It is a contradiction that remains unreconciled.
The Utchak Sheepdog is said by some to be as real as the boogeyman under a child’s bed. With no proof of existence in either Russia nor its surrounds, the breed is, in the minds of some dog experts, non-existent, and that means it could never have factored into the histories of the Karelian Bear Dog or Russo-European Laika, two breeds mentioned as having Utchak in their backgrounds.
Russo-European Laika
Other sources (including some rather well known authors) refer to the authenticity of an Utchak Sheepdog as a real breed when writing about the histories of certain breeds. We found one passage that suggested that Russians bred their dogs with the “Utchak Sheepdog” to create “super bear dogs” with tremendous courage and stamina, while another wrote, “Russian breeders added Utchak Sheepdog blood for greater resistance to the cold.”
It’s possible that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Some have posited that “Utchak” may simply be a corruption or mispronunciation of the breed known as the “Ovcharka,” the Russian word for “sheepdog.”
Karelian Bear Dog/photo By Fraczek.marcin – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9395848
Using commercially available SNP analysis, researchers, Jaakko L. O. Pohjoismäki , Sara Lampi, Jonas Donner, and Heidi Anderson found that the Finnish Spitz, Nordic Spitz and Karelian Bear Dog have relatively little genetic resemblance with the similar breeds in the adjacent geographical areas of Russia and Scandinavia, and that includes the East- and West-Siberian Laika, Russian-European Laika, Swedish and Norwegian Elkhound as well as Swedish Vallhund and Norwegian Lundehund. One concludes that the breeds may be phenotypically similar to each other, but not to either the Ovcharka or a mystery dog known as the Utchak Sheedog. Russo-European Laikas are believed to have originated from aboriginal dogs of the northeast part of European Russia, and there is no suggestion that they were ever cross bred with any other imported breed. Neither was the Karelian Bear Dog interbred with any other breeds (including the Russian Laikas). Both Karelian Bear Dog and Russo-European Laika have their own separate FCI breed standards and should never be regarded as the same breed, they are not!