Caucasian Shepherd Dog

In Poland you need a permit to keep a Caucasian Shepherd. It is issued by the head of the local authority, because the breed appears on the official list of eleven breeds classed as aggressive. In Denmark it may not be kept at all. Most of us, in fact, know it exactly the way the authorities do: from the outside. Through a wire fence, through a gate with a warning sign, as several dozen kilos of fur and a bass voice that makes the gate rattle. Almost everyone has seen it from that side. Almost no one from the other.

To see that other side you have to start in the Caucasus mountains: in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Dagestan. For centuries the shepherds there kept dogs that, despite the name, never herded anything. The Caucasian Shepherd did not drive sheep. It lived with them. A puppy was put with the flock when it was only a few weeks old and grew up among lambs, convinced that they were its family. When the shepherd went down to the village, the dog stayed. It had one job: to stand between the flock and whatever came down from the mountains at night — a wolf, a bear, a sheep thief. To the wolf it was a wall. To a lamb it was something large and warm that you could sleep next to. A hundred years ago Soviet breeders turned these mountain dogs into a single breed, and people began placing it at gates instead of beside sheep. The principle stayed the same: everything on its side is its own.

From the inside it looks like this. During the day the Caucasian Shepherd lies at the highest point of the yard and resembles a haystack that opens one eye from time to time. It follows a ball with its gaze: since you threw it away, you evidently did not need it. It carries out commands, but after consideration, with the look of someone who has been making decisions alone for a thousand years and sees no reason to start asking for opinions now. It comes to life at dusk. It walks along the fence, stops, listens, and if it dislikes something, says so in a voice that carries three streets. It is worth warning the neighbours in advance. Preferably with cake. And at the sight of you it does something it does for nobody else: it gets up. At seventy kilos that is not a reflex. It is a declaration.

Then there is the night. In the evening you switch off the light and go to bed, and it stays where it is, nose towards the gate, exactly as it stayed when the shepherd went down to the village. Nobody assigned it the task. Nobody did in the mountains either. For several hundred years someone has slept soundly because it does not: first the sheep, then the shepherds, now you.

The Caucasian Shepherd does not divide the world into good and bad. It divides it into those inside and those outside, and only one person opens the gate: you. It is you who brings guests in, calmly and in person, and it is you who, from puppyhood, shows it people, places and sounds for as long as it takes until it accepts that the world beyond the fence is not a threat. That is why this is a dog for someone with experience, a secure fence and a great deal of patience, not for anyone who has taken a fancy to a huge fluffy puppy. But anyone who has once found themselves on the inner side of this dog knows there are few places in the world as peaceful.

On the inner side of the fence, as it happens, the roles are reversed. It guards the boundary and you guard it, and that begins with the bowl. The first surprise: it eats less than you would think. An adult Caucasian Shepherd weighing sixty kilos needs about 2,400 kilocalories a day, roughly as much as you do. The second: the most harm is done to a puppy by feeding it to grow fast. A giant should grow slowly, because its joints have to keep up with the rest.

The authorities will issue you a permit for the dog. A second, more important one is issued by the dog itself, and there is no form for it. You will recognise it by this: when you stand at the gate, several dozen kilos that move for nobody get up and walk towards you.

The rest of the world looks at it through the fence. You are inside.