The only dog Cuba made
The Havanese is the national dog of Cuba and the only breed native to the island. Its ancestors arrived with Spanish settlers in the sixteenth century — small white companion dogs of the Bichon family, the same stock behind the Bichon Frise and the Maltese — and once they were on the island they stopped being European dogs. Generations in the Caribbean gave them a lighter, airier coat and a build suited to the climate, and what emerged was known as the Blanquito de la Habana, the little white dog of Havana.
The Blanquito became the dog of Cuban city households, and later, crossed with poodles and other bichon types coming in from Europe, it became the Havanese. Through all of it the job never changed: company. These were dogs bred to live indoors with a family, to move from room to room with whoever was home, and to be entertaining about it.
The breed came to the United States with Cuban families after 1959 and was rebuilt here from a very small number of dogs by breeders who went looking for what remained. The American Kennel Club recognized the Havanese in 1996, and it has climbed steadily in popularity since. The dog sitting in front of you at the store is the direct result of that rescue.
The silk coat and how it is kept
The old name is the Havana Silk Dog, and it is a description rather than a flourish. The coat is long, soft and light, straight or wavy, and it moves when the dog moves — it lifts and floats rather than lying flat. Run a hand through it and the texture really is closer to raw silk than to the wool of most small coated breeds.
That coat was shaped by the climate it grew up in. It works the way a linen shirt works, shading the dog from the sun without holding heat against the skin, which is exactly what a small dog in the tropics needed.
You have choices about how to keep it, and all of them are correct. Plenty of owners keep the full coat, brushed out three or four times a week with a pin brush, worked in sections down to the skin and then combed through to catch whatever the brush skated over. Plenty of others ask the groomer for a short puppy clip, which keeps the shape and the face and turns the weekly routine into a few minutes. A third group keeps the coat corded, in soft ropes, which is a traditional Havanese look and turns heads at a hundred paces. Pick the one that matches the time you want to spend.
The rest of the routine is short. A wipe around the eyes with a damp cloth every few days. Ears cleaned when you brush. Nails every few weeks. Teeth done as a matter of routine, started early enough that a puppy decides the toothbrush is a game. Most owners settle into a grooming appointment every couple of months and handle the in-between at home in front of the television.
Size, colour and that springy gait
A grown Havanese stands about eight and a half to eleven and a half inches at the shoulder and weighs somewhere between seven and thirteen pounds. It is slightly longer than it is tall, and it is sturdier in the hand than the coat suggests — there is a real little dog under there, not a puff of hair.
The ears drop and carry feathering. The eyes are large, dark and almond-shaped, and the expression is soft and direct. The tail is carried arched over the back with a plume of long hair falling to one side, which is the outline you can pick out across a park.
Colour is wide open. The standard accepts every colour and every combination, so you will meet cream, gold, red, silver, blue, chocolate, black, sable, brindle and parti-colour, often with markings that shift as the puppy grows. A gold puppy can lighten toward cream; a black one can silver out. Whatever coat a Havanese finishes with is rarely the one it started with, and most owners enjoy watching it happen.
Then there is the gait. The Havanese has a springy, bouncing trot with the front legs reaching high, and it is written into the breed standard because it belongs to this breed alone. A Havanese crossing a room looks pleased with itself, and this is why.
A dog that follows you room to room
Havanese owners use the word velcro, and they mean it fondly. This is a dog that wants to be in the room with you — not the yard, not the room next door. It will follow you from the kitchen to the desk to the laundry, settle where it can see you, and get up again when you do.
They are cheerful, sociable and genuinely funny. They greet visitors as new friends, they are easy with other dogs and with cats, and they treat a busy household as a good thing rather than an interruption. With children they are patient and up for the company, and their size makes them portable in a way that suits families who go places.
There is a performing streak in the breed with real history behind it. Havanese worked in Cuban circuses, and the traits that made them good at it — quick learning, a taste for attention, that natural bounce — are all still there. A Havanese with an audience will find something to do with it.
They also read a household closely. This is a sensitive dog that notices tone and mood, and most owners find their Havanese turns up beside whoever is having the quietest day.
Training a natural performer
Havanese are bright and eager, and they work for praise, food and enthusiasm in roughly equal measure. Reward-based training suits them exactly: short, cheerful sessions, one thing at a time, finishing while the dog still wants more. Make it a game and you get a dog that offers you three new behaviours before you have asked for one.
Tricks are the obvious outlet, and there is very little a Havanese will not learn. Spin, weave, paw, take a bow, put the toys back in the basket. Five minutes of that before dinner does as much for a Havanese as another walk would.
House-training goes on a schedule rather than a signal — a pen or a crate, a fixed routine, out to the same spot each time, and the reward delivered outside where you want the habit to form. Think in months rather than weeks and it goes smoothly.
Socialization is worth doing properly through the first six months. Take the puppy places: different floors, different people, umbrellas, hats, the sound of traffic, calm adult dogs. A well-socialized Havanese is welcome nearly everywhere, and since this is a dog you can carry into a café, that groundwork pays back for years.
The breed also does well in organized activities. Obedience, rally, agility and trick titles all suit them, and a great many Havanese end up doing therapy visits, which is about the most natural job you could hand this breed.
What a day together looks like
A Havanese day begins with a small dog standing on your chest, establishing whether you are up yet.
Exercise is modest and social. A walk or two around the neighbourhood at a pace that allows for greeting everyone covers most of it, plus some indoor play. Through a warm Florida or Tennessee summer the early and late hours are the pleasant ones, and a Havanese is perfectly content to spend the middle of the day stretched out on cool tile.
The rest is company. A Havanese arranges its day around yours: on the chair beside you while you work, on the kitchen floor while you cook, in the doorway of the bathroom because the door was shut. A five-minute training game in the afternoon and a chew in the evening rounds it off.
Evenings are the lap. This is a breed that does companionship as a full-time occupation, and a household that likes having a dog underfoot could not ask for a better one.
Come and meet the Havanese puppies
A photograph of a Havanese is mostly coat. In person you notice how solid the dog is, how directly it looks at you, and how quickly a puppy concludes that your lap is the correct place to be. Littermates vary in colour and in personality, and both are far easier to judge with the puppies in front of you.
Our Havanese puppies come from our network of licensed breeders, and our team can tell you what a particular puppy’s parents looked like and how the coat is likely to settle as it grows. We have a store in Orlando and one in Nashville, and you are welcome to sit on the floor with a puppy for as long as you like before deciding anything. Find directions and hours, and ask about financing while you are here. Every puppy here goes home with its vet records, its vaccination history and a health warranty, and our team will walk you through what those cover.