Ardennes Cattle Dog

Ardennes Cattle Dog (Bouvier des Ardennes) ORIGIN : Belgium. UTILIZATION : Originally a true cattle dog, used to the open air and to the tough work of rounding-up, guarding and driving cattle. Even today with a minimum of training for maximum efficacity, it is a good all-purpose working dog and a specialised guard of stock and property. BRIEF HISTORICAL SUMMARY : It has always been called the cowdog in the Belgian Ardennes and been selected for its abilities. It gets its name from the practice of guarding and driving cattle in the region where it is active rather than from its physical appearance. The harsh climate, the hard specific work, the difficult terrain and the poverty of the region have all served to fashion its type. Only the most hardy and the most hardworking of a deliberately restricted population were retained to drive the herds, usually consisting of milking cows and sheep but also pigs and horses in the 19th century. From the 19th century they were used to track deer and wild boar, and then during the two World Wars they became poachers’dogs. At the end of the 19th century the drover’s dog looked like a sheep dog with a harsh coat, but stronger, bigger and more biting. In Belgian shows classes were opened to drovers’ dogs as an experiment to try to establish similarities of type. On April 27th 1903, at the Liege Show, Professor Reul discovered Tom, the first example of the ideal type of drovers’dog. (no more details provided at the time). In 1913 « The Society of Liege for the improvement of the drovers’ dog from the province of Liege and the Ardennes » was founded and it drew up a proposed standard. The definitive text was adopted by Belgium in 1923 and published by the FCI on June 16th 1963. The disappearance of many farms in the Ardennes plus the reduction in milking herds considerably diminished the number of working dogs. In about 1985, the collection of colostrum from milking herds led cynophiles to discover a few survivors of the Bouvier des Ardennes, more or less typical of the breed. By about 1990, some breeders set out to produce dogs which corresponded better to the type laid down in the standard and they began from these breeding lines in the Ardennes. Oddly enough, it was in the north of the country that a few drovers and shepherds, astounded by the way that these dogs drove herds, began a breeding programme, from a line transplanted there about 1930 - a breeding programme which was out discreetly but with care and confidence. It was only in 1996 that this breed line was discovered by the official cynophile authorities. GENERAL APPEARANCE : It is a hardy strong dog of medium size which makes no concessions to elegance. It is short and thick-set with a bone structure heavier thant its size would suggest and a powerful head. The adjectives short, compact and well-muscled describe it best. Its harsch tousled coat (except on the head where it is shorter and flat), its moustache and little beard all give a forbidding appearance. The Bouvier des Ardennes is to be judged in its natural stance, without physical contact with the handler and without stacking.