Age of exploration dog breeds: dogs that sailed with explorers

Part 1

What dogs actually traveled with explorers

One overview of the period notes that mastiffs and greyhounds also played a role alongside the alano. The alano, also called the Alano Español, was a bulldog-type dog from the Iberian Peninsula.

His date and place of birth were never recorded, and historians can only guess whether he was born in the kennels of Diego Columbus or of Juan Ponce de León. By 1511, historical records already describe him with battle scars, and sources disagree on whether he was an Alano Español or a mastiff.

Part 2

Dogs and the conquest of the Americas

Christopher Columbus is described as the first person to use dogs as weapons in the Americas. Accounts say he released dogs against the indigenous people of Hispaniola in 1493 and against a group that tried to stop his landing in Jamaica in 1494. By 1495 he reportedly had twenty Spanish mastiffs with him, dogs said to reach as much as two hundred fifty pounds, and set them on the Arawak people with the command tomalos, meaning take them. Hundreds and then thousands more dogs followed in the years after.

Becerrillo was a war dog owned by Juan Ponce de León and used during the conquest of Puerto Rico. Becerrillo was trained to tell Spanish soldiers from native people, to track down people who had fled, and to fight in battle. One account credits him with killing thirty-three attackers in a single night battle that lasted about half an hour. He was fed the same rations as the soldiers and considered worth fifty men in the field. His son, Leoncico, is recorded as having gone with Vasco Núñez de Balboa into battles on the Isthmus of Panama in 1513.

Chroniclers describe the imported dogs as tools of terror, set loose on people who resisted Spanish rule. European chroniclers, including Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, wrote accounts describing dogs unleashed on entire groups of people who had no way to defend themselves. One account records Vasco Núñez de Balboa ordering a group of people to be killed by his dogs as punishment for resisting Spanish authority. You can find repeated descriptions of communities coming to see these dogs as something close to demonic, a fear that spread well beyond any single battle.

Part 3

Dogs as cargo on the crossing

Columbus's second voyage left Spain in September 1493 with seventeen ships, around twelve hundred men, and livestock that included horses, sheep, and cattle. That fleet reached the Caribbean, including Puerto Rico, in November 1493, and it carried Juan Ponce de León. So if you imagine your own dog on a ship like this, picture a working animal packed among livestock and weapons, not a pampered companion.

Part 4

How Becerrillo's story ended

Becerrillo died in 1514. Accounts describe Becerrillo pursuing attackers who had escaped by canoe, swimming after them through the water until he was hit by a volley of arrows and died. He was normally protected by a padded jacket, but it is not known whether he wore it that day. His handlers believed their opponents saw him as impossible to kill, so they buried him in an unmarked grave to keep his death secret. Accounts describe him being mourned by the Spanish troops, more so than some of their own fallen soldiers.

There is also a story of Becerrillo showing mercy, which sits oddly beside the rest of his record. An old woman was sent by Diego Guilarte de Salazar to carry a folded piece of paper to the governor, and he set the dog on her as cruel entertainment. She dropped to her knees and begged him not to hurt her, and according to the accounts, Becerrillo sniffed her, then turned and walked away without harming her. When Ponce de León heard what happened, he is reported to have said he would not let a dog show more compassion than a Christian, and he ordered the woman freed.