How did Rhodesian Ridgebacks get so sexy, anyway? Every reference says they were bred to hunt lions... so... OK... at a guess I would think a lion-hunting dog should be built like a Warg from Warcraft.
Unless maybe those great white Victorian hunters in Rhodesia were sitting around camp all day fucking their dogs, on the rest days between safaris? There's more to "lion hunting" than just hunting lions...
So the historical inquiry was going nowhere. Then I thought, what specifics make the RR so sexy? Can we put it into words? And it occurred to me that human sexual attraction to a Rhodesian Ridgeback is less of a mental stretch in a sense, they come closer than most other dogs to the conventional conception of sexiness in human beings. Other dogs, you have to appreciate more on their own terms. To see the beauty in wolves you have to embrace the abstract concept of natural beauty, largely defined as everything the civilized human experience is not. German Shepherds just exude "German Shepherd-ness," I mean if you know what I mean, you know what I mean!
To love a Mastiff or St. Bernard you have to be into sheer mass and drool, not typical human ideals. And people with Great Danes, I figure they come by way of attraction to horses, but horses are too impractical. But as I see a Rhodesian Ridgeback, he has the lithe, graceful strength of a track athlete or a professional dancer, and a slick coat that gives a perfect glowing tan without hiding anything (like the best of us "hairless apes"), and finally an easy, confident, slightly goofy smile and forward-set, human-like eyes. He's not that much different from the guy on the cover of a romance novel. A human hardly needs to depart from his humanity at all to see the sexy in a Rhodesian Ridgeback.