From MAKK in Bulgaria

The native Karakachan breeds of horse, sheep, and dog are among the oldest of domestic animals in Europe, providing a genetic bridge between modern high-productive breeds with their ancestral, undomesticated ancestors. To its credit, the Karakachan dog has been both historically and traditionally the only effective and most suitable protection against flock predators.

The Karakachan Dog is one of Europe’s oldest dog breeds. A typical Mollos, created for guarding its owner’s flock and property, it does not hesitate to fight wolves or bears to defend its owner and his family in case of danger. Its ancestors started forming as early as the third millennium BC. The Karakachan Dog is a descendant of the dogs of the Thracians – the oldest inhabitants of the Balkan peninsula, renowned as stock-breeders, whom Herodotus describes as the most numerous people after the Indian one. The Proto-Bulgarians also played an essential part in the formation of the Karakachan Dog as they brought their dogs with them at the time of their migration from Pamir and Hindukush.

The dog is named after the Karakachanians-nomadic shepherds of Thracian origin. Due to their conservative stock-breeding traditions, they managed to preserve some of the oldest breeds of domestic animals in Europe – the Karakachan sheep, the Karakachan horse, and the Karakachan Dog. It is with this name that the Karakachan Dog appears in the works of some of the classics of Bulgarian literature, namely Yordan Yovkov, Georgi Raitchev and Yordan Radichkov. In 1938 H.B. Peters wrote about it in the German cinologycal magazine. The first researcher of the breed was Todor Gaytandjiev, who proposed the standardization of the breed in the 1940s.

Nowadays these dogs are found in the Bulgarian mountains - Rila, Pirin, Rhodopes, Stara Planina, where they are used as guard dogs to escort flocks of livestock in Bulgaria. Descendants of Karakachan dogs are also found in northern Greece and Macedonia, through which territories the Karakachans had passed.

Standardization of the Karakachan dog breed was proposed in the 1970s.

Author: Zooinzh. Venelin Dinchev