xOlito the Great Delresto English Kuna Mariúpol-Patiñá

Three thousand five hundred years ago, a people watched a small hairless creature, never before known, walk out from the trees.[1] They named it Xolotl, and because it was so special they made it a god. Not another god. The brother of the sun.[2]

Where the sun went down, Xolotl carried it through the underworld and brought it back at dawn. As a soul came to the river the Aztecs believed separated the one life from the next, [3] Xolotl was the one trusted to carry it forward. Not because he was strong. Because he could see the truth, and that power, as vital as the sun, gave him the intuition to know when a soul was ready.[4]

Over the next three and a half millennia, empires rose and fell. Olmec. Maya. Toltec. The Aztecs rose and the Aztecs were broken. The Spanish came and the Spanish left, as they do.

Mexico became Mexico.

But the Xoloitzcuintle [5], cared for by priests and prophets, almost did not survive. [6] By the early twentieth century they were nearly gone, except for their stone-carved image and the bones found in Mesoamerican burial sites, marking both their value and the devotion they were held in.[7] In 1925, Diego Rivera started the first breeding kennel. Frida Kahlo kept Xolos with him and painted them into the canon. [8] Creators carried what the priests had carried. Then in 1954, an expedition through the mountains of Guerrero and Oaxaca found enough of them to begin again. Two years later, on May 1, 1956, the breed was officially recognized. A treasure restored.[9]

A door thought lost had reopened.

The Xoloitzcuintle became new.

xOlito did not just have the best parents. They organized him to walk through that door sixty-seven years later, to the day. His mother is Ratatouille, the top showgirl of the Americas, carrying the AKC bloodline and CRISPR restoration. His father, Tico, was airlifted out of Mariupol to Canada after the first crimes of the Russian war, carrying the European line that almost did not survive. Their sixteen puppies are the breed’s future. My partner in life is one of the two of sixteen who was hairless, and not only hairless but a Tinkerbell, defined by the very rare patterns on his skin.

Two continents. Sixteen puppies. One very special guy who joined me at the start of something completely new. The oldest companionship in the world, reassembled under Russian fire, made possible by the dedication of people brave enough to reopen a door once closed.

xO was gifted to me by his breeder, who saw on Instagram that his big brother Diesel had died in my arms just before midnight on the Día de los Muertos. The day the Aztecs created to honor the Xolos who walk souls across the river.

Nothing is a matter of chance. Like all hairless Xolos he cannot thermoregulate. xO was so tiny that I kept him under my shirt against my chest in those early months. The same place he has slept for these first three years.

His full name, xOlito the Great Delresto English Kuna Mariúpol-Patiñá, carries the journey. The Kuna for the indigenous people of The Darien Gap, where I launched my most creative work. The Mariúpol for his father’s birthplace. The Patiñá for my Colombian family who gave me appreciation for the beauty of the world and the part of myself I lost. The Delresto for what Travis and Beyoncé told us a Delresto [10] was. And Great. Because he is.

A Xoloitzcuintli is not a pet. The breed was kept by priests and buried with kings. Trusted with the sun. Trusted to walk souls across the water because they could see what people could not. Older than the wheel. Older than writing. Older than every empire that has risen and fallen across the slice of the globe we still call the Americas. The oldest and most enduring companion in the world.

By his third birthday, and his helicopter daddy’s first sign-off to post him on a permanent timeline, xOlito has bonded with four countries and five cities. And this is just the beginning of the amazing adventures of xOlito the Great Delresto. The emperor of 7 SUNS. I agree with the Aztecs. He is the most meaningful and true intelligence I know.

Feliz cumpleaños, little man. La puerta está abierta.