Wild Transylvania

When you think of a specific dog breed, what ingredients do you need to make your conclusion about the dog standing in front of you? Many would refer to a breed standard, giving details about colour, size and weight. Deviations from these standards often exclude dogs from shows and breeding programmes — but is that fair?

When it comes to livestock guardian dogs (LGDs), shepherds usually care far less about perfect conformity to a written breed standard and far more about whether the dog can actually do the job. They look for real working qualities—loyalty, courage, strong guarding instinct, and sharp intelligence. That said, some standards — including the Sarplaninac’s — actually permit a surprisingly wide range of colours: “All solid colors are acceptable from white to a very dark brown that is nearly black. The most common color is an iron gray” (United Kennel Club, n.d.).¹

In the photo above is Zorro, a Sarplaninac gifted to me as a puppy by a shepherd friend in Transylvania, Romania. Very soon after I started posting images of him on social media, the comments began about his colour — “he looks too dark for a Sarplaninac”, etc. I wasn’t too bothered; for me he had all the positive attributes I sought and he has always been an excellent dog. For the record, when you part his coat and hold it to a backlight, the hair shows a dark brown with a reddish tinge.

In 2023 I took Zorro to the UCHR show in Bran, Romania, where the judges are specialists in LGD breeds (UCHR, 2023).² On his very first time in the ring he won Best of Breed (Sarplaninac).

The negative comments continued, but in 2024 a remarkable opportunity arose: I was invited to submit Zorro’s DNA to a research project at the University of Porto titled “Multiple ancestries and shared gene flow among modern livestock guarding dogs” (Coutinho-Lima et al., 2024).³ I jumped at the chance. Months later the results arrived — Zorro is 100% Sarplaninac.

It’s hard to argue against science and DNA. This has been a hard lesson learned: judgement based on appearance alone is often just personal opinion, narrowly defined by a checklist of visible markers while ignoring hundreds of years of functional breeding and real ancestry.

I can’t say I feel vindicated, but it is important to look beyond physical appearance — especially when you’re looking for the working attributes you actually need in a livestock guardian dog.