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	T H E    S H E E P D O G   O F   Ð A K O V O
		That can be found in numerous Internet pages : the only archives of the past are some writings from the bishopric of Ðakovo. The first one is dated from the 14th century (1374), some other followed it. Ðakovo is a town, which still exists nowadays ; it is located in a area named "Slavonija", which is situated between two rivers : Drava in the north and Sava in the south ; in the west, the area is called "Croatia", while in the east, the area is named Vojvodina. Nowadays, the Slavonija area and the Croatia one belong to the Croatian Republic, but it hasn't always been so. The publishing firm Corvina (Budapest) published a book written by Istvàn Làzàr about the Hungarian history, in Hungarian of course, but also in English and in French ("Petite histoire de Hongrie"). And it appears clearly that the Slavonija area belonged to the Hungarian territory during several centuries, with a Turkish nationality when the whole Hungary had become a part of the Ottoman Empire ; during the period of the Austrian Empire, the Hungarians got a "Hungarian Monarchy", included the areas of Croatia and Slavonija (but not the Dalmacija, which was in the Empire but not in the Hungarian Monarchy), and in fact the nationality, Austrian or Hungarian, wasn't really easy to define ... The nationality of the Slavonija area changed when the Hungary lost the World War One and lost consequently a lot of territories, included the areas of Croatia and Slovenija ; these areas became then Yugoslavian. When the Yugoslavia disappeared, replaced by several nations, the areas of both Croatia and Slavonija formed, with the Dalmacija (Dalmatia) area, the current Croatian Republic. So this dog who is nowadays called "Croatian Sheepdog" has got the Croatian nationality only since the current Croatian Republic has been created from the former Yugoslavia, the Croatian Sheepdog has been of Hungarian nationality during several centuries, a bit of Ottoman nationality and of Yugoslavian nationality too ; but finally, for the time being, the shorter spell is the one with the Croatian nationality ! Maybe it would be easier to say : "The Sheepdog of Ðakovo has been of Hungarian nationality", but in fact, the word "Croatian" must not be interpreted as a nationality. When the Hungarians of the Arpàd time came into the Carpathian basin, the area was already more or less populated ; a lot of different ethnic groups were often on the go, in the basin but also all around. The Hungarians settled down in the Carpathian basin, but they also conquered numerous territories all around the basin ; that doesn't mean that these conquered territories were populated by Hungarian people, the different ethnic groups could remain themselves, just they were under the authority of the Hungarian power. Istvàn Làzàr often mentions the Croatians, and as Slavs, as some of "the Slavs of the south". In fact, the Croatian ethnic group stayed overall itself, without being mixed with the Hungarians and becoming Hungarian with time ; of course, they mixed a little, for that matter Istvàn Làzàr mentions a Hungarian-Croatian dynasty (named Zrinyi), but overall the areas of Slavonija and Croatia remained populated by the Croatian ethnic group (as for the Dalmatia, it hasn't always belonged to the Hungarian territories, sometimes yes, sometimes no). And the Slavonic ethnic groups kept their own (Slavonic) language, while the Hungarians kept their own (Hungarian) language ; the Hungarian language isn't at all a Slavonic one but a Finno-Ugric one ; of course, as people mixed a little, languages mixed a little too, not really in their structure, different indeed, but one can notice a lot of similar words - similar when you pronounce them, not because of their spelling, the two alphabets are different enough. Nonetheless, each people and each language remained overall themselves during these centuries. To come back to the sheepdog of Ðakovo, the first writings that mention him are dated back to 1374 ; the description of the dog seems really to correspond to what could be the ancestors of our current dogs ; they called him "Canis Pastoralis Croaticus". Why ? The Ðakovo area was then of Hungarian nationality, but the population was composed in a large majority of Croatians, this word meaning then the Croatian ethnic group, for at this time there was none concept of nation for this ethnic group. So the sheepdog of Ðakovo was considered as belonging to the Croatians, to the Croatian ethnic group. Time passed away, several times again some people mentioned this dog in the area of Ðakovo. Would that mean that this kind of dog was a characteristic of the area of Ðakovo, that is to say that it could be found only or nearly only in this area ? As long as a discovery will prove in a scientific way that this kind of dog had lived in other parts of the country, and even all around, it will be quite impossible to rule out this hypothesis (this dog could be found only around Ðakovo) ; but it's as much impossible to exclude the possibility that such dogs could be found in a wide territory ; all this is considered at the time of the first writings, 1374,  but nothing can still be known about this kind of dog before 1374. So it's impossible to affirm that all the later dogs owed their origins to the sheepdog of Ðakovo. Even in case this dog lived only in the Ðakovo area in 1374, one can think that he overran a wide territory, because of human and livestock migrations, and maybe also because of his qualities with any kind of livestock. No human border could have prevented him to go to the North (the current Hungary), while in some periods of the history, the territories in the south and in the east or even far in the west could have been more or less harder to reach. But during the past centuries, the borders moved several times, and if we consider several centuries, this kind of dog could have gone nearly anywhere (the Ottoman Empire let the whole Balkan countries and the Hungary without borders !). So it's logical that this kind of dog, mentioned in the writings of the Ðakovo bishopric, could be found inside a very wide territory. When the Hungary lost the First World War, it has been deprived of several parts of its previous territory. Nonetheless, when the Hungarians proposed several breeds to be recognized by the FCI, they considered that the "Transylvanian Scenthound"  was a Hungarian breed (and the FCI recognized this dog as a Hungarian breed), although the " Transylvania" in question belonged to Romania since the end of the World War One ! They lost too the areas of Croatia and of Slavonija, why didn't they do the same with the sheepdog of Ðakovo ? I don't know the answer, but in the book of Istvàn Làzàr, I can find a difference between the areas of Croatia and Slovenija and the Transylvania : if both territories had been included in the "Historical Hungary" (the Hungary before the end of the First World War), the Transylvania had always been populated in a large majority with Hungarians while the Croatian ethnic group had always been in a large majority in the Slavonija and Croatia areas. It seems that the Hungarians considered that the Transylvanian Scenthound was a Hungarian dog, but that the "sheepdog of Ðakovo" really belonged to the Croatian ethnic group. The Hungarians made "their" breed recognized, with its own name : MUDI. Why did they - and maybe still do they, at least for some - refuse to admit that "their" dog was the same breed that the sheepdog of Ðakovo ? They coined other origins to the Mudi : the Mudi would have appeared "spontaneously" in the Hungarian territory "during the 18th to 19th century from crossbreeding Hungarian herding dogs most probably with various prick eared German herding dogs" (FCI standard dated 2000 ...) I do use the word : "coin" ; who could honestly imagine that luck could have made, from German Shepherd ancestors, Puli, Pumi and possibly some other breeds, a dog who is overall really similar to another, bred for centuries just in the south of the Drava river - this river who became a border after the World War One, while during centuries the Slavonija was a part of the Hungary ? But why did and even do the Hungarians refuse to admit that the Mudi is the same breed that the sheepdogs owned by the Croatians ? Even when Anghy published his book (in 1936) about the Hungarians sheepdogs breeds and related breeds, he didn't mention at all the Croatian Sheepdog ; it's impossible to rule out completely the hypothesis that he didn't know these dogs, but it's difficult to think so, especially when he mentions breeds from far countries, or hardly known breeds ... Did Anghi never go across the Drava river ? I wonder if the Hungarians (since Anghi's time) would have expected that this dog owned by the Croatians would never be considered as a breed, would never be recognized by the FCI, and if they had admitted that their Mudi's ancestors was the sheepdog of Ðakovo, they would have taken the risk that the FCI and some other (foreigner) people would have discovered the Croatian dog and would have thought that the real breed was the Croatian one, not the Hungarian one. By denying the existence of the Croatian Sheepdog - as Anghi seems to have done ... - they could "give a place" to their own breed, a Hungarian breed, that they called Mudi. They didn't deny the Transylvania Scenthound, they said that it was a Hungarian breed, and the FCI did the same ; it seems it was impossible for the Hungarians to say that the dogs of Slavonija and all around was a Hungarian dog, so they denied his existence to make their own dogs, similar to those of Slavonija, become a Hungarian breed. Why not a Hungarian breed for a dog who lived in Hungary, if no similar breed still existed among the breeds then already recognized by the FCI (and it was really so at this time) ? But the thing that discredits the Hungarians, is the fact that they "coined" a history of the Mudi, a history that no one can honestly believe ... Only the ones who don't know the Croatian Sheepdog can still believe this coined history. So I wonder whether the Hungarians denied the existence of the Croatian Sheepdog because they feared that anyone who could know this breed could understand quickly that Mudi and Croatian Sheepdog are the same breed, and so the Mudi could not to be recognized by the FCI ; in the years 1995-2000, I got letters and the club news letters from Hungary (I had learnt Hungarian), and I was very astonished when some Hungarian Mudi lovers said that they had to develop Mudis with other colour than black, and reduce the height too, to affirm the difference between the Mudi and the Croatian Sheepdog (who was then already recognized by the FCI), because, some said, if the FCI once would want to keep only one breed, it would probably happened that the Mudi disappeared in front of the Croatian Sheepdog ; I was astonished because the Mudi was really more numerous throughout the world than the nearly unknown Croatian Sheepdog ; but this fear means a thing : that the Hungarians knew that the real breed is the Croatian Sheepdog and that the Mudi is nothing else than a Croatian Sheepdog who lives on the Hungarian territory. If the Croatians would never had proposed their breed to be recognized by the FCI, the Mudi would have been perfectly justified, on condition that they admitted that the Mudi was the descendant of the dogs mentioned in the writings of the bishopric of Ðakovo ... The Hungarians chose another way, and the Yugoslavians chose to propose their breed to be recognized as a  Yugoslavian one, and the FCI accepted to recognize this second breed. The Yugoslavians proposed their breed to the FCI, giving a standard in French, whose title was : "Berger Croate", which means Croatian Sheepdog ; later the FCI translated it  so : "Croatian Shepherd" (in French "berger" is the only word for both "sheepdog" and "shepherd"). Why did the Yugoslavians choose to use the adjective "Croatian" ? This dog was certainly present in the areas around Slavonija, maybe in the whole territory of the Yugoslavia. "Croatia" was then one of the regions of Yugoslavia (even a kind of republic), and the Croatia Region included three areas : Dalmacija, Croatia (as an area) and Slavonija. Maybe this kind of dog was more numerous in the area of Slavoniija and in the areas all around  : Croatia (as an area) in the west, Vojvodina in the east, and may be too in the south of the Sava river, some parts of the north of Bosnia ; maybe in theses places, people bred this dog, as a real breed, I want to say by avoiding crossbreeding, and maybe that was not always so in the whole Yugoslavia ; nonetheless, we can be entitled to believe that the writings of the bishopric of Ðakovo had played an important role in the fact that the Yugoslavians called this dog "Croatian Sheepdog" ; the word "Croatian" meant then a region characteristic, maybe still an ethnic group characteristic - for the Yugoslavia consisted of several ethnic groups. Then several countries took the place of the Yugoslavia, the Croatian Republic was made of the areas of Dalmacija, Croatia and Slavonija, like the Croatia Region of the former Yugoslavia. Naturally, the Croatian Sheepdog stayed to the Croatians, and for the first time his nationality became Croatian. Nowadays, we are inclined to consider the word "Croatian" as the nationality of this breed, but in fact, when it has been recognized by the FCI, "Croatian" meant either a geographical region or an ethnic group (or both). If the Yugoslavian had called this breed "Sheedog of Slavonija", it wouldn't have changed anything ; but if they had chosen to call it "Sheepdog of Slavonija and Vojvodina" or "Sheepdog of Croatia and Vojvodina", perhaps it would have been a bit "delicate" at the end of the Yugoslavia ... For Croatian Sheepdogs prove to be numerous enough in the Vojvodina, in the east of Slavonija, but now Vojvodina belongs to Serbia. In Internet, I found people who talked about Croatian Sheepdog and said that in their country, they called him "Pulin" ; I tried to know more about this "Pulin" ; it seems so that a dog similar to the Croatian Sheepdog is numerous enough in Serbia, especially in Vojvodina, and that they call him '"Pulin" ; some seem to consider that they are Croatian Sheepdog, but I found in a page in French a text in English (1), without date nor author, where it can be read that the Pulin is the ancestor of the Croatian Sheepdog and the Mudi. The description of the Pulin is about the same that the Croatian Sheepdog one, just a bit more permissive ; the two main differences are the average height (around 22 inches = 55,88 cm) and the colours ("white, cream, yellow, fawn, red, brown brindle and grey shades") - that remains the Mudi, the main differences between the Mudi standard and the Croatian Sheepdog's one are precisely the height and the colours ... ! The Pulin "in its pure form" would have been in the Balkans since the 9th century, but the Croatians say the same for their dog ! I regard as very probable that this kind of dog lived in the Balkans and maybe already in the Carpathian basin several centuries before the writings of the bishopric of Ðakovo ; but for the time being, no one can PROVE scientifically anything ... ; must this dog be called Pulin or Croatian Sheepdog or else ? I think the problem is principally more or less rivalry between Serbians and Croatians ... If it was really sure that the Pulin was the real breed, why the Yugoslavians have called it "Croatian Sheepdog" and not "Vojvodanski Pulin" ? At this time, Serbians and Croatians were of the same nationality, Yugoslavians. And the dogs of Vojvodina like the others were registered in the Yugoslavian studbook as Croatian Sheepdogs ...  I think that the choice of "Croatian" has been influenced by the writings of the bishopric of Ðakovo. Very probably this kind of dog existed before these writings and in other places too, but of all this, we can just suppose and think, we can't KNOW anything - at least for the time being. The choice of the Yugoslavians has been based on the first elements known in a scientific way : the first writings ever found about such a kind of dog. If we consider the "Sheepdog of Ðakovo" as the representation of a kind of dog who existed before (probably several centuries before) and in a wide territory included the area of Ðakovo, then we can consider that Mudi, Croatian Sheepdog and Pulin are one and only one breed, the "Sheepdog of Ðakovo", more exactly the sheepdog described by the writings of Ðakovo (not necessarily the sheepdog originated from Ðakovo ...) In the text about the Pulin, the (unknown) authors write that the Mudi and the Croatian Sheepdog are descendants of the Pulin ; as for me, during a long time I regarded the Mudi as a descendant of the Croatian Sheepdog. I don't agree anymore, and I'm going to explain. If the Mudi is a descendant of the Croatian Sheepdog, that means that the Mudi comes from the Croatian Sheepdog, but that then, either he altered by himself, or he had been artificially modified by human breeding selection. It could be so if the Mudi breeders had really succeeded to produce only 38-47 cm high Mudis (but numerous Mudis' height corresponds to the Croatian Sheepdog's standard, and that's not a rare thing to find 50-55 cm high Mudis !) and if the genes of other colours than black couldn't be found, or just exceptionally, in the Croatian Sheepdog (but that's not so) ; in this case, the Mudi would be considered as a different breed, really smaller, modified from the Croatian Sheepdog "ancestors" by acquiring genes of different colours (either by crossbreeding or possibly by mutation, that seems to be the case for the Merle gene). That's exactly the same with the Pulin : numerous Croatian Sheepdogs (and even some Mudis) are around 55 cm high, and if some dogs have lighter bones, some other have very strong bones. The genes of colours (other than black) exist in the Croatian Sheepdog breed ; for the time being, I've no information about b (bb gives brown), but I can already be sure that the following genes still exist in the nowadays Croatian Sheepdogs : at (atat gives the black and tan scheme), of course B (Bb and BB give black), cch, (cchcch turns the fawn into yellow-cream-offwhite), d (dd turns also fawn into yellow-cream-offwhite but too it turns black into blue and brown into whitish-beige), e (ee gives fawn, which can be turned into a lighter colour by cch or by d or by both). The difference is between the standards and between the people : in two cases, the colours other than black are accepted and even promoted, in the third case, these colours are eliminating for breeding, either the pups are killed at birth, or they are not registered - they are not registered as Croatian Sheepdogs, like their parents, but finally they can be registered as Mudis or Pulins with "unknown origins" in the aim to help these two breeds to develop their differences with the Croatian Sheepdog. There's no real difference between Mudi, Croatian Sheepdog and Pulin, so it's impossible to say that one is the descendant of another, they are all the same breed ! Artificially man can made a few differences, but in fact the breeding selection don't succeed to make these theoretical differences become a reality ! The standard of the Mudi permitted to develop colours other than black, yes, but it didn't succeed to reduce the height ! The standard of the Croatian Sheepdog makes believe that this dog is always black, nonetheless it didn't succeed to make the other colours genes disappear away ... The Pulin has not yet any FCI standard, and for the time being he can be considered as a "coloured" Croatian Sheepdog. What about the recognition of the Pulin by the FCI, as a Serbian breed - and as a third breed for the same one ? It must be said that if the Croatians don't modify the current standard (or propose an additional clause) to accept higher dogs and other colours (to accept officially, I know that in Croatia numerous too high dogs are used in breeding ...), there is a "niche" for a third breed : one with 38-47cm height and several colours, one with 40-50 cm height and only black, so a third for e.g. 50-60cm height and several colours - why not ? It's up to the only FCI to decide to recognize or not as many breeds as countries, nevertheless everyone can get an opinion about this, I got mine, but it will be the subject of the following text (2). (1) Click here to find this text (2) See the corresponding text
				01-04/11/11 Isabelle Coquinot