Urd”.
Following the epidemic at Hamar there were a total of 5 puffin dogs left – and
from these 5 we have re-established a larger population of puffin dogs.

It is estimated today there are about twelve hundred dogs in the world
and about two hundred seventy-five in the United States.

(Norwegian Author Unknown )
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View Breed Standard from the F.C.I.