Thinking of you.
Thanks P! No question in my mind that they do - especially Turkish Shepherd Dogs; my old Mishca was - as my partner always reported - only truly happy when he was with me. Otherwise just waiting for my return, with as much fortitude as he could muster. Classic for Çoban Köpeği; they just never want to be separated from the pack-buddies whom they select and bond to in the first sixteen weeks of their lives. That’s why the shepherds put pregnant sheep and shepherd-dog bitches together in lambing pens, so that pups and lambs become fast, lifelong friends, with whom the dog always wants to be.
I have this theory that the early herders who selected from their disparate dog/wolf camp-followers the ones who showed most protective instinct towards the flocks were - though they never expressed it thus - actually selecting for a) great size and judicious ferocity, and b) greater than usual capacity to love and protect their pack-mates; us and our cattle all being seen in that capacity. The old drovers did a superb job when they bred-up the ancient family of livestock-guardian breeds. Magnificent dogs!
(Note: in the vid below, the actor reading the voice-over clearly has difficulty distinguishing between ‘pyr’ as in funeral pyre, and ‘Pyr’ as in Pyrenean: the people who wrote his script also failed to grasp that ‘Akbash’ dogs are simply all-white specimens of the standard Çoban Köpeği, the Turkish shepherd dogs, aka the Anatolians - my long-favoured landrace. They also left out several famous members of this family of breeds, the Caucasian Ovcharka, the Armenian Gamprs, and the Alabai, for example…)
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