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The Sarplaninac Livestock Guardian Dog
The Yugoslavian Dog - Sarplaninac (pronounced shar-pla-nee-natz) has been bred for centuries in the south eastern mountain regions of (former) Yugoslavia. The name "Sharplaninec" is a Macedonian word and means Shara Mountain Dog. The Sarplaninac shepherd dog is known for its loyalty, intelligence, and calmness. The dog demonstrates a possessive attitude toward family, livestock, and property.
Sarplaninac are used primarily as Livestock Guardian dogs protecting the large flocks from predators such as bear, wolf, fox, lynx and of course human thieves. They are courageous and fierce protectors of livestock, family and property and are fearless when faced with large predators.
Our dogs are primarily livestock guardian dogs, the need to protect our sheep and newborn cattle from predators is essential for the success of our ranch. Any of our dogs we have can easily make the transition from full time LGD to home, personal and property protector. Their characters are stable, balanced and loyal.
"These are loyal and brave dogs who suit our situation and work very well. They do the job and we have no predation issues."
We are in a unique situation here in Canada and the USA as we have no tradition in utilizing LGD, and we have no native breeds of LGD. In fact, the rise of use of LGD has only been a recent event (the last 40 year or so).
The Old World knowledge has just not been available to many producers here and everything we know about LGD, has been told to us by a number of researchers.
Information on good breeding and selection, the number of dogs to run, how to raise them, how to train them needs to be examined and molded to fit the New World with its unique challenges.