TURKISH KANGAL DOG - WOLF KILLER OR PET?

Hello and welcome to Animal Watch and this week we're talking the Turkish Kangal dogs. There are a few breeds in the world who are known as formidable flock guardians. One being the feared and immense Kangal. Claimed to have the size, strength and ferocity to kill wolves in order to protect their flock. Claimed to have the speed and launch power of a Ferrari and suggested to have a bite force that is the most powerful out of every dog breed there is. Possessing an old and ancient history that goes back thousands of years. Some stories even suggest the actual wolf blood runs through their veins. But what is the truth? Are these huge herding dogs mindless killers or simply protectors of the innocent? Are they suitable as pets or best left as working dogs? And can they really kill a wolf or are they simply effective wolf deterrents? Today I'm visiting Carl Westfield in the UK who is guardian of several Kangals. And also one of the UK's top Kangal experts Sheila Reid. In order to find out just what the temperament is of one of these incredible looking dogs. And also the truth. Oh hi Annika. Nice to meet you. These are my Kangals. This is Dave here. Dave? Yes this is Dave. What a tough name for a Kangal. I love it. It's amazing isn't it? Oh it's beautiful isn't he? And this is? This is Dave and Kayaz. Kayaz. That's a pretty name. I met Carl's two Kangals and the first thing that hit me was how lovely they were. Really affectionate and welcoming of strangers. Dave, his male Kangal, just wanted to be petted and loved to roll over and fall down in my lap. The two dogs had an obvious roving curiosity and Carl mentioned that he preferred to keep them leashed as their protective streak would kick in like a Ferrari from 0-80mph if a passing dog went by in the distance. Even though they had just been introduced to this field, apparently it would now have become their territory to protect and keep safe. Well Carl, these are beautiful, beautiful dogs. It's the first time I've ever met a Kangal dog. You get this sort of idea when people go on about them being these ferocious flock guardians and that, that they're going to be somewhat unfriendly, but they've been so sweet and lovely, haven't they? They are. With people and families and especially children, a good Kangal is completely solid temperament, basically calm until roused. They can be confrontational if they consider that there's something outside of what they perceive to be their flock, their family, their guardian, their area. If anything kind of threatens that, then yes, they do come alive. It's very, very well documented that they are exceptional with children literally because for centuries they've had to grow up in villages with children running around and they can't show any undue aggression otherwise they would be fiercely treated. How tall do the Kangals stand? There's again, there's quite a disparity with what you think is a massive Kangal versus what is the reality of a Kangal, I believe. If you do any Googling or if you look at YouTube or pictures or wherever, you sometimes see massive dogs, generally originating out of Turkey, that are coming in at 80, 90, 100 kilos. These are just not Kangal. They're not a working dog. They couldn't do a day's work. These are more of the proper working Kangals that are out there with the shepherds doing the job? Yes. There is big, there is small within a standard. It's anywhere between 28 and 32 approximately. How heavy are the Kangals approximately? Anywhere between about 90 and 130 pounds. Let's just quickly talk about Dave's ears here because I know people comment a lot about cropped ears. In the United Kingdom we don't crop ears, it's illegal. He's an import and of course when they come in from working lines they've been cropped when they've been very, very young and of course little Dave here is an import so he's not being cropped here in the UK and Carl certainly doesn't crop any of the ears. And of course as you can see here on the female this is what their ears are supposed to look like. So what is it like having a Kangal in your house? For such a big dogs sometimes you can't hear them, you don't know where they are and yet they know, they constantly watch. They'll pretty much sleep with one eye open so they'll know exactly what's happening. Anything out of the unusual then they'll let you know. So if somebody rings the doorbell will they fly up? Yes, they'll want to know what it is. How about if somebody's walking a dog past your window? Yes, they will go mental. If I came to greet you in your house would they still treat me exactly the same? Yes, exactly the same. So just lovely dogs actually, really, really lovely dogs that have got a bit of a rubbish reputation I've got to say on some of the clips that I've been seeing. What is the life expectancy for a Kangal because they're quite large dogs but they're healthy? Yes, they are very, very healthy. It's normally fair to say that the bigger the dog the less long they live. But that is quite unusual with these because I've known dogs that are 14, 15, 16 years old. That's a really good age. That's a good age. Healthy age. They live and work for a very long time. It's an unbelievable coat. I mean if I rub my hand up here it's dense. Hello Dave. Hello Dave, he's so sweet. It is very, very thick. It's so thick and dense, isn't it? And the undercoat is the same length as the guard hair, isn't it? Yes. And you can see how they can keep so warm up in the mountains. I mean how cold does it get in Turkey? In the winters it's got to be minus 30. Minus 30. It must be somewhere like that. And of course they crop the ears out there because they can get frostbite and one of the first things to go is the ears. As well of course if they come into a confrontation with a wolf, a wolf will latch on to anything that's hanging off, so like the ears. This is the only colour they come in then I presume. What colour is this called? It's fawn with a black mask. And it's a very similar colour to Akita's, isn't it? That's why you said they sometimes get muddled up. Yeah, there's that. And of course they have a similar Akita tail. They're not rumbunctious. They're not rumbunctious or clumsy or anything like that. They're just very calm and quiet. So you could have quite a small child with them and they're not going to jump on them or scratch them. No, no. They seem very, very relaxed to me. These dogs are very, very aloof and they're very independent. If you let them off the lead and they see something, you were saying they could just literally go? Yeah, they will. Always on a leash. You've got to be quite a brave person to let your Kangal run loose. It might be fair to say that if you get recall from your Kangal, you'll go down in history. When they go, it's gosh, they pull. They really pull. They have greater strength than what they seem to be in their size. You've got to be fairly young and agile and fit and strong to have one of these dogs. A fenced garden. Fenced garden because you were saying your boy here is a jumper. They're also very, very good diggers. Oh, really are they? They're very, very good diggers. They will dig under fences to get out. I think the digging comes back from in summer time. In summer time, they'll dig for a cool shade, cool area. And then in the winter time, they go down in the slough. It's exactly like a wolf will do that too. What do they eat? What do your ones eat? Mine eat fresh meat and biscuits or kibble or anything really that I've got for them. They survive on very little, actually. It's not true to say that they're big dogs and you've got to feed them two, three, four pounds of meat a day. No, they survive on quite a small amount of food. Maybe that's because of their breeding and having to be up in the mountains. Later that week, I dropped by to meet a very special lady indeed, Sheila Reid, respected across the UK for her expertise in the Kangal breed. Both her and her husband Michael had kept Kangals for decades now and had travelled out to Turkey many times to source dogs from working lines. If there was anyone who knew the Kangal better, then it would be her. We fell in love with the breed. Our old dog had died and we just wanted a natural dog. We went to see a lady called Mrs Betty Marshall and she brought out her dog called Fenner. He stood on his back legs and he put his paws on my shoulders and he looked me in the eye and he looked right into my soul and that was it. The Turkish people will tell you that they came with them as they moved up through into Turkey. They've been used for thousands and thousands of years and it is their role to protect whatever it is that they live with. That's what they do naturally. If you go into Turkey and you go into the villages, you'll see the old dogs and if they're no longer fit and young out with the flock, they actually stay in the villages and when the children start to wander off, you'll actually see the old dogs go and heave themselves to their feet. But they will go off with the children to ensure that the children are never alone and they are their guardian. So they don't march up and down being aggressive. They just wander quietly along making sure the children are safe. Certainly a Kangal dog can kill a wolf without any problem at all. If you watch the Kangal dogs when they're young puppies, their mother teaches them in play and they will use their shoulders to charge. They don't always win. We had a very, very sad story. We went out on a vaccination programme in 2003 I think it was. One day we went up to the top of the mountain to this village first and there were only three puppies and that was because the previous week there was a big, big pack of wolves that had come into the village in the middle of the night and the males had gone out and what had happened is they'd gone into attack mode with the wolves. The wolves basically were winning. So the people of the village got their burning staves and gone out. But the mother of these puppies had been in a shed with the puppies when she could hear that things were going badly because it is usually the bitch that kills the wolves not the males. She'd broken free and left the puppies locked in a safe place and gone out. So between her and the villagers the wolves were chased away but all of the males were dead but she was severely damaged. They do take enormous care of their dogs and they worked very hard on her but unfortunately she didn't survive and all they'd got left were these three puppies and the villagers were absolutely heartbroken. But the Turks don't recognise any dog called an Anatolian Shepherd dog. To them the word Anatolian Shepherd, they don't accept the word Anatolian because that's just a plateau in Turkey. It's a nothingness. It was a word that was taken up by the Americans to give it a name. And basically it's a word that covers any big dog that comes from Turkey. Any dog over 24 inches that comes out of Turkey. So it can be any colour, any coat length, anything really. Whereas a Kangal dog is a particular type. If you look at an Anatolian Shepherd dog some of them look like Kangal dogs because a lot of them might have in their background a grandfather or a grandmother. They're not a dog for somebody who wants a dog that they can wander down the road and go to the local park and let them off for a week to play with all the other dogs. They'd be fine when they were puppies but what would happen is gradually that park would become theirs. If they went there every day or once a week, gradually as they grew up, that would be their park. And so they would consider that everybody within that park were people who needed to abide by certain behaviour patterns, civilised behaviour patterns. If some stupid dog comes up to it growling and snapping and snarling and biting at its face, a Kangal dog will just do dog behaviour and it will stand completely statue-like, which is dog language for your behaviour is unacceptable, please stop. And if that doesn't work he will follow through in animal behaviour patterns until it gets to the point where he has to do what animal behaviour insists that he must do, which is to pick it up and give it a good thumping, which is not acceptable in today's modern world. In today's modern world that will make him a dangerous dog, which he doesn't understand because as far as he's concerned he's followed all the patterns. I've tried, I've been very civilised, I've said don't do that, I've said I told you not to do that, I've followed all the behaviour lines. It isn't just physical strength, you need them to know what you want them to do. When we had our first dogs they knew that I didn't want them to behave in a certain way at a certain place. What they did know was they had somewhere where they could do that. Always our dogs have had somewhere where they could guard. Our dogs here, we've got a bride away at the side, they guard, they run up and down and they shout and they scream if anybody goes by, that's what they do. When we go out from here they know that that behaviour is not acceptable. We do not have a dog barking and growling and screaming in a car and we make that clear from an early age. They're not a dog that goes around with their sleeves rolled up looking for trouble and they should not be like that and that is not what somebody should be wanting. They are not aggressive, what they are is they are there to take care of you. They are my heart and soul and they will give you their heart and their soul. They don't hold back ever, there's no half ways. They're an all or nothing dog and that's the trouble with me, I'm an all or nothing person and that's what I like about them. I was deeply moved by Sheila's stories and found out information I did not previously know, such as there being varying types of Kangal, some larger, some more large headed, some with more toes and some far more aggressive than others. What was clear though was her deep unwavering love and respect of this breed, a breed that she was keen to not have misrepresented, a breed that would love and look after you with its soul and one that she wanted to be embraced by the world. She backed up my conclusion that a wolf can kill a Kangal but equally if the conditions were right, a Kangal could kill a wolf. The walls of Turkey and the surrounding areas are much smaller than North American timber wolves and this small size would equate for why they are killed from time to time, but equally it was clear that wolves regularly kill the Kangals. However, what was most important was the dog's role, as if more flock guardians were used the world around, then there would be less licensed wolf culls, as farmers could then protect their sheep in the fair and natural way, allowing wolves to coexist in the lands they all once roamed before industrial farming. Sheila also nicely cleared up the Kangal versus Anatolian Shepherd debate and explained why these two dog breeds are certainly not the same. If you enjoyed this episode on Kangals then please give us a big thumbs up and subscribe to the channel by clicking the button in the bottom of the screen and do feel free to ask us any questions in the box below and I will do my best to answer them. If you'd like to find out more about the Caucasian Shepherd I filmed with a few weeks ago, you can click the information box at the top of the page which will take you to the video on the Caucasian Shepherd who is another flock guardian which is known for being the nemesis of the wolf and I will see you next week for another fantastic episode of Animal Watch which is on dogs, wolves, wolf dogs, animal rescue, wildlife and conservation. Bye for now! If you would like to find out more about Kangals you can contact Karl via his webpage www.zoetropekangals.co.uk