It’s said that one doesn’t train a Livestock Guardian Dog to guard livestock as much as facilitate the expression of their bonding instincts. Done properly, this result in a reliable, hard working dog, but certainly not an average domestic dog. Most such dogs need supervision, work to do, acreage to roam on, and owners confident enough to take the lead with a large, strong, independent-minded dog like the Akbash, a dog that can weigh up to 140 pounds. This is not a breed with which to trifle if they are angry or feel their flock is threatened.

The Akbash is one of the national dog breeds of Turkey, developed as it was in Turkey as far as 750 to 300 B.C., and takes its name from a Turkish word meaning “white head.”  The breed is officially recognized by the KIF, or Turkish Kennel Club, and in rural areas, these dogs can still be found protecting livestock.

We found remarkable video describing the dog involved as an Akbash, but we also found the suggestion that the breed is a Slovak Čuvač. Perhaps a reader can determine it once and for all. The video is from the short movie, High Tatras – A Wilderness Frozen in Time which is set in the High Tatras, a National Park in Slovakia. It stands to reason that the dog is Slovak Čuvač:

Image of an Akbash Dog guarding a flock of sheep in California via Wikicommons’ Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.