This is my favorite Dog !
Need I say more ?
I Love this f&^%ing dog !
Smartest, bravest, best nerves out here. He’s the only dog out here I won’t go to make a point with empty handed, and he’s the gentlest and most graceful around young kids, two or four legged; a lotta heart, a lotta grace… equals class.
He’s something special, he’s something to build on. More on him later, for now I just want to get some photos up.
Oz’s Penn hip ( exceptional also .28 .28 )
Oz at just over two.
2 years old
Ever wonder why dun with a black mask is the default color of so many creatures ?
Oz at 14 months
Oz at 14 months
Oz under a year here, all arms and legs. The Boerboel is an honest 160lb. good looking bastard, that I never used cause he’s not even close to right temperamentally or mentally ( he’s retarded )
Every time I look at the photo below I’m reminded of the earnest scolding I got from a well educated and worldy Turk in Istanbul who was adamant that Kangals simply die if taken from their dry native Eastern Turkey region ( chuckle ) Urban Turks, turns out, often know even less about dogs than urban Americans, and spout all manner of proud and often foolish gibberish about their National dog the Kangal.
Below Oz risks sure death in one of the ponds in my woods
Oz at 8 months
5 months
Oz here at 5 months, witnessing his first kidding. Most people that deal in livestock guardians would scold me for even allowing a pup this age unfettered access to this, but I was willing to lose a kid to see for myself if there was any real truth to the claims. And sure enough, as rambunctious as was at that age with the big goats, all he wanted to do was lick this kid. He never needed teaching from an older dog or to be separated till he was older; that’s probably not a fair expectation to set, but it’s true of him. Now as an adult he’s the teacher and I rotate young dogs/pups into a pen with him and young kids, said young dogs and pups promptly get hammered by Oz if they even think about getting rough with the young goats.
Oz here around 10 weeks, shortly after we made it back.
Oz here at about 8 weeks, in Istanbul
O
8 wks again, with me in Istanbul, preparing for the final leg of our great adventure
Sevdi’s Penn Hip ( .27 .27 ) I don’t think anybody in the world can put to better scores together than her and Oz ( .28 .28 )
The most striking thing about Sevdi for me is the way she moves, talk about floating, she’ll be the first dog I shoot video of. She came to me as an adult, so I don’t have quite the same bond or knowledge, as I would a dog I raised; but she’s good with my goats and my kids, and always on the job. She’s also got that same steady temperament I see so often in Kangals, no nervous energy at all, self contained. I’ll start with a couple shots of her just after arriving at my place after a few days on the road with me and my 14 year old, this is her meeting two of my younger children for the first time… needless to say I trusted her implicitly by then, she’s a very sweet dog, she was a family dog in her first home.
below; Sevdi and Oz
The world belongs to a good looking dog that can dance
Could be love
But it’s not all roses
11 pups born on the coldest night of the year, a record breaking 5 degrees that night I heard the little shrieks of newborns not happy and went out to find she had some how dumped about 5 of them still wet from being born, out the opening of the dog house and into the snow. I put them back in and I went back inside. I don’t believe in helping. They all lived. The Kangal, as a breed, has not been babied, it has not been ruined; It is I’m sure the healthiest and most hardy of all that I work with.
Touchdown !
I have no excuse for showing this photo… except I love it :) My fascination with genetics baring the ultimate fruit :)
Kangals 1 to 10 ( breed description )
My kangals:
Oz Tamam
Sevdi
Current litter born 11/22/11 departing 1/22/12 can be seen in
“current litters ” from headings on left side, more photos coming soon
Accepting deposits now.
My take on Kangals
Photo album of previous litter + penn hips scores
General Temperament:
Low prey drive, but highly protective, their job is to let you know if anything is out there. The Kangal is an independent, regal, self contained sort. Possessed of an almost lupine sort of grace and a primal intelligence I find lacking in less independent bully breeds. They offer a gentle stability around young kids, of two or four legs. Nothing neurotic in these dogs, no false moves, no week nerves; nothing of the jumpy slobbering bully yes man dog. But exceedingly territorial, suspicious of all things that don’t belong, and extremely protective of those that do. Wicked smart but equally willful. The most pronounced downside would be a tendency to ” expand their territory” in effect roam.
Energy level: 3
Laid back, scanning pasture with their minds on their stock and their stock on their minds. Little energy wasted here.
Intelligence: 8-9
The only reason I don’t say 10 is to allow for breeds I’ve not owned.
Biddability: 2-8
Excuse the range, but my male for example is as biddable as any dog I’ve owned….. so long as there is nothing he wants to do more at the time of my request :) This is the paradox, he’s as smart as any dog I’ve had, knows what I want, knows what the consequences of disobeying will be and will even voluntarily head for his own punishment place. In general though the breed should not be considered biddable, they think for themselves.
Independence: 8-9
That’s what they are, independent; I personally enjoy some of that in a dog, but if you want a dog that lives for you, can’t be happy without you, a candidate for mindless obedience, it’s not a kangal you want.
Gravity: 3-5
If you raise a kangal such that you are it’s stock, it will never be gone long ( unless it get’s shot roaming ) They will stay with you for walks through the woods for example. But left alone, without stock to protect, they may explore, they may “expand” their territory..
Roam: 8-9
They just do, this is a reality, all over turkey you find them on chains or perhaps with stock, very little else. This is also true of many breeds of livestock guardians even if the peddlers there of are less honest than I. Or call it different things, if they catch a bullet does it matter if they were expanding territory or roaming ?
Prey drive: 3
minimal, although they will get all over anything that comes around, mine even caught an owl, don’t ask me how, but it was still warm when I took it from him
Dog aggression: 6-8
Pretty significant, which makes sense for a stock guardian, don’t expect your kangal to welcome strange dogs in it’s territory.
Human aggression: 4-8
There again, it’s a matter of territory and doing their job. Mine don’t like anyone new outside the gate, but once a new person has been welcomed in, they will understand that they are welcome and behave accordingly. Naturally suspicious of strangers I would say more than innately aggressive.
Kangals
In a perhaps telling twist, the most ancient of breeds I work with may have the least to choose from by way of written history. A breed that’s purported to have been around for thousands of years, sitting as Turkey does at the geographical cross roads of the world, that history might be quite busy and all but impossible to document anyway. Or perhaps, as a true land race breed, there is really very little that can be said with certainty; except the breed has been around almost as long as animal husbandry.
The Kangal vs Anatolian debate is agenda driven on all sides and frankly not very interesting to me. In a nutshell it seems that almost anything that came from turkey could get papers as an Anatolian, hence the wide range of phenotypes and temperaments available under that flag, I can assure you there are endless kangal-like dogs running the streets and country sides of Turkey…. They are not all kangals.
The most valid point the kangal people have is that “Kangal” is the term the Turks themselves use, and more importantly, the term “Anatolian” is not. So while there may be some window of contention among Turks as to what exactly is or isn’t a “pure Kangal.” There is no such debate regards an “Anatolian”…. because the term has no meaning amongst Turks ! Except perhaps amongst westernized Turks, who sometimes use it as an umbrella term to speak to all Turkish dogs, of which there are several distinct groups and much crossing.
The most valid question I’ve heard the Anatolian people pose is:
” Why would a shepherd care what color his dog was if it did it’s job ?”
And I have to admit I’ve no answer for that. I’ve always found those in dogs that were particularly concerned with a dab of white here or black there, be it Kangal, Boerboel, or Dogo, were not the people truly interested in function.
The reality, as I see it, is that the definition of an “Anatolian” was much looser in many regards, than that which is currently applied to defining Kangals. So, as is obvious to the eye, some dogs called “Anatolians” probably are Kangals, but many are not. And yet since they have been given the same flag they can, have, and continue to be mixed.
Given that we had the audacity to rename the breed I guess it should come as no surprise we didn’t seem too selective in what wore the flag Anatolian, allowing all manner of dogs from Turkey to be mixed with what ever Kangals were imported, under whatever name.
But The Kangal “community” is primarily composed of a most diss-agreable collection of control freaks, hippocrits, and mercenaries. A batch of old ladies who could not be further from the the men in Turkey who historically dealt in these dogs, in any, and every regard. The Kangal in America is largely in the strangle hold of hobby, novelty, show, breeders. Ranchers are not likely to pay the prices they ask, or humor the interrogations and conditions they impose on potential buyers. Which means the breed is very liable to be put on the fast track to selection pressure dementia
So, Let it be known then, I will beat anyone in America’s price on a kangal to a true working home, with real predator issues. Not novelty this or that, on a postage stamp estate that could be guarded by anything that barks. REAL STOCK, REAL PREDATORS, REAL ACREAGE; if you have those things, I want to be the guy that gets you a Kangal. And if you don’t have those things…….. I’ll probably beat anybody’s price anyway, cause the KDCA pissed me off, I’m gonna take a bite out their pie, and I’d personally not mind seeing the price come down to a level that their ilk don’t traffic in, and ranchers might.
