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It’s been said that chow chow, in the past, was the Buda temple guardian dog. One day a monk in one of the temples fell ill and the dog replaced him in his job of fetching firewood. Turns our that the chow chow found charred pieces of wood and so by carrying this wood with his mouth the carbon dyed his tongue blue forever.
Another chinese legend (that’s chow chow’s origin) says that the chow chow was a very special dog-dragon at the beginning of times: he totally hated nights. He hated them so much that one night he licked the dark sky to make the day light show up. This infuriated many Gods and so they took revenge: they’d leave him blue tongued for ever and that’s how everyone would know what he’d done.
Another version of (blueish) similar dye asures that a chow chow dog breeds used to join Buda while he’d be painting the sky blue. The dog had no better idea than licking the painting drops that would fall of Buda’s brush… and the rest is history.
The funny part of this is that leaving aside the wonderful human necessity of using fantasy for explaining inexplicable things, the boring scientifics do not agree neither about why the chow chow dog’s tongue is blue. Some of them say that this dog’s metabolims produces a lot more melanin than what’s considered normal. The melanin is a dark pigment that being localized in a big proportion in the tongue of the chow chow, it provides him this characteristic color… However, other theories afirm exactly the oposite: that chow chows have a lack of tyrosine, and what makes it worse, apparently this is what produces the melanin…
Will we someday know the truth about the mystery of the chow chow dogs blue tongue?
