Tales of Mel The Story of an Ibizan Hound

"Tales of Mel” tells the tale of Mel, a male Ibiza Hound puppy who was originally given as a gift to my friend Raphael Sainz, who rapidly became an aficionado, and then a breeder of this amazing canine race. Mel was not himself a pedigree animal, but was the founder of a proud pedigree line through his grand-daughter Baltasara.
This is a very special book about an individual dog (Mel), and a breed that at the time was believed to be descended from the hunting dogs of the Egyptian pharaohs. Subsequent genetic research has cast doubt on this hypothesis, but the case for an Egyptian ancestry and the link to Ibiza via the Phoenicians is elegantly laid out within these pages.
Rafael Sainz was a lawyer from Madrid, but with very close ties to Ibiza from the 1930’s onwards. He retired to Ibiza in the late 1980s, and Mel was his first Ibizan hound. The book follows Mel's life, and indeed finishes with his death. It also reveals a whole panorama of life on Ibiza before the tourist industry took over. Rafael takes us on walks, on hunting expeditions and on rambles into the often turbulent history of the island, from the first arrival of the Phoenicians through the Spanish Civil War and into the modern day. If you wish to understand the Ibizan hound, this book is essential reading.
I include a copy of the cover material. It shows a ghostly face of an Ibiza hound superimposed on one of the many Phoenician sites on the island in the shadow of the Es Vedra rock, one of Ibiza’s iconic landmarks. The history of the dog and the history of the island are inseparably intertwined.