Canaan Dog

The Canaan dog, a breed of pariah dog and the national dog breed of Israel, has been part of the Middle Eastern landscape for thousands of years. There are 2,000 to 3,000 Canaan dogs across the world, mostly in Europe and North America.

History
The Canaan dog began in ancient times as a primitive feral in ancient Canaan, where the Canaanites and Israelites lived, roughly corresponding to the region encompassing modern-day Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel.

They survived this way until the 1930s, when Dr. Rudolphina Menzel came up with the idea to use these intelligent scavenger dogs mainly found in the desert, as guard dogs for the scattered settlements. Menzel was asked by the Haganah to help them build up a service dog organization. She captured a select group of semi-wild individuals, tamed, trained and bred them. Menzel found the dogs highly adaptable, trainable, and easy to domesticate. It took her about six months to capture her first dog, Dugma, and within a few weeks she was able to take him into town and on buses.

She began a breeding program in 1934, providing working dogs for the military and she gave pups to be pets and home guard dogs. She initiated a selective breeding program to produce the breed known today as the Canaan dog.

Appearance
The Canaan dog is a typical primitive dog in appearance. It is a medium-sized square built dog, with a wedge-shaped head, erect and low set ears with a broad base and rounded tips. Its outer coat is dense, harsh and straight of short to medium-length. The undercoat should be close and profuse according to season. Colour ranges from black to cream and all shades of brown and red between, usually with small white markings, or all white with colour patches. Spotting of all kinds is permitted, as well as white or black masks.