The Karakachan Dog - The Bulgarian Legend

The roots of the close friendship between human beings and domestic dogs can be found in ancient times. The tribes living on the Balkan Peninsula have had a cult of dogs and horses and the Proto-Bulgarians have offered sacrifices to dogs. Injuring and bad treatment of dogs has been considered a serious crime and has been severely punished. Such attitude towards animals has enabled the appearance of different types of shepherd dogs ever since the dawn of the Nomadic stock-breeding. This has exerted influence upon the ancestors of the Karakachan dog of local and foreign origin, allowing the formation of convergent forms. The appearance of some of these forms on Bulgarian lands is in close connection with war campaigns and movement of studs and flocks from different European and Asian regions and the movement of dogs with them.
The Karakachan dog is a nearest heir to the Tibetan mastiff together with the Mongolian and the Middle-Asian shepherd dogs, the Caucasian dog, the Shar-mountain dog, the Turkish shepherd dogs Karabash and Akbash, the shepherd dogs of the Tatra and the Carpathian Mountains.
The Karakachan dog owes its name and the final formation of its type to the Karakachans. The name "Karakachan" is of Turkish origin and it means "black fugitive".
According to most scientists the Karakachans are Hellenized descendents of the Thracians. Their constant home has become the Pind Mountain in the Epir region, which name is connected with the enormous dogs used for fights with lions and elephants. Wandering with their herds across the whole Balkan Peninsula the Karakachans have mixed their dogs with the heirs of the ancient dogs and this process has lasted for hundreds of years. The severe life and the cruel selection made the Karakachan dogs irreplaceable friends of human beings.

Dimitar Andreev and his dog Orfo.
For comparision; Dimitar is 176 cm. (69,17 in) tall, while Orfo is
1 year of age, 77 cm. (30 in) at the withers and 60 kg. (132 lbs).

For the first time the name "Karakachan dog" is officially mentioned in 1938 in an artickle dedicated to this breed and published in German cynological issue. Nowadays comparatively typical representatives of this breed can be found in the alpine regions of Bulgaria. Unfortunately there is a greater variety of types and important characteristics as height of the withers, lenght and colour of the hairy cover, lenght and width of the head vary in great limits. Except the anomalies of the exterior, typical feature for most representatives is the lack of their outspoken temperament with which the Karakachan dog excels its closest relatives. Characteristic features of this breed are calmness, moderate aggressiveness, unique braveness and self-respect.

Orfo

The observations over eighty dogs and the measurements of thirty nine of the most typical representatives of them served as a basis for the suggested standard. Criteria for typicalness were good body development, strong character, lack of degenerational features, relative morphological conservativeness. The measurements together with their minimum and maximum values are given in the following table in inches:

DIMENSIONS	Male Min.	Male Max.	Female Min.	Female Max.
Heigh of the withers	24,8"	29,5"	23,6"	26,8"
Heigh of the elbow	13,2"	15,7"	12,6"	14,6"
Lenght of the body	26,8"	32,3"	25,6"	29,1"
Length of the head	9,8"	12,6"	9,1"	11,4"
Length of the muzzle	4,1"	5,9"	3,9"	5,5"
Width of the head	4,9"	6,3"	4,3"	5,7"
Depth of the brisket	10,8"	12,6"	9,1"	11,4"
Width of the brisket	7,1"	7,9"	5,9"	6,5"
Chest measurement	31,1"	35,8"	28,7"	32,3"
Metacarpus measurement	5,1"	6,3"	4,9"	5,3"

On the basis of the observations and the above mentioned measurements a precise concept of the contemporary type of the Karakachan dog was made. This allowed the elaboration of a project for standard, reckoned with the history and the trends of the development of this type of dog. In the standard we tried to keep and to exalt the characteristic features of the Karakachan dog and to shape the way of its future development.