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THE EMERGENCE OF THE PASTORAL DOGS
By David Hancock

In his informative A History of Domesticated Animals (Hutchinson, 1963), the distinguished zoologist Frederick Zeuner wrote: “In the Bronze Age a moderately large dog is frequently found which, in many respects, is like some of the primitive breeds of sheepdog still to be found in parts of Europe. The modern collies, Alsatians and others with elongated skulls are products of very recent systematic breeding…In view of the palaeontological material now available, this means that the sheepdog group can be traced back to the Bronze Age…Its frequent occurrence in Bronze Age sites may be connected with the increasing importance of sheep-breeding in the economy of Bronze Age Europe. Thus the forerunners of the modern sheepdogs can so far be traced back to the Bronze Age only.” Evidence of far earlier use of pastoral dogs, not surprisingly, can be found in the artefacts of Ancient Egypt, as these two images demonstrate.

No Breed Identity

  When man became a farmer, he became a trader too, with meat and wool being marketed over many thousands of miles to ensure ‘business-viability’. This led to types of dogs being developed to cope with local conditions and needs. It is unwise, however, for enthusiastic breed historians to link contemporary breeds with depictions of dogs on ancient artefacts. As Juliet Clutton-Brock wrote in her Domesticated Animals from early times, Heinemann (for The British Museum (Natural History), 1981: “The majority of the remains of the earliest domestic dogs have been retrieved from archaeological sites in western Asia, although small numbers have also been found in North and South America, north west Europe (England and Denmark), Russia and Japan. They are nowhere very common until the Neolithic period when livestock animals are of course also represented…The dogs of these early periods, before the invention or widespread use of agriculture, were already quite variable in size and they probably also varied in their pelage, length of ears and tail, and shape of facial region...it is not acceptable to divide these dog remains into separate categories or subspecies, let alone into breeds.” Function ensures physical resemblances but pure breeding for appearance is a modern phenomenon.

Usefulness to Man

 If man is the most successful mammal on the planet, then, dog, man's closest animal companion, is arguably the second most successful and certainly man’s most valuable animal companion. Dogs have changed history, allowing for example early farmers to protect their livestock from predators, primitive hunters to obtain meat for the table and facilitate travel in Arctic conditions. In his Dogs: A Historical Journey (Howell Book House, 1996), Lloyd Wendt writes: 'The earliest evident pattern of human and dog migrations and partnership activity began in southeastern Africa, extending to Lakes Turkana and Omo in Ethiopia and the Nile tributaries, the Nile itself, and may have reached past the deserts of Sudan...' In his Dogs through History (Denlinger, 1987), Maxwell Riddle writes: 'Asia is a huge land mass, with high mountains separating fertile valleys. Such valleys were ideal for developing dog breeds. Their comparative isolation and highland stock grazing areas challenged the people within to produce dogs for specialized purposes.'

 In her The Lost History of the Canine Race (Andrews and McMeel, 1996), Mary Thurston writes: 'At its height, Rome was a veritable melting pot of both domesticated animals and people...At the same time, "exotic" dogs continued to arrive from Northern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Out-crossed with one another as well as with the more primitive, Neolithic canines still residing in rural parts of Southern Europe, they gave rise to a plethora of new varieties...' These three quotes provide background to the timeless development of dogs with people, the movement of people with their dogs and the trading in dogs once their value was known.

The Farmers’ Needs

 It was during the eighth and seventh millennia BC that man first began to domesticate sheep and goats within the region of Western Asia. Unlike nomadic animals such as gazelles, antelope and bison, humans, sheep, goats and dogs were all part of a social system based on a single dominant leader and tended to settle on what became known as a home range. They therefore became inter-dependent, with the herdsman as leader and the dog as his agent. Dogs also protected humans and their livestock against wild predators such as lynxes, lions, wolves, tigers, jackals, leopards, cheetahs, foxes, civets and, in some places, huge eagles. The protection of flock-guarding dogs was vital; such dogs had to be brave and determined, alert and resolute, vigilant and reactive – but above all, protective.

The Spread of Agriculture

 In his Farmers in Prehistoric Britain of 2011, Francis Pryor gives the view that: “The spread of farming across Europe has been well documented by excavation and radiocarbon dating. At present it would appear that farming reached the north and west extremities of the continent by two distinct routes, or groups of routes: overland by way of the Danube and Rhine valleys to modern Germany, northern France and the Low Countries; or via the Mediterranean to the Alps, or up the Rhone into central and northern France or, finally, across south-western France via the Carcasonne-Narbonne ‘gap’.' Pryor estimates that there may well have been as many as 5,000 sheep in just one fen basin, Flag Fen basin, in the Bronze Age in Britain. If such sheep farming here involved sheepdogs and the routes above were followed by farmers with dogs, it is easy to see how their pastoral dogs ended up in the nations of today covered by these routes and perhaps why, in time, such dogs ended up resembling each other.

Roles for Pastoral Dogs

 Not surprisingly, the dogs that protected flocks of sheep from wild predators, human rustlers or other dogs were large and fierce. Those that controlled the flock or herd, like the Beauceron and the Briard, were smaller, more biddable, and, although less fierce, were still very resolute, such as the German Shepherd Dog – used as a ‘living fence’. The driving dogs combined stamina and robustness with an instinctive desire to keep the flock or herd together as a group. The herding or penning dogs were required to be highly responsive to the human voice or whistle and yet still be very strong-willed. British breeds have long excelled in this role. The heeling dogs were used to turn or drive cattle and had to be small, quick and extremely agile, as the Corgi breeds demonstrate to this day. The pinning or gripping dogs, once hunting dogs and utilized extensively by butchers, were needed to seize and hold one individual animal, for example a powerful sow, to facilitate handling, loading on to transport or even slaughter. Broad-mouthed breeds like the old type of Bulldog, the Cane Corso of Italy and the Rottweiler of Germany were used for this type of work, valued for their fierce determination and widely traded. 

 Dog-traders have earned themselves a questionable reputation in modern times, but trading in dogs in past times allowed the widespread movement of dogs and a wider appreciation of their usefulness. Dogs accompanied wandering tribes, campaigning armies and migrating peoples, provided they had some use. The game-catchers like the sighthound breeds, the game-finders like the modern gundog breeds and the flock guarding breeds each had a distinct value to man. The need to control vermin led to the development of the terrier breeds. The need to control sheep gave us the herding breeds. Dogs that excelled in their specialist function have long been extensively traded. In due course, dogs that worked with livestock went with that livestock, even across national boundaries and on ships sailing to the colonies. That is how many pastoral breeds developed eventually as separate distinct breeds once modified by local conditions overseas. But wherever they went they had to function.

Needs of the Role

 Whatever their role, their work, the climate and the terrain demanded excellent feet, tough frames, weatherproof coats, enormous stamina, really good eyesight and hearing and quite remarkable robustness. These dogs operated in harsh conditions, ranging from the hottest to the coldest, the stoniest, thorniest, windiest, most mountainous and most arid areas of Europe and Western Asia. Farmers and shepherds had to have entirely functional dogs; physical exaggeration does not occur in any of the flock-guarding breeds, unlike the ornamental ones. Hunting ability was not desired although the physical power and bravery of such dogs did lead to their use in bear hunts in Russia and boar hunts in Central Europe, where they were used at the kill, not in the hunt itself. The demands of climate have led to both the flock guardians and the shepherd dogs featuring appropriate coats for their region. The Hungarian Komondor and the Italian Bergamasco display the thick corded or felted coats required to survive in their working environment. The Swiss Entlebucher and Appenzeller and the New Zealand Huntaway exhibit the smooth sleek coats best suited to their working conditions.

 If we then look at the shorter legs of the heeling breeds, like the Corgis, and the longer legs of the herding dogs, like the Belgian, Dutch and German Shepherd Dogs, we can see how not only climate but also terrain and function determined type. In some areas the harsh-haired or goat-haired breeds, like the Bearded Collie and the Schapendoes of Holland, were favoured, because of the local conditions and their instinctive skills. The breeds were shaped by the farmers’ needs.  Wherever they worked or farmed, farmers needed dogs with the innate characteristics, the appropriate physique and the suitable length and texture of coat to protect, drive or herd their stock, hunt down vermin and guard their farmsteads and pastures. Their demanding requirements have left us with some of the most popular breeds of companion dog today, although, sadly, these are so often bred more with cosmetic than functional considerations in today’s society.  

Changed World

 The advent of the pedigree dog show in the middle of the 19th century changed the world of the domestic dog forever. For the very first time, the working, pastoral and sporting breeds were to be judged on what they looked like rather than what they could do. A handsome but brainless, motiveless dog could be rated as more valuable than a skilful hard-working sheepdog serving its master in all winds and weather in harsh unforgiving terrain. A determination to ‘stamp out the drover’s dog’, as Weager (below) put it, eventually came into every pastoral breed:

“OLD ENGLISH SHEEPDOGS

The increased interest now taken in this, one of the most useful and picturesque of English dogs, was apparent at the Kennel Club show, where more purchases were effected and higher prices realized than in any other class. Farmers and others will do well to look about them and send dogs to shows, where they will find a ready market for good specimens. The quality of the dogs shown on this occasion has greatly improved on the corresponding exhibition of last year. The club’s determination to stamp out the drover’s dog has been most effectual, and here on this event was only one wrong specimen shown.”

William G Weager, The Kennel Gazette, February, 1889. 

The ‘wrong specimen’, as Weager termed it, might well have been highly effective herding or driving dogs but were not as handsome as the ringside viewing expected. Judging dogs entirely on their appearance is not exactly a rational act but sadly so often a wallet-led human choice. The exhibiting of dogs too has led to some pastoral breeds being seen much more often in towns than was once the case. It is noteworthy that the pastoral breeds of Britain were very much the dogs of working people. Early photographs of rural communities illustrate this fact. If you read Victorian dog books, packed with chapters on hounds and gundogs, you quickly detect a lack of real knowledge from the monied, educated classes of these humbler but certainly more valuable canine workers. 

 A number of pastoral breed-types never reached the show ring, perhaps lacking the glamour that the public seek in their canine pets. Most of the old Welsh breeds were lost to us, and the Smithfield Sheepdog is only kept going by the lurcher fraternity – and in Tasmania! The small heeler types of England vanished too, although eventually the Ormskirk Heeler was reclaimed for us and named the Lancashire Heeler. Undoubtedly, the show ring saved some pastoral breeds, even if many were changed morphologically and not to their benefit. Depictions of the pastoral breeds of a century ago show very different creatures from their counterparts today.

Breed Titles

 I do wish the kennel clubs of the world would get their act together over the nomenclature used for pastoral breed titles. The flock guarding breeds, like the Anatolian Shepherd Dog, should not be called ‘shepherd dogs’; the herding breeds like the Belgian and Dutch Shepherd Dog breeds are best described by this title. But when is a sheepdog not a shepherd dog? Is there a difference in role here? The Pyrenean pastoral breeds make a point for me: the biggest, the Pyrenean Mountain Dog is the flock guardian, with the size and role of the Hungarian Kuvasz; the next down in size, and on the Spanish side of the range, but more fiercely protective is the Pyrenean Mastiff, a shepherd’s mastiff, with the size and role of the Tibetan Mastiff; then comes the Pyrenean Sheepdog, a much smaller, much more active herding breed, but appreciably smaller and with a different role from our Old English Sheepdog. Breed titles should reflect breed purpose. Their role gave them their phenotype, their temperament and their nature. These are breed points as, if not more, important than show ring breed points, such as skull shape and ear and tail carriage. Breed type originated in function not appearance.    

 A further complication is the breed titles imposed on the pastoral breeds from outside. The Tibetans do not call their flock protector a ‘Tibetan Mastiff’, the Polish do not call their Tatra Mountain Dog by that label, the Roumanians do not call their Carpathian Sheepdog a Mountain Dog despite its mountain pastures, the St Bernard of today was the Alpine Mastiff of yesterday and the Sar Planina works in the mountains of that name but is not called a mountain dog here, unlike the Pyrenean equivalent. I suspect that the noun ‘mastiff’ has become shorthand for big strapping dogs out of the long-held view, especially in North America, that mastiffs are today’s molossers. They are not; the Mollossi, of Epirus in Ancient Greece, had two sorts of big dog, one was a flock protector, the other a hound. The mastiffs of their time came from Hyrcania and were referred to as ‘Indian Dogs’; scholars have since misused the mastiff to cover every large dog in ancient writings. The Swiss use the word ‘sennenhund’, or dog of the high pastures, for their livestock protection dogs. The FCI should really differentiate between mountain dogs, steppe dogs and plains dogs; their anatomies are different as is their coat texture. Breed identity can help in its long-term survival, as the Lancashire Heeler demonstrated.   

 I believe that our breeds of domestic dog are in unprecedented danger, not from one single distinct threat and not next year or the one after, but from a multiplicity of menaces over the next two decades. Some breeds, like the Smooth Collie, the Sealyham Terrier, the Sussex and Field Spaniels, the Cardiganshire Welsh Corgi and the Lancashire Heeler could simply fade away because of lack of numbers. Already there is concern over their immediate future. Their registrations in 2012 reveal the cause of this concern: 88 Smooth Collies, 76 Sealyhams, 74 Sussex Spaniels, 94 Cardigan Corgis and 47 Field Spaniels; each is now an endangered species. Breeds we have imported, like the Maremma Sheepdog, with only 25 registrations in 2012, could also disappear from our breed list. There are quite a number of imported pastoral breeds just not making ground here, after the initial enthusiasm for them faded.

 Unlike some countries, Denmark, Portugal and Japan for example, we lack a society devoted to the perpetuation of our threatened native breeds of dog. We have already lost the English White Terrier, the Smithfield Sheepdog, the Glenwherry Collie, the Welsh Hillman and the Llanidloes Setter and only just saved the Irish Wolfhound, the Mastiff, the Field Spaniel and the Lancashire Heeler. Only in the late 20th century did the best working collie breed in the world gain interest from the show fraternity, with the Border Collie going from 700 registrations in 1980 to over 2,000 twenty years later. Many less gifted foreign herding breeds were registered with our KC before this important national breed. But it is worth noting that in 1970, there were no registrations here of Anatolian Shepherd Dogs, Belgian Shepherd Dogs, Bernese Mountain Dogs, Briards, Hungarian Pulis or Maremma Sheepdogs. Another half a dozen pastoral breeds being favoured now were not even recognized by our KC then. Human fickleness does not assist breed stability.  

Perils of Over-popularity

 Paradoxically, another serious threat comes from the unwise over-breeding of certain over-popular breeds: German Shepherd Dogs (over 8,000 registered annually), Rough Collie (8,462 in 1979), Shetland Sheepdogs (5,872 in 1969) and Pembroke Welsh Corgis (4,165 in 1969). (The last three breeds had very different figures in 2012: 943, 1,085 and 333 respectively, indicating the sheer fickleness of the show dog world.) I don't recall seeing as many badly bred specimens in these breeds as I did in the 1990s. Too many under-standard bitches are being bred from; too many faulty or weedy pups are being retained. Glamorous pastoral breeds like the Rough Collie, the Shetland Sheepdog and the Bearded Collie have become victims of the show ring – being prized for coat. The Shetland Sheepdog attracted over 5,000 registrations a year throughout the 1970s. The Bearded Collie went from 3 registrations in 1951 to nearly 2,000 in 1989. Fine working breeds like the German Shepherd Dog have suffered from over-popularity, (over 21,500 in 1985), with the faddists altering the breed from its prototypal phenotype. The specimens I used to admire when working in Germany in the 1960s lost their level toplines and effortless movement based on powerful hindquarters. The ‘banana-backs’ became favoured and crippled dogs actually became desirable as misguided ‘gaiting’ or racing around the show ring with all the power in the front legs, (that is, being pulled along instead of being pushed by the hindquarters, as nature intended), developed into the only acceptable form of movement – just for this breed! They deserved better. The best ‘GSD’ I have seen in recent years was a variation developed as the East European Shepherd, Russia’s most popular breed. The brace I saw at the World Dog Show in Budapest was truly impressive.

Employment as Service Dogs

 Evidence of the remarkable merit of the pastoral breeds is shown daily in the way in which they are used as service dogs – all over the world, by the military, by police forces and as support dogs for the disabled or handicapped humans. Over the years, breeds used as service dogs have lost their role through being bred away from their function and into the world of the fancier. The Border Collie is widely used across many needs, based on its quickness to absorb training and willingness to work – two basic requirements in a dog of the shepherds. I do not know, however, of a Rough or Smooth Collie or of an Old English Sheepdog being used as a service dog. Is this a reflection of their lost capabilities, sheer human fickleness or, in two cases, the demands of their coat-care? I have long argued for the pastoral breeds to be bred true to type and fit for function; these may now be clichés but both expressions really do matter for the breeds concerned. They will, in my view, either survive because they retain traditional physical form and character or be lost to us through simply having no independent breed individuality and, more importantly, no purpose – and that, when their remarkable past is taken into account, would be our loss too.    

 “…such are the dogs used in Persia to guard the flocks of sheep, such the shepherd’s dog of Natolia; but we must not suppose that they perform the duties of our shepherd’s dog, which render it so interesting – on the contrary, they are to be regarded simply as watch-dogs, defending the flocks from wild beasts and strangers, and consequently are more remarkable for other qualities than sagacity and intelligence. In the East, be it remembered, the sheep are not driven – they follow the shepherd – at least in Western Asia, Greece, etc.; but in our country the shepherd’s dog acts as drover and gatherer of the sheep together, and takes no little labour from the shepherd, to whom his dog is of the utmost importance.”

From The History of the Dog by WCL Martin, Charles Knight & Co., 1845.