Havanese

In the official standard of the Havanese, in the section on how the dog should move, there is a sentence a poet would be proud of: “according to his happy nature” it has “a strikingly light-footed and elastic gait”. The people who write the rules were supposed to describe a dog's step and had to begin with joy — there was no other way. The Havanese is the national dog of Cuba. Its ancestors, small bichons from the Mediterranean, sailed to the island on board ships and made the only career they had ever dreamed of there: they became members of the household. For generations they lived in Havana's homes, and on its sun-baked streets they learned to walk the way they still walk today — as if the paving were slightly warmer than it should be. Then came the revolution and the music stopped. The world this dog lived in vanished, and when American breeders went looking for it in the 1970s, they counted eleven Havanese in the whole of the United States. Eleven dogs. That was enough for the tune to survive.

Day to day that tune never stops playing. A Havanese doesn't go for a walk — it springs along on one. Before every meal it performs a pirouette, sometimes three. It learns so fast that you run out of new tricks before it runs out of enthusiasm, and the zip on your rucksack is a two-minute puzzle to it. It watches television: really, from the sofa, with concentration, and looks like someone with firm opinions about the schedule. It also has one weakness that breeders warn you about under their breath: paper. A roll left within reach of its mouth turns into streamers, and the hall into a street the morning after carnival. Letters, receipts and instruction manuals it treats as confetti in its raw state. The standard puts it with restraint: “a charmer, playful and even a bit of a clown”.

But the most important dance is the one you don't notice straight away. People say a Havanese never leaves your side. That is true, only badly told. It doesn't tread on your heels and it demands nothing — it keeps step. You get up, it gets up. You go to the kitchen, it is half a step beside you. You sit, it sits. You slow down on a bad day — it slows down with you and doesn't ask why. Dancing is the only situation in life in which someone half a step away from you is not a nuisance but a partner. It has mastered that art to perfection: it doesn't get ahead, doesn't fall behind, and always knows where you are. That is why it does so well as a therapy dog. And why it copes so badly with an empty flat — a dancer without a partner has nothing to do with itself.

That springy step is also the best indicator of its health and the first thing excess weight takes away. A Havanese weighs between three and six kilograms, so half a kilo too much is a tenth of its body and a noticeably heavier landing on knees which in small dogs tend to be delicate anyway. When the spring in the step fades, it usually isn't age. It is the bowl. And there is something worth looking after, because this is one of the longer-lived breeds: a well-cared-for Havanese dances with its person for fourteen or fifteen years.

A Havanese demands nothing of you. It doesn't need a garden, special tasks or great expeditions. It needs a partner: someone whose step it can keep.

Two hundred years ago it sprang along the sun-warmed paving of Havana. Today it does the same in your hall, in the middle of a Polish November — with the same step and the same joy that someone once had to write into the standard, because without it the description would have made no sense. You don't have to know how to dance. It is enough to get up from the sofa. And then, just this once — let it lead.