Catalan Sheepdog
Catalan Sheepdog
The Catalan Sheepdog (Catalan: Gos d'Atura Català, Spanish: Pastor Catalán) is a Spanish breed of herding dog. It originated in valleys and foothills of the Pyrenees of Catalonia, but has spread throughout Catalonia and much of Spain; there are breed societies in Finland, France, Germany and Holland.
It was traditionally used to herd livestock, particularly horses and sheep. In the twenty-first century it may also be kept as a companion animal.
History
The Gos d'Atura derives from the former wide and variable population of long-haired herding dogs in the Pyrenees, from which the Pyrenean Shepherd and the Euskal Artzain Txakurra also derive. It was recognised as a breed at the time of the formation of the Real Sociedad Central para el Fomento de las Razas Caninas en España in 1911. The first breed standard was drawn up in 1929, and was adopted by the Fédération Cynologique Internationale when it definitively accepted the breed in 1954. A new standard was prepared in 1982, and modified at the time of the formation of the Club del Gos d’Atura Català in 1984.
Characteristics
Height at the withers is in the range 47 to 55 cm for dogs, and 45 to 53 cm for bitches. Their coat is long and either flat or slightly wavy, and ranges from fawn to dark sable and light to dark grey.
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This entry incorporates text from “Catalan Sheepdog” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.