Diesel

It's a legendary dog. How many breeds do you know which are thousand years old? The sheepdog is at least 400,000.. Its life was all hard experiences, a severe climate and the everlasting enemy - wolf.

Climatic conditions of a huge Asian region vary but not to such extent like in the Caucasian region. Besides, Asia is turned out to be more isolated and its dogs are of more pure breeds than in different regions. It would be possible to assume that the Middle Asian Sheepdog(CAO) has the exterior very close to that of ancient dogs. In these terms, the Middle Asian Sheepdog is of great value for us.

In 2000 BC Asia was well developed both socially and economically. Here started the epoch of cattle breeders and nomads. Their life was unthinkable without a working dog. The dog was loved and worshipped

According to a legend a king-conqueror Kir I from of Ahamediny's dynasty in Iran was brought up by his adopted mother called Spacka. In Persian "Spacka" means "dog".

By the way, Slavs used to have two words for the dog. One of them was applied to any representative of dogs and quite often had a negative connotation while another one had Persian origin and meant a vicious wardog. The dog was loved and treated well both in the Turkic and ancient Iranian civilizations.

The turning point in the history of the Middle Asia was the Arab Conquest (651 DC), which brought a new religion, culture and made the region a part of the biggest Middle Ages state - Arab Caliphate. Arrival of Islam changed sharply the attitude to dogs: the holy animal turned into a grubby creature.

In the middle of the eleventh century on the territory where ancient Turkmen lived (the Syr-Darya region) the Seldguk-clan came into power. They converted to Islam and moved to Iran and the Asia Minor with their vassals. In the 14-15th centuries the Seldguk's descendants - the Osmans started the Osman Empire. Thus, the Anatoly carabash, a direct descendant of the Middle Asian dog, moved with ancient Turkmen-nomads.

Another brunch of the Middle Ages nomads, that were the ancestors of the Osetins, was known in Western Europe as the Allans. It was the Allans whose dogs are associated with the origin of many Mastiffs in Western Europe.

Then there was a powerful state of Timur. At the turn of the fifteenth century Uzbek nomads invaded the state and started a new dynasty. Different tribes related to those that moved to the south created the Kazakh khanate in heaths. A new epoch began in the history of the Middle Asia. It was the epoch of a relative isolation, endless wars, fights, which led to political, economical and cultural recession.

There is a good point in this mixture of nations. The civilization of the region was largely a civilization of nomadic tribes. No nomad would have lived without a dog. It protected his domestic animals from carnivores and robbers, helped to run the cattle to a new place.

Now, just think of how many nomadic tribes crossed the Great Heath during its history, how many of them settled down and assimilated with tribes arrived there earlier. Every new wave of migration brought dogs with it that were different from those living there. Migrants mixed with local dogs and their generations were selected naturally according to their ability to survive in severe conditions. A man's requirement was all time the same - perfect work without any failure.

Thus through hundreds of years on the huge territory of the Middle Asian region there was formed a perfect breed - the Middle Asian Sheepdog. As a reflection of the very complicated history of the dog there some inbreed types but nowadays to trace their relations with particular tribes and regions is impossible.