Chow Chow, or Chow, is a breed of dog that was first developed in Mongolia about 4,000 years ago and was later introduced into China, where it is referred to as Songshi Quanm which literally means "puffy-lion dog."
Westerners believed that Chow Chow was the original model for the Chinese guardian lion. In ancient China, where the real lion was unknown, Buddhist monks from India brought descriptions of the traditional stone lions that guarded their native temples. Hearing these stories, Chinese sculptors modeled statues of Fu or Foo lions, the lions of Buddha, after these native dogs and created an icon of an animal never before seen in China. However this idea is left unsupported due to lack of evidence.