The Cesky Terrier‘s story begins with a young boy named František Horák born in the early 20th century. While some youngsters of the day wanted to grow up to become pirates, cowboys or magnates, František wanted to become a horse breeder. This wasn’t entirely surprisingly because Isabella Palomino horses were bred in his birthplace, and his family created what was known as Europe’s original sport horse, the Kinský horse. At the grand age of nine, František was allowed to breed dogs.

In 1932, Horák bought his first Scottish Terrier to study its hunting style. Soon after, he started a kennel he named, “Lovu zdar,” meaning “successful hunting.”Horák was well respected in his endeavors as both a hunter and a breeder, but the Scottie’s hunting style didn’t suit him, and he imagined a dog that could hunt in packs, be easier to control, have a narrower chest, moderately sized head, and longer legs.

Thinking that a Sealyham would be the polar opposite of a Scottie, he got his first Sealy in 1940, and after nine years, he envisioned that breeding the two breeds together would produce a breed that was a successful hunter, be able to work in packs, and go to ground in holes too small for either the Sealyham or the Scottie. The dog would be aggressive, but not overly so; it would be mobile, well-muscled, short-legged and well-pigmented, and after a day of running through thickets, bogs and dense forests, could be easily cleaned up and join the family as a pet.

By now, Horak was a geneticist working at the Academy of Science in Prague and kept detailed records of his efforts to produce the dog of his vision. His first litter in 1949 resulted in three pups, but only one dog survived, a dog he named ADAM Lovu zdar, and whom he studied for two years, all the while reporting its patterns and abilities to the local Terrier Club. Unbelievably, Adam was shot by a careless hunter in 1951, and Horak had to start again. He repeated his breeding by crossing the same Sealy with the Scotty, “Scotch Rose.” They produced six puppies.

For the next thirteen years, Horak worked to bring to life the dog he had always imagined. In that time, he actually produced two breeds, the Czech Piebald dog also called “Horak’s Labor Dog,” and the Cesky Terrier. Thirty-five litters were bred between 1949 and 1963, and in 1963, the Cesky Terrier was officially recognized by the Federation Cynologique Internationale (FCI) as an established breed called the Bohemian-Cesky Terrier.  It was the most successful national breed in Czechoslovakia, and has to date been so successful that it’s been featured in books, on postage stamps, TV, and a movie. For a number of years during the Communist regime, there was even a ban on exporting the Cesky Terrier to other countries. František Horák got to see his breed flourish and spread beyond the Czech Republic, and in 1996, he died at the age of 87 years.

The Cesky entered the AKC’s Terrier Group in 2011 and received its first Group 1 win in 2012, but it’s still regarded as uncommon breed with less than 600 in the United States.