Croatian Shepherd Dog

The Croatian Shepherd is a medium-sized, compact, Spitz-type dog with a rustic appearance.

Croatian Shepherds have dense, compact, and soft undercoats their topcoats are profuse, dense, and soft with stand-off wavy to curly hair that can grow up to five-and-a-half inches long. Their hair is longer on the neck, back, croup, ribs, backs of the forearms and hindlegs with the longest part of their coats at the culottes near the root of their tails. It is shorter on their foreheads, on the muzzle, forehead, ears, around the eyes, on the cheeks, and on the front part of the forelegs. Males have longer, more profuse coats than females.

Croatian Shepherds are black. A few (almost invisible) white hairs spread across their bodies and white markings on the chest are permitted. Their undercoats are black except during shedding season when the color might turn greyish or have a slightly brown tinge; neither is a fault.

Croatian Shepherds have rectangular-shaped bodies with horizontal, muscular backs; short, well-muscled loins; deep, broad chests; and tails that are strong at the root, tapered toward the tip, and carried above the topline when the dogs are alert. These dogs also have oval eyes; triangular ears with rounded tips that are carried either pricked or semi-pricked; and tapered muzzles; their facial features give Croatian Shepherds a fox-like expression.

The earliest references to the Croatian Shepherd date back to 1374. The Croats who settled the land brought their dogs, believed to be descendants of the Pfahlbauhund, to herd cattle and sheep in the plains of Slavonia. The Croatian Shepherd, also known as the Croatian Sheepdog, spread across Croatia and then throughout the rest of Europe.

In 1935, a Croatian professor began the first systematic breeding program for the Croatian Shepherd. It took more than three decades for a breed standard to be published.