Caucasian Shepherd The Russian Bear

More like a bear, less a dog – in its appearance that is. The shepherd dog is an imposing looking breed, with a calm and protective streak

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The Caucasus region spans Eastern Europe and Western Asia, including countries like Russia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia.

The large, livestock guardian began to emerge as a sought-after breed in the 1920s in the Soviet Union, with many variants forming and the Ovcharka becoming its highly regarded title.

ORIGIN: During the 20th century, Soviet breeders selected some of these varieties among Caucasian dogs and created the Caucasian Shepherd dog breed. These dogs continued the tradition of these large guardians of livestock such as sheep, from predators like wolves and humans, in the Caucasus regions, for years. The Caucasian Shepherd Dog became widely distributed in these countries, with different features and attributes showing forth in the variants. For instance, the ones in Azerbaijan are fairly tall and lightly built while the ones in Dagestan — a republic of Russia are smaller. It is widely accepted, though, that the ones in Georgia SSR, are the most preferred and uniform than all the other regions, because of their large size and attractive, long fur. The breed was definitively accepted by the Fédération Cynologique Internationale in 1984.