astibus- [quote] Very confident. Generally speaking, corpulent LGDs with an attitude existed in this particular region for a long time.[/QUOTE] I don't get what the picture is for. It's safe to say that dog is representing no breed from today, but rather a mongrel from then. And who even knows what the mongrel was used for? What kind of dog it was. Is there any indication given with the statue? [QUOTE]If anything, Shars were more vicious when I was a child. My grand father had dogs that weren't for touching - for anyone. That was the norm back then. My dad as a child could freely play with dogs, he couldn't go near Shars. Everyone back then knew that Shars are naturally very sharp. I remember hiking as a child in a larger group with my parents, some relatives and friends. As we came across a herd of sheep, I remember very serious dogs marching by, slowly crossing the dirt road with the livestock. Everyone kept their sweet distance and the dogs and livestock of course had the right of way. This wasn't just LGDs walking by, I'm sure everyone in that group stopped breathing for a moment. [/QUOTE] That's actually a pretty cool story, made very easy to visualise. Real working dog encounters as a child still stand out in my memory as well. For me in rural queensland australia it was invariably pig dogs. Experiences like these undoubtedly planted the seeds for the passions we exhibit (and at times struggle to conceal) today. But I'm not sure how lgds of old being sharp and vicious is at odds with my argument. I guess I may have mentioned how the modern mastiff mixes have been bred to be aggressive, but I didn't mean real LGDs weren't aggressive, I just meant the modern mixes weren't bred for much else. I'd actually suspect they're naturally less aggressive than real LGDs, a) because mastiffs just are, and b) because these mastiff-infused LGD monsters are typically living in close proximity to people and civilisation. It seems usually just being the pet or fighting dog of some guy in a tracksuit. LGDs live out in remote areas with sheep in the wilderness, so yeah they can get away with being much more sharp and vicious and indeed it would even be favoured naturally. [QUOTE]If one compares various countries and their respective LGD populations, it often comes down to localized selective regimes. The question to ask is how harsh an environment has to be to necessitate a substantial portion of ferociousness in LGDs. What happens if average LGDs get eaten consistently in a particular region? What happens (longterm) in regions where average LGDs totally suffice to keep the lambs safe (and warm)? Over time the local selective pressures decide the differences in phenotype or temp. The Scandinavians didn't become blond and blue eyed because the vikings wanted to show off their women to their neighbors. It just made more selective sense to let the pigment go. An no, I am not implying Scandinavians are watered down humans. lol Most regions in Western Europe haven't had a high prevalence of predators for centuries. Ordinary LGDs would be just fine there. Other regions however are infested with predators to this day (You can still buy wolf-furs in Skopje's Old Bazaar for cheap). That will have consequences on the LGD pool. As Ray Coppinger stated, the "cull"-rate in transhumance in that region is phenomenal, only the toughest dogs make it. The life on a farm in Southern France on the other hand is very different. All of this gotta affect the base line in an LGD population. [/QUOTE] I understand all this and agree, amongst the "true lgds" there's gonna be some variation and some will have relatively soft lifestyles in lovely idealic fairly safe meadows. The pyrenees seems a tad softer than the akbash for example, and I don't think this is explained with any outcrossing but rather just the natural result of adapting to differing environments and conditions. The thing is with some "LGDs" I don't think I'm looking at adaptations to harsher conditions, but rather simple outcrossing to western mastiffs and artificial selection for bigness and impressiveness. I base this on seeing that they look a lot like mastiffs, and the fact that I rarely if ever see them actually working as serious LGDs anywhere, harsh conditions or otherwise. Their similarity to western mastiffs is strange given that other LGDs are not related to mastiffs, I mean they must be related to the other LGDs, they're still fairly similar to them and are apparently supposed to perform the same function. But they also look like western/mastiffs and bullbreeds, and indeed even are used in dog fights like western bull/mastiff types often are. So they're related to both, but then those both aren't related to one another, so then the only logical answer is they're a hybrid of both types, and not a "predecessor" (which is what I used to think). [QUOTE]In Shars, mastiff blood does not have a positive result. It changes the dog to its core. In recent years, people presumably do it anyway for fighting purposes, but that ain't a Shar anymore. And it shows. [/quote] Shars are intriguing because they're not very big, and don't look very mastiffy, I don't feel like they're being bred to be dick-extensions for guys in full-tracksuits, and I have seen them mentioned in serious LGD studies as actually working as LGDs, and not only in their country of origin. All this would seem to group them with genuine successful functional LGDs, I guess then the question I'm inclined to ask is how formidable are they really? Since for most genuine LGDs being actually combatively formidable doesn't seem to be a huge concern. But from what I've been reading you and others say about shars they definitely are exceedingly formidable. I'm not inclined to disbelieve you but I am inclined to wonder why this would be? I don't know if harsh conditions can really explain it. Perhaps the fact they've been called upon for other tasks like wolf said. Anyway, I am open to the idea the shar is a genuine LGD, but a super badass version. It's possible. I think my theory in general stands up pretty well anyway, so far.