Critically Endangered
These have very sweet faces. I love cow noses, they are very boopable, like hippo noses. The Tamaraw is a dwarf buffalo, only about 4 feet tall. They are endemic to the Philippine island of Mindoro. They faced extinction about a hundred years ago because of disease. The island wasn't developed for a long time, and they managed to make a comeback. They used to number around 10,000, but now because of humans moving to the island there are not even 500 of them. There was one held in captivity that lived to be 21 years old, I do not know how long they live in the wild. Even in captivity 21 is apparently very old. They tend to be solitary, and have a bovine version of "small man syndrome", similar to dogs. Somehow more personality, attitude, and fierceness gets crammed into the smaller bodies than their larger cousins seem to have.
We had a lot of dogs when I was little, but this is the first one that I really remember. I'd say this picture is from 1978 or so. We got this wirehair dachshund from the pound when he was 7 and he lived to be 17 or 19, I can't remember how old. His previous owner was an elderly lady who had to go into a nursing home and couldn't take him. We didn't rename him, so being called ChinChin cannot be held against us. My dad used to say he was part opossum, part raccoon, and part brilo pad. My sister and I though thought he was the most handsome and amazing dog. He knew his colours and when we would put game pieces in front of him and ask which was red, etc he would always pick the right one. This was back when we were still told that dogs only saw black and white. The old woman who had owned him must have spent a ton of time teaching him, because we never did but he was also never wrong. He knew how to play hide-and-seek also. He had a martyr type personality, and would let us do anything to him without complaint. He was really the best dog for kids you could find.