1899 Mexican Hairless... billboards.

"There is a a restaurant keeper in Fifth Avenue, Chicago, who has evolved a scheme which seems to him to be the biggest thing that has occurred this century. Not long ago, a friend gave him a small, fat, hairless Mexican dog. It's broad black back looked inviting and a journeyman painter who gets his noonday glass of beer and sausages at the place, caught the dog one day and lettered on its back in green and red: "I'm Schneider's dog; whose dog are you?" The animal, like all Mexican dogs, is restless and is up and down the length of the sidewalk a hundred times a day. It's back attracted much attention and caused some laughter. Schneider has written to a man he knows in Monterey and inquired the price of hairless dogs by the car load. Eight Mexican peasants out of ten have families and each family owns from one to a dozen dogs. They can be bought for ten cents apiece. Schneider intends to bring on a lot of them, accustom them to his place, paint signs advertising his weinerwurst and beer on their backs and sides and drop them about the city, trusting to their homing instinct to find their way back. At first they will be taken only a block or two away, but as they grow bolder and more accustomed to finding their way back the distances of their daily journeys will be increased. To get back to the place where he is fed is something that a dog learns rapidly and the restaurant man does not think that he will lose many of them. He will feed them on table scraps. The backs of some of these animals are broad enough to contain a small bill of fare with prices." [Article from the 'Marietta Daily Leader' May 07, 1899]