well... what i found in internet about shalaikas. they are extremely shy and surely can't work in crowded spaces, but one shalaika pup costs more than new mercedes :lol:

and even more (sorry for my english, we are from ussr :lol:). their cynologist takes a sample of air with a vacuum cleaner, shalaika sniffs and detects the presence of explosives or narcotics etc. because shalaikas are so shy of strange people:lol:

mama mia... i just imagined...

More lies from the American and British press!:lol: They had a 2-3 minute news special here one night 1-2 years ago on a national broadcast (NBC, maybe?). They showed the dogs and hailed them as "Superdogs" - but, as I recall, they only showed the dogs working in a hidden corner of some airport, with no other people around.

exactly... terrorists shouldn't worry :D

and to vaiva. i think csv would be something like shalaika in our capitalistic days :lol:

Though...on topic of shalaikas, the video from Uli in the other post seems to show them not being too shy - they seem comfortable jumping up on benches near strange people in the airport. They are wonderfully cute! :p

Originally posted by GalomyOak :
"Though...on topic of shalaikas, the video from Uli in the other post seems to show them not being too shy - they seem comfortable jumping up on benches near strange people in the airport. They are wonderfully cute!" :p

Hi Marcy , I think with the shyness of these dogs it depends on individual pre-dispositions and on good socialisation during the first weeks - just like with all dogs.

If you know about the tendency to shyness because of wild canide genes inside the breed ( no matter whether it´s wolf or jackal ), one must take care much more with getting them very good socialiced, by spending a lot of time with the puppies... If you don´t do enough, they will become shy at last, sure. May be this is the only "secret" on what was told about this behaviour of "shalaikas" ( I already told that I like more to call them "sha-la-laikas"...:lol: )

And - as you tell it in your posting- the dogs in the video are not shy at all , as everybody can see.

Best greetings to USA sends

Uli alias Silvester from Germany

i'm sure nobody will show another kind of video while one pup costs so much :lol: i have some friends working in the same structures and they confirm that shalaikas are suuuper shy, sorry :|

Agreed! It's one of the most difficult things to explain to new people with our breed. Shy is not typical, not desired, not common...but not rare, I guess, either. Much of it (not all) is preventable through early (and continued) socialization, and understanding individual dogs as well as lines. It takes a lot of time and research (or good luck!) to know what you are seeing or getting in a CSV puppy. In observing my own dogs (I have the whole spectrum, from the boldest of the bold - crazy! to a quite shy dog, everyone else is inbetween )- the biggest trait they all share is that they are very intense and complicated in their personality, more so than other breeds, I guess. Each one is a puzzle. It's clearly not something everyone is prepared for that buys one.:roll: And this after many decades of very controlled breeding...I love the enigma we have now with the CSV, but recognize it's fragility too if breeders of the future aren't careful.:|

Could moderators separate this stuff to a topic called "Here we talk about everything" or similar? Thanks...

But wikipedia (very trustworfy source :roll:) says, that the experiment with these shakalaikas (it translates so nice to Lithuanian - word jackal and dry branch of a tree, also used for "very skiny" differs in one letter :lol: Šakalas and šakalys) started in 1975 :roll:
It would be interesting to know how individuals, suitable for work, are picked, also what happends to these "unsuitable". Sold to noew russians, if so expensive? :lol:

I am not sure if I told this on this forum, if I am repeating, sorry. I saw a documentary about dogs, where people made an experiment with taming wolfs. They took 5 days old cubs, hand-fed them, each little wolf grew up in families, with other dogs, slept in beds and so on. They were treated as dogs, but never became dogs. They weren't shy - very well socialised. But! I could not stop laughting, seeing how a teenage wolf simply jumps on the table and takes food from owners plate, no matter how many time the owner drops him down, he jumps again (while two dogs are staring with horror). This was so similar to my dog in her early age :lol: So when people ask me about the breed and say "yes, I understand, that dogs can be naughty" this is a nice example to show what "naughty" mean in wolfdogs... So in fact socialisation helps from shyness, but still does not make them "normal" :D

Vaiva, you are describing my house! :shock::lol:

Not really :) Every time there was new enrolment announced, I was absent from school ;-) But I did play the piano at the October Revolution anniversary celebrations :oops::)

I agree, Marcy :) It's so hard to answer questions like "Are they good with kids?" or "Do they bark or howl?" or "Are they friendly to people" or "Do they escape from their owners?" etc. Once, when I tried to be exact, I heard "You own the dog but don't appear to know much about the breed character" :rock_3

Originally posted by Vaiva:
"So in fact socialisation helps from shyness, but still does not make them "normal"" :lol:

Yeah Vaiva that´s surely correct - but I was ONLY writing about shyness.
And that was the only question about what was asked in connection with the shalalaikas...( sounds like "balalaika", so I la-la-like it !:kiss_2:happy)

I´m sure that also these dogs have some differences in behaviour to "normal" dogs, just like a lot (or most) of our vlcaks.

Greetings to Vilnius , Uli