[quote1320472921=Astibus] OK, fair enough. Now let me ask you (or anyone else really), what if I take a certified Sarplaninac and declare it a "Deltari Ilir" - as this undeniably HAS happened in the past. What, if years later that "Deltari Ilir" is sold to someone else and becomes a Sarplaninac again? What is or was this dog? What are his offspring considered? If they create their own isolated (and modified) breed, then I guess noone can stop the insanity. But if this turns into some sort of hostile takeover, than I am going to fight tooth and nail to expose this revisionist crap. [/quote1320472921]

Basically, nothing will change except that instead of one breed benefiting from the "aboriginal" LGD population there will be two. Then three. And likely more. They're all equally pure and equally mixed, now it's up to the breeders of each breed variety to actually select for distinguishing traits and prove their breeds are breeds. In the process of selection there will be mutually beneficial "incorrect for us, but maybe good for you" examples to be exchanged between sides. The brindle Yugo-Shars will go to Kosovo, the smaller "army greens" will go to Serbia and the bigger ones to Montenegro, the black ones to Macedonia for the 3rd breed in waiting, piebald ones will become some dubious Tornjak variety and everyone will have the same big yellow dog that belongs to all and so on. There will be all kinds of "crossbreeding" within the family, of course.

Hustlers will continue doing what they've always done - wheeling and dealing and selling/buying/trading/stealing dogs with the blessing of their clique leaders. A dancing champ is a dancing champ and everything has a price, pedigrees be damned... With fancy names or without them, these are all the same dogs in the hands of the same people who will continue taking care of the same old business by finding ways around technicalities. New mess, old dump. One could argue that while this new mess is indeed messy, at least the hybridizing craze has been brought to an end. Instead of crossing in Kangals, CAOs and COs, a Shar breeder can "cross" a D.I. into his line and say that it's not really crossbreeding. Instead of a St.Bernard, English Mastiff and Great Dane, a Deltari Ilir breeder can just get one the Macedonian dancers and "cross" it into his so very very different breed. Why bother with Newfies when we got Karamans? And such...

These grim predictions of mine might not be the worst that could happen. It can be positive... from certain angles, at least. By condensing all that variety into a single genepool from which 2, 3 or more breeds can be extracted and chiseled out of, the value of that entire family will go up in autochthonous aspects, for lack of a precise wording. It may have influences from elsewhere, but that has always been the case, yet this would be a multigenerational autochthonous population of dogs, separated only by their Standards. Many key, however subtle, differences in temperament and "math" between the Standards should be quite helpful in efficiently establishing some cynological order and preserving the various types previously ignored, neglected and/or eliminated in favour of the one breed which could never be one breed. What paperz ya fit, that's who you are.

The "paper" should be representative of the animal shaped by its job(s) and selective breeding for its ideal form, instead of claiming the whole population, of course. Since every standard [u]will[/u] claim the entire population anyway, then the "biometric" information and the "math" within the individual/separate/whatever breed standards should decide to which breed any given example belongs instead of what "nationality" the poor critter was unfortunate enough to be born as. And nobody HAS to play by the rules. Do we ever?

The point is that one can have a separate outlook on, and the relationship with, the Sharplaninetz ideal (or just the idea) that doesn't follow any definitions except those of a much broader perspective, seeing dogs where others see breeds and recognizing the essence instead of packaging. But it will be a whole lot easier to get what you want if it has a name by which you can ask for it and offers a set of characteristics which can be used to identify it even without an ID tag. We don't HAVE to participate.

Breeds, registries and all that official silliness are for suckers anyway.