DESCRIPTION OF THE BREED
The Romanian Mioritic Shepherd, also known under its earlier names, specifically “the Mocan Dog,” “the Mustache Dog,” or “the Fleece Dog,” is a strong and fiery breed that is large in size, but never ungainly, while also vigorous and spectacular, robust and compact. This dog is extraordinarily rustic and capable of impressing through both physique and temperament. The Mioritic Shepherd is a dog suited to the spirituality of these lands, and has a natural shape and proportions that can delight even the most demanding eye.
Its top coat is abundant on both head and body, coarse in texture, straight and at least 10 cm long. There are 2 layers to its fur, which provides very good thermal protection, as well as good shock absorption against potential hits received from wild animals. Its undercoat is denser, suppler and light-colored. The Mioritic Shepherd has a massive head with a wide frontal part, prominent occipital protuberance, a cranium that is slightly arched, and a stop that is not too defined. The Mioritic has very good eyesight in spite of its eyes being covered by the abundant hair on its head. It has ears that are 10-15 cm long, relatively high and V-shaped with an extremity that is slightly rounded, and they drop quite close to its cheeks.
Its nose is wide and black, its maxillaries are strong, its dentition is full with a scissors bite, and its eyes are expressive, medium-sized and slanted; they are either hazelnut-colored or dark brown; they project calm and intelligence. The muzzle is slightly shorter than or, at most, equal in size to the cranium, and narrows progressively towards the tip.
The body is rectangular with a straight topline and defined medium withers. The coat is shorter on its limbs.
The tail is plentifully covered in hair. The height of its chest must be approximately 50% of the height of its withers. The weight of a specimen varies from 40 to 65 kg, and is proportional to the height; the ideal height is 75 cm for males, and 70 cm for females.
Part II CLICK ---> Welcome to the Forum !
The most predominant among the Mioritic population is the white Mioritic and the gray-spotted white Mioritic. There are also specimens with an entirely gray coat, as well as specimens with black markings on white. White always occupies most of the body’s surface, rarely does gray outweigh white. In canine competitions, black and gray mottled specimens are appreciated and sought after. Mioritic breeders work on breed selection intensely, and colors are closely monitored. If we look to the past, we can see that there is a mythical ambivalence towards dogs in the superstitions of the bygone dwellers of these Romanian territories: white dogs were considered good, while the black dog was considered to be the embodiment of evil. The white Shepherd braves the wolf, who is also considered to be an emanation of darkness, but, at the same time, the wolf is respected and admired by our sheepherders. This is why luck and prosperity transform into a white dog; hence sheepherders’ preference for white Shepherds beyond any arguments concerning the ability to tell Mioritics apart from wolves when entangled in battle or the ability to distinguish between dogs in the pitch black darkness of the night or the possibility to camouflage themselves within the herd of animals.
A more important aspect about the Mioritic’s coat is considered to be the ratio between top coat and undercoat, with an ultimate tendency to stabilize a coat that requires care which is as rare as possible.
Through its presence, the Mioritic expresses strength and vigor, keeping intruders at bay. It is a lively and quick-witted dog with sharp hearing and selective sense of smell, light movement and remarkable resistance to effort, being endowed with very good motion that allows it to easily cover ground, which consequently boosts its guarding capability. The Mioritic Shepherd is perfectly adapted to the natural conditions of our country, and is also a consummate guard, works well in stressful conditions, is resistant to diseases, unfussy, relatively low-maintenance, and has unique qualities that are the fruit of natural selection, as well as the empirical selection of Carpathian-Balkan sheepherders, in the center of which was the Romanian territory of today.
THE MIORITIC SHEPHERD CONTINUES TO MAKE HISTORY
Throughout the centuries, through transhumance, Romanian (Wallachian) herders from the Carpathian Mountains took the ancestor of this Shepherd dog along with them on the multiple-thousand-kilometer routes that they traveled with their animal herds, thus disseminating this type of dog throughout the Carpathian Mountain range and even beyond the Bug all the way to the Caspian Sea. This is why we can find breeds similar to the Mioritic in modern Russia and also Poland, like the Polish Lowland Sheepdog (Polski Owczarek Nizinny – PON). Even now, the mountains of current-day Poland, but also the neighboring countries, in the region of Moravia, but also the Tatra region, are home to compact, important hubs of Wallachian (Romanian) herders who had already been living in these regions of Old Europe before the successive invasions of the Slavs. Those who have still managed to preserve their identities and have the native’s conviction, the endemic person’s conviction, are the Boykos, Lemkos, Wolochs, Dolynians and Gorals, populations from current-day Poland who recognize their proto-Romanian lineage.
These communities still use a few dozens of old Romanian words from the sheepherding vocabulary. They have, however, mostly shed this original language, but not their spirit, which is distinct from the Polish, Czech and Slovakian spirit, and they embrace their Romanian roots. So here we have, in current-day Poland, as opposed to Crimea (an old Byzantine redoubt) and southern Ukraine / Russia, people who have preserved (kept) their old hearth, not just their dogs.
It would not be a stretch to say that there are two breeds in Poland whose lineage can be traced back to the Romanian Sheepdogs, and those are the Polski Owczarek Nizinny (PON), along with the Tatra Shepherd Dog, who, as we can see, indicates the very area where the mountaineers descending from old Wallachians live to this day, people who shared a culture and populated the entirety of the Carpathian range.
This people of herders and farmers, who were skilled in battle when they needed to defend themselves, but were otherwise peaceful, stretched from one side to the other of the Lower Danube, and its migration territory extended, on the northern side, all the way to the extremity of the Northern Carpathians, and, on the southern side, all the way to the extremity of the Pindus Mountains. This nation has 4 branches: Aromanians, Istro-Romanians, Megleno-Romanians and Daco-Romanians. The Aromanian branch, endemic to the Balkans, spread throughout the right bank of the Lower Danube (the southern side of the Danube). They are good sheepherders, scientists and merchants, speak the Aromanian dialect of Romanian language, and have made significant contributions to the culture and formation of Balkan states, including Greece and the Central European states, such as contemporary Hungary. Although there have been numerous attempts, our brothers have not managed to form a distinct state entity, but the Slavs that settled here managed to prevail. In contrast, the other branch, the Daco-Romanians, who were on the left bank of the Danube (the northern side of the Danube) managed to protect and save themselves, forming their own nation state. In the meantime, this nation state aims to restore itself through the re-unification of Romania and the Republic of Moldova, a territory repeatedly annexed by Russian Slavs.
Tudor from the Dowry of The Sheepfolds - Mioritic Adult Male
Part II CLICK ---> Welcome to the Forum !
The Southern Russian Ovcharka (Южнорусская овчарка - SRO), also known as the Ukrainian Ovcharka, is another breed similar to the Romanian Mioritic Shepherd, and we can say with certainty that the SRO is the descendent of the furry Shepherd dogs that accompanied Carpathian sheepherders’ flocks. This breed came to be in contemporary southern Ukraine neighboring the Republic of Moldova, next to the old Budjak and the region of Odessa, while, on the eastern side, the area of the SRO’s birth is limited by the Donets, an affluent of the Don, and the Don itself, which flows into the Sea of Azov. The Balkan-Carpathian sheepherders’ treks led them all the way to the Bug, but also beyond, through the northern side of the Black Sea toward the Sea of Azov and finally to the Donets and Don, and even further to the Caspian Sea.
There are documents that attest these almost natural sheepherder transhumance movements back and forth. Let us also not forget about the tens of millions of herds that were taken as tribute from the Carpathian-Danubian-Pontic area throughout the centuries by our Russian and Turkish neighbors. Many of these records exist in archives, but many others have also been lost, and, sometimes, not everything has been documented. These herds taken as tribute were accompanied on their journey by guard dogs, among which were the ancestors of the contemporary Romanian Mioritic Shepherd and other Romanian type sheepdogs. After Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina were torn from the ancestral Romanian hearth during 1940 and 1941 by the Stalin regime, 3 massive waves of Romanians were deported from the annexed territory to various areas of the Soviet Union (Russian Federation). There was also the organized Soviet famine of 1946-1948 that was set in motion by the USSR administration on the territory annexed and torn from the mother country of Romania in 1940-1941. During the organized Soviet famine, Romanians were forced to resort to the consumption of dog meat, human corpses (cannibalism), and even human babies. The nuclei of ancestral dogs from the villages and from around the urban peripheries of the Republic of Moldova were destroyed and eaten during the famine organized by the Soviet Union (Russian Federation). What has remained today of the territories annexed by the Russians in 1940-1941 is the modern-day Republic of Moldova, the north (Northern Bukovina) and the south (Budjak), which were again torn away and offered to present-day Ukraine following pressure from Russia, which compensated Republic of Moldova(part of Romania) with a small sliver of land called Transnistria. For this reason, we will not generally encounter old nuclei of sheepdogs on the territory of the Republic of Moldova, much less nuclei of the Mioritic Shepherd. However, there are numerous types of endemic canine populations throughout the rest of Romania for which the amelioration and selection work for international homologation has not yet begun (e.g. the Golden Romanian Shepherd – Ciobănescul Românesc Bălan).
The decline of the South Russian Ovcharka population at the beginning of the 20th century continued throughout the period of time between the 2 World Wars. After World War II, breeders’ interest sunk even lower, and the breed was on the brink of extinction. However, towards the end of the 20th century, Russian breeders revitalized the South Russian Ovcharka by using specimens of the Romanian Mioritic Shepherd taken from Romania, and Irish Wolfhounds, but also other descendants of the old Mioritic, such as the Komondor and the Polish Lowland Sheepdog, which we briefly described above.
Romania, the largest Balkan country both in terms of surface and population, has three internationally recognized sheepdog breeds. To the west of Romania, in Hungary, our neighbors from this small lowland country have 10 internationally recognized sheepdog breeds, most of them similar to the recognized Romanian Shepherds, but also to the Romanian hound and sheepdog breeds for which the homologation work has not yet begun in our country. The Komondor sheepdog that descends from the Mioritic reflects the slightly altered image of the Mioritic Shepherd through the stabilization, among the population, of a gene that codifies curled hair.
Unlike the other Romanian Shepherds, the Mioritic is radically different due to its appearance – morphology, the length and texture of its coat, color, and even its classification in FCI Group 1. The Romanian Carpathian Shepherd is also included in this list, but the distinctions between this breed and the Mioritic are more than obvious.
THE ROMANIAN CARPATHIAN SHEPHERD DOG
Not long ago, in 2010, there was a genetic study on the sheepdog breeds of Romania conducted in collaboration with the primary care physician and neurosurgeon Horațiu Stan. This study is titled ”Caracterizarea la nivel molecular a raselor de câini Ciobănești Românești” (”The Molecular Characterization of Romanian Sheepdog Breeds”) and represents the PhD thesis of Mr. Olivier Chakirou, Eng. The doctoral student, along with Dr. Horațiu Stan and the team from the Department of Animal Genetics and Amelioration under the UASVM of Cluj-Napoca aim to establish the relationships between 4 national sheepdog breeds, as well as the relationships between Romanian Shepherds and other foreign breeds.
In order to do this, the phylogenetic tree of these breeds must be drawn in order to observe their degree of kinship and potential common ancestors. Basically, the phylogeny is established through the sequencing of mitochondrial DNA, which is exclusively passed down through the mother, and which is of use especially in biodiversity and phylogeny studies. This mitochondrial DNA is obtained from blood samples, and the sequences are introduced into a database and compared through special software with those that are already documented in the international gene bank, belonging to 150 canine breeds that have already been the subject of phylogenetic studies.
The mitochondrial DNA was sent to the Netherlands for sequencing. Thus, the phylogenetic trees are drawn and, with the aid of algorithms, the similarities and differences between Romanian breeds and other breeds in the database are established. This study is of significant importance for Romanian and European cynology, and will shed light on many questions whose answer is still not in our grasp. For the conclusiveness of this study, lovers and breeders of Romanian Shepherds were asked to allow sampling and show more openness to this opportunity. Once finished, the research proved to be the pièce de résistance in the files submitted for the international homologation of Romanian sheepdogs. The FCI Scientific Commission proposed that new breeds not be recognized in the future without studies of this kind.
Author: Veterinarian Secara Oliviu-Florian, PhD
Owner of the Mioritic Kennel ”Din Zestrea Stânelor” - ”from the Dowry of The Sheepfolds” Kennel
Part II CLICK ---> Welcome to the Forum !
Pintea from the Dowry of The Sheepfolds - Mioritic male head
Deplasările și așezările oierilor români documentate în Ucraina /Rusia, a se vedea spațiul unde a ajuns, dus din Carpați, câinele mocănesc, strămoșul SRO-ului. Arealul coincide cu zona unde s-a format SRO modern
Crimeea Region - Bizantin avanpost
Zona folosită de oierii români și de turmele lor de la N Mării Negre coincide cu arealul în care a apărut ulterior Ciobănescul Rusesc de Sud ( The South Russian Ovcharka ) Южнорусская овчарка
- Аскания-Нова, где была выведена порода, находится в нынешней Херсонской области на юге Украины.
Wutenia from the Dowry of The Sheepfolds - Mioritic female