South Russian Ovcharka
dog breed
The South Russian Ovcharka or South Russian Shepherd Dog is breed of flock guardian dog. It developed in the areas of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union that are now Ukraine and southern Russia, and is thought to derive from cross-breeding between local dogs of the Russian steppes and long-haired shepherd dogs brought to the area from Spain in the late eighteenth century together with Merino sheep. These may have been similar in appearance to the present-day Gos d'Atura Catala.
History
The South Russian Ovcharka is thought to derive from cross-breeding between local dogs – of both flock guardian and sighthound type – of the Russian steppes and long-haired shepherd dogs brought to the area from Spain in the late eighteenth century together with Merino sheep. These Spanish dogs may have been similar in appearance to the present-day Gos d'Atura Catala. A cross-bred dog of this South Russian type won a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle of 1867 in Paris.
Much of the selective breeding and development of the breed took place in the early twentieth century, on the estates of Friedrich von Falz-Fein at Askania-Nova, now in Kherson Oblast, Ukraine. The breed standard was approved early in the 1930s.
The Fédération Cynologique Internationale definitively accepted it on 30 September 1983 as the Yuzhnorusskaya Ovcharka or South Russian Shepherd Dog.
Characteristics
It is a large dog: dogs stand no less than 66 cm at the withers and weigh at least 35 kg; bitches are about 4 cm smaller and weigh some 5 kg less.
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