Sarplaninac Temperment

Lee, Don't go there here. Save us all a ton of sh!t and go back to your dogs, forget you ever heard of this or any other LGD.

Dan, Don't respond to the moron. He is clearly out of his element and doesn't know piss all about this breed to think them going for the face is fear based in unbalanced animals. Please, just let this fool go back to stroking his ego on morons who will buy his brand. Please, let it go. He is disrespecting 1000 years of hsitory because he was shown to be an imbicile.

I agree with you, Tonedog. But when you've seen it in action, you don't need to hype it. I haven't seen a dog pull a kid from traffic, but I have seen the ugly side of Eastern LGD, it doesn't need hyping. I'm sick of the hyping, and I'm not hyping breeds. I'm telling of examples of LGD I had personal experience with, 1 of which lived with me for over a year. Literally, and not a single elevated word here, but like nothing I've ever owned before or since. Like I said before, it is about the individual and not the breed in these type's. Lee is shitting on many peoples family histories(many families are intertwined with these dogs) out of knee jerk reaction to another thread. That's what offends me.

I don't care if you apologize. I don't care if you don't take offense to jokes. You are offending more than just Dan with your Disney comments, and are derailing a thread started by another member to get dialogue between Sar owners started. That should be enough for you to go and delete your foolish posts in this thread.

Were you in every single farmstead in every single territory in the entire Australian continent? No, you weren't, so again you show your ignorance with a big stars and bars flag flying in the wind.

Overall this has been an interesting and informative thread.

Al, I really like your explanation and distinction between sharpness and aggression. It's quite profound in it's simplicity and yet it is probably too complex a concept for some self proclaimed experts to grasp. I'll share a couple of observations about working Shars in PP based on an experiences I had in Pozarevac with one particular Sarplaninac out of Niz kennel lines. The particular dog was owned by a former Serb special ops military guy who worked at our steel mill in Smederevo as part of the contracted security company.

I got to go to his house to meet his Sarplaninacs. He had one dog that he said was his "best protection dog" and from meeting the dog in person you would never know it at first glance. The dog appeared to be laid back bordering on soft but when you really observed him it was a quiet calm assertiveness and at the same time you could see that he was "taking everything in and calculating" the whole time. What really surprised me was that the owner told me that the dog would not do bite work at all or react to it because he knew it was a game. Any presence of a bite sleeve or a bite suit worn by somebody the dog either knew or did not know and he just did not react. I watched the dog be non-responsive to another of my coworkers who put on the bite suit and the dog just looked at him when the agitation work was ongoing. I thought it may have been because the dog knew this guy so I personally tried to agitate the dog in full bite suit and the dog just stood there and looked at me like I was an idiot.

There was neither fear nor aggression in his posture or behavior. Just the look of WTF are you doing dude!!! I am not claiming to be a professional decoy by any means but I have been around Schutzhund for 25 years and have agitated a dog or two in my time so I was astonished by this. I did not otherwise see the dog put in a situation where he would need to display his protection traits as I have no reason not to believe the guy. What I think it does show is the cognitive intelligence that many LGDs seem to have that just does not seem to exist in other breeds of dogs. It is somewhat similar to other Sars that I have seen that will do bite work and will immediately and go back to attack the decoy when he lets the sleeve drop after the dog has grabbed it. I've never seen this behavior occur instinctively in dogs other than COs, CAOs, and Sars when they catch the sleeve and the decoy drops it.

Lastly, it's also too bad that we have to put up with individuals who become "legends in their own mind" when it comes to what they think their grasp of knowledge of dog behavior is and what the superiority of their dogs are. Yet as just one example they show their lack of true understanding of dog behavior (notice I was nice and didn't say ignorance) when they define multiple drives in dog behavior that do not even exist and are merely in a few cases are just subsets of prey drive and defense drive.

John Bayard Swinford is probably rolling in his grave. But I digress some people are just not coachable.

Thank you, Sue. Its nice to hear some owners input on that side of the dogs.

And you can say that based on what? How many working Sarplaninci have you seen? In which situations? Which predators involved, how many times outnumbered, what climate? Oh wait, you have NO credibility in providing an opinion on this subject, but are spitting out nonsense based on your absolute ignorance. Thanks for once again showing yourself, Harold. Every once in a while the members here need a reminder of what you really are.

Not only PP trainers but companion dog obedience trainers are also befuddled by LGDs and just don't understand how to work with them.

These dogs and other LGDs even puzzle guys like Michael Ellis and Kevin Behan with their behavior not that you'd know who they are anyway. As such, it's not surprising that you're not grasping what we are telling you. Because of your own arrogance and you're belief in what you think is your superior knowledge of dog behavior over the rest of us, especially with a breed and breed type which you know less than nothing about and have no experience with it's perfectly understandable that you've resorted to an infantile response.

[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.

It's not about LGDs vs. mongrels. It's LGD mongrels vs. hunting/fighting mongrels. They all are and were mongrels. That's why we have specific breeds to keep discussions on point. The Shar didn't get to be all that by being a friggin' LGD. The Shar was more like a bandog/herder in that you can actually work them, unlike typical LGDs. You know what I mean by "work" here and it's not sitting pretty next to a lamb until wolves swoop in, but is about actually being useful for a variety of tasks. Any dog that you can [u]send[/u] to go bite something or someone is not an LGD. That's the line. It can still be an LGD as well, but if that's all the Shar was, then it would've never been on any currency or in people's hearts, period. Same goes for bandogs and breeds "descended" from bandogs. As long as there's no work propelling the selection forward, we're just talking about mutts that work. That isn't special. But if what started as a bandog ends up the elite specific purpose-bred worker, with a set set of traits and ability to reproduce itself... All I'm saying is that equating bandog with "mongrel" tends to cloud the historical perspective and confuse 3 separate definitions of what is discussed. The word gets in the way. Just like the word "breed"... LGDs suck. The Shar rules. Bandogs suck. The Pit rules. And such.

Agreed, which is why I'm not bothered by his unqualified contributions. It's just noise. I also happen to agree that the Balkan "nucleus" was different to other LGD-friendly areas, if for no other reason, then the simple fact that the very region is a remarkably interesting place itself, especially for adventurous historians and independent thinkers. The crossroads. Whereas many other mountaintops in Europe had overgrown collies at the foundation for the mastiff infusion to make them mountain mastiffs, the proto-Shar and its cousins from the 'hood were mountain mastiffs already. But that is also a word that causes problems, since technically only the English Mastiff is a mastiff...But whatever, we use terms like dogmen, not like showies do. Anymutt, one would benefit from seeing history [u]in waves[/u] instead of retracing unreliable steps for neatly precise clues. Trends and migrations are what has influenced history and our understanding of it without most of us even realizing that because we have OUR times and OUR troubles tainting our perspective. And those things always come in waves. If we leave out, as we probably should, the inhuman/national aspects and focus on dogs as types, families and breeds as they relate to historical trends and migration patterns, some things ought to become clearer. A region is hit with a wave of people escaping from (or being transplanted from) some other region, they establish a society of theirs, thrive for a few decades or centuries and then another wave hits that same region and this brings a completely different culture with it, turning the area into a literal breeding ground for "the 3rd option", as it were. Then the region is hit with a trend which promotes one thing while annihilating all else, affecting every layer of society and each walk of life. And then another trend, another tragedy, another migration, another new beginning and so on and so forth. Where are the dogs in this picture? What are the dogs in this picture? When and who? If you want to know what had really happened or what was likely the case when data doesn't match up, occupy yourself with studying history in its broadest sense and waves of migrations and trends in the narrowest. Interested in a region?Learn that region's history, not just the national histories of the "tenants" and all that drivel. Follow the trends of invasions and migrations while looking at a map. Then "zoom in" on the specifics, understand them in context and zoom back out and follow logic. Too many get stuck on details which, while not always irrelevant, are almost exclusively growth-stoppers in terms of learning. Go fractal.

lol cool photos astibus here and in the bandog thread thanks for sharing..