American Indian dog hoax?

Speaking of dog breeds, there is a fellow who claims to have reintroduced the "American Indian dog" as a breed.

I don't know much about dog breeds, or breeding, but I'm skeptical.  The dogs are marketed as "the true descendants of the 'old dogs'", which smells fishy to me.  The guy claims to have learned how to breed the dogs from talking to "elders."  It sounds exactly like the kind of thing you'd say if you wanted to sell dogs to people who are overly interested in imitating native lifestyles and religion.  Much of the evidence given to support the claim that these dogs are "authentic" is vaguely scientific at best, and generally based on similarities to dogs depicted in paintings and drawings of Native Americans.

There are detractors.   This lengthy forum topic about the dogs and their breeder at the Museum of Hoaxes web site is worth reading.

There are some nice ironies here, too.  As it turns out, there is a kind of feral dog that lives in isolated places in North Carolina (called the Carolina Dog) that may be an actual descendent of dogs originally brought to North America.  Maybe.

But I really love this part: According to Wikipedia, the diminutive, ordinary, non-travois-pulling, non-plains travelling, often-annoying Chihuahua is "the oldest canine breed in North America."  You see, Mexico is part of North America.  Mexico had people living in it before Columbus came snooping around.  If you like, you can think of those people as being "Indians."  Indians who had dogs.  Little tiny Indian dogs.