Hortaya Borzaya
Encyclopedia
The hortaya borzaya is an old Asian sighthound
breed originating in the former Kievan Rus, later Grand Duchy of Lithuania (later Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) and Russian Empire. It is a dog of large size, of lean but at the same time robust build, of considerably elongated proportions. In its everyday life the hortaya is quiet and balanced. It has a piercing sight, capable of seeing a moving object at a very far distance. In spite of its calm temperament the dog has a very active reaction to running game. Hortaya are excellent, enduring hunting dogs endowed with a good, basic obedience and completely lacking aggression towards humans.
The short, dense fur can come in almost any color and color combination: white, black, cream of all shades, red, sable and brindle
, solid or piebald
(with white markings, or white with coloured markings). A black overlay and black mask
, grey or red tan markings are normal. The nose is black, with light colours a brown nose is not a fault. Eyes always have a black or very dark rim.
Atypical colors and markings, like brown or chocolate, a saddle or dapple pattern, and diluted colors (isabella) with blue or light eyes are not allowed.
Hortaya males range from 26 to 30 inches (65 to 75 cm), females from 24 to 28 inches (61 to 71 cm). The weight depends largely on type and can range from 18 kilograms (Stavropol-type female) up to 35 kilograms (northern-type male). In general the hortaya is heavier than it looks.
When not hunting the typical gait of the breed is a fluid, limber and effortless trot. When chasing the prey, hortaya gallop in fast leaps of great length.
It is very close to wolves in its pack behaviour. Thus it is usually no problem to keep even larger groups of hortaya together in a kennel; hortaya integrate easily.
As rural people in Eurasia do not at all tolerate dogs which harm their livestock, properly socialized hortaya do not hunt domestic animals, and can easily be taught which animals are off limits to them.
The breed is late in development, very vigorous and long-lived. It is not rare that older dogs, retired from active hunting, start their breeding career at an age of 8 or 9 years in perfect health and without any impairment. Breed-specific illnesses or hereditary diseases, such as hip dysplasia and elbow dysplasia, are so far unknown. The life expectancy of the hortaya borzaya largely depends on its use.In regions where they are hunted on large prey, especially predators, there may be quite some dogs killed young during the hunt. If you subtract these dangers, 14-15 healthy years as an average is not uncommon.
However, great care has to be taken in not over-feeding the hortaya pup and juvenile. The breed was formed on a meagre, extremely basic and low diet with but rare and small amounts of meat, especially high quality meat.
Most of the year hortaya get little more than the scraps from the table, a gruel of oats, bread soaked in milk and whatever rodents they can hunt for themselves around the house. Only during the spring slaughter/lambing season and the main hunting season they get more meat: the innards and offals from what they hunt for their masters. As a result this breed has practically no tolerance for high quality, high protein dog foods and supplements, and especially the young, still growing dogs will suffer irreversible and lethal damage to their bone structure and cartilage when faultily fed.
, especially for hunting hare
s, fox
es, wolves and Saiga antelopes. It is extremely enduring, capable of working from early morning to late evening. Up to 8–10 runs on game in a day (including tracking prey together with the hunter across large distances) is a perfectly feasible workload. Unlike the Whippet
or Greyhound
, the hortaya is not a short distance sprinter. Game is usually chased for distances up to 4 km (2.5 mi) on the open steppe, and a hortaya can repeat such runs after only a short rest. Unlike most sight hounds, the hortaya does not hunt using sight alone; it often will track game it has lost sight of using its well-developed sense of smell.
Hortaya hunt singly on smaller game, or as pairs and larger groups on wolves, antelopes and deer. Small game is hunted and killed immediately, larger game is cornered and held in place for the hunter. The hortaya has a "soft mouth" like the Retriever breeds. After a quick kill, the game must not be rent as native hunters also use the furs. In the CIS
hunting sight hounds are regularly tested, judged and graded in so-called "hunt trials".
The first hortaya have recently been officially exported with full breeding papers to European countries, e.g. Czech Republic
, Slovakia
, Germany
(2004), Finland
and Switzerland
. In 2005, the first hortaya was also exported to the USA. Some of these dogs participate in racing and coursing
, partly out of competition due to the lack of international FCI recognition. Hortaya owned by European owners have shown an aptitude for Agility
, Breitensport and have proven to be excellent trail
companions for horseback riders. The first registered litter outside of the hortaya's historical habitat was born in Europe in 2006.
Contrary to the practice of Western breeding and breeders of other dog breeds, the hortaya is not regarded as an unfinished breed which still needs any amelioration or even formation.
The shorthaired sightdog of the southern Eurasian steppes, which today trades under the name of hortaya borzaya, was bred in this habitat for thousands of years, is a breed as old as the Tazi/Saluki and only marginally younger than the Bakhmul/Afghan. For newcomers it would be unwise to be deceived by the relatively recent standard.
Analogous to the oriental and Asian breeds of thoroughbred horses the original breeders of hortaya consider it rightfully as firmly consolidated. An improvement into any direction therefore is not part of breeding hortaya. This is an important and massive difference to the western way of dog breeding and it has far reaching, very positive consequences for the breeding practice.
As no changes are striven for the breeding methods used among other breeds to achieve them, like incest, inbreeding or linebreeding, are practically non-existent. These methods are seriously frowned upon among hortaya breeders. It is extremely rare that ancestors appear twice among the first 4-6 generations of a pedigree. In fact, hortaya breeders try hard to achieve the farthest possible outcross. This is one important reason why the breed is so healthy in spite of its relatively small population.
Another consequence is the application of the breed standard. It does not describe any "ideal dog" which should be bred for, as it is with other dog breeds. Instead the hortaya standard is a standard of exclusion: it only and very simply describes the boundaries outside of which a dog would not be considered acceptable. Anything else would be pointless, as it is the active endeavour of ortaya breeders to preserve the large variety of types and sub-types of the breed, which may seem being totally different breeds to the layman.
Additionally, with the hortaya it is its hunting ability which is the measure of everything, anything else is quite secondary regarding selection.
Looking at all this it also becomes clear, why an international acceptance of this breed by the FCI is not regarded as being very desirable by the majority of hortaya aficionados. The breed's breeding practice, its consolidated state and its truly extreme phenotypical diversity do not really fit into the actual breeding and judging practices of today's FCI or of any other major kynological federation. Any international FCI acceptance which would not result in immediate harm to the breed needs major, important groundwork and decades of preparation. Currently the direct and immediate consequence would be the undesirable separation into show and work lines, and into western and original hortaya.
, after spreading slowly from the mountains of Afghanistan westwards. Dogs of this type were bred by various peoples of this region, which extends from modern Ukraine
and the south of Russia
to the westernmost regions of Kazakhstan
. Therefore it is not possible to attribute this breed to a specific people or country. In the east and south-east of its geographical spread it connects to the oriental rsp. Central Asian sight hounds, while it is considered the link to the western sight hound breeds close to the Polish frontiers.
In the year 1951, the USSR laid down the first standard for the breed. Nowadays the Russian Kynological Federation (RKF), the national Russian FCI member association, officially maintains the standard. Currently there exist an estimated 2500-3500 hortaya borzaya worldwide, with less than a few dozen outside of the boundaries of the CIS.
An international recognition by the FCI does not exist so far, however the breed is nationally recognized by all FCI member countries within the CIS
and by many other middle European nations. In some of these states the studbook is maintained directly by the national member organisation of the FCI, in others the hortaya is registered by specialized hunting dog associations.
The owners of these dogs are mostly local hunters, who live in remote, often isolated villages in the steppe. Few of them have any interest in shows. For them the hortaya is a valued co-worker who puts food on the table in winter. In the steppe a good hunting hortaya can be worth as much as a good riding horse.
The hortaya borzaya belongs to the extremely rare sight hound breeds, which - up to our modern times - has been selected exclusively on its hunting abilities and qualities.
Sighthound
Sighthounds, also called gazehounds, are hounds that primarily hunt by speed and sight, instead of by scent and endurance as scent hounds do.-Appearance:...
breed originating in the former Kievan Rus, later Grand Duchy of Lithuania (later Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) and Russian Empire. It is a dog of large size, of lean but at the same time robust build, of considerably elongated proportions. In its everyday life the hortaya is quiet and balanced. It has a piercing sight, capable of seeing a moving object at a very far distance. In spite of its calm temperament the dog has a very active reaction to running game. Hortaya are excellent, enduring hunting dogs endowed with a good, basic obedience and completely lacking aggression towards humans.
Appearance
The hortaya is a sight hound of a large to very large size depending on breed type. The breed has five distinct types, with at least as many subtypes to each main type. The result of this is a broad variability, adapting the breed to the large variety of geography, climate and prey found across the huge expanse of its habitat.The short, dense fur can come in almost any color and color combination: white, black, cream of all shades, red, sable and brindle
Brindle
Brindle is a coat coloring pattern in animals, particularly dogs, cats, cattle, guinea pigs, crested geckos and, rarely, horses. It is sometimes described as "tiger striped", although the brindle pattern is more subtle than that of a tiger's coat...
, solid or piebald
Piebald
A piebald or pied animal is one that has a spotting pattern of large unpigmented, usually white, areas of hair, feathers, or scales and normally pigmented patches, generally black. The colour of the animal's skin underneath its coat is also pigmented under the dark patches and unpigmented under...
(with white markings, or white with coloured markings). A black overlay and black mask
Melanistic mask
A melanistic mask is a dog coat pattern that gives the appearance of a mask on the dog's face. The hairs on the muzzle, and sometimes entire face or ears, are colored by eumelanin instead of pheomelanin pigment. Eumelanin is typically black, but may instead be brown, dark gray, or light gray-brown...
, grey or red tan markings are normal. The nose is black, with light colours a brown nose is not a fault. Eyes always have a black or very dark rim.
Atypical colors and markings, like brown or chocolate, a saddle or dapple pattern, and diluted colors (isabella) with blue or light eyes are not allowed.
Hortaya males range from 26 to 30 inches (65 to 75 cm), females from 24 to 28 inches (61 to 71 cm). The weight depends largely on type and can range from 18 kilograms (Stavropol-type female) up to 35 kilograms (northern-type male). In general the hortaya is heavier than it looks.
When not hunting the typical gait of the breed is a fluid, limber and effortless trot. When chasing the prey, hortaya gallop in fast leaps of great length.
Temperament
The hortaya borzaya is of a friendly, but distinctly Asian character. It is never aggressive or fierce towards humans, even though occasionally quite vigilant. Due the rigorous selection on hunting in a team with its owner, the hortaya belongs to the trainable sight hounds, showing a good basic obedience and high intelligence.It is very close to wolves in its pack behaviour. Thus it is usually no problem to keep even larger groups of hortaya together in a kennel; hortaya integrate easily.
As rural people in Eurasia do not at all tolerate dogs which harm their livestock, properly socialized hortaya do not hunt domestic animals, and can easily be taught which animals are off limits to them.
Health
However, great care has to be taken in not over-feeding the hortaya pup and juvenile. The breed was formed on a meagre, extremely basic and low diet with but rare and small amounts of meat, especially high quality meat.
Most of the year hortaya get little more than the scraps from the table, a gruel of oats, bread soaked in milk and whatever rodents they can hunt for themselves around the house. Only during the spring slaughter/lambing season and the main hunting season they get more meat: the innards and offals from what they hunt for their masters. As a result this breed has practically no tolerance for high quality, high protein dog foods and supplements, and especially the young, still growing dogs will suffer irreversible and lethal damage to their bone structure and cartilage when faultily fed.
Use and activity
In its original habitat, the hortaya borzaya is still purely a hunting sight hound. It is used on all game living in the steppeSteppe
In physical geography, steppe is an ecoregion, in the montane grasslands and shrublands and temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biomes, characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes...
, especially for hunting hare
Hare
Hares and jackrabbits are leporids belonging to the genus Lepus. Hares less than one year old are called leverets. Four species commonly known as types of hare are classified outside of Lepus: the hispid hare , and three species known as red rock hares .Hares are very fast-moving...
s, fox
Fox
Fox is a common name for many species of omnivorous mammals belonging to the Canidae family. Foxes are small to medium-sized canids , characterized by possessing a long narrow snout, and a bushy tail .Members of about 37 species are referred to as foxes, of which only 12 species actually belong to...
es, wolves and Saiga antelopes. It is extremely enduring, capable of working from early morning to late evening. Up to 8–10 runs on game in a day (including tracking prey together with the hunter across large distances) is a perfectly feasible workload. Unlike the Whippet
Whippet
The Whippet is a breed of dog in the sighthound family. They are active and playful and are physically similar to a small Greyhound.- Description :...
or Greyhound
Greyhound
The Greyhound is a breed of sighthound that has been primarily bred for coursing game and racing, and the breed has also recently seen a resurgence in its popularity as a pedigree show dog and family pet. It is a gentle and intelligent breed...
, the hortaya is not a short distance sprinter. Game is usually chased for distances up to 4 km (2.5 mi) on the open steppe, and a hortaya can repeat such runs after only a short rest. Unlike most sight hounds, the hortaya does not hunt using sight alone; it often will track game it has lost sight of using its well-developed sense of smell.
Hortaya hunt singly on smaller game, or as pairs and larger groups on wolves, antelopes and deer. Small game is hunted and killed immediately, larger game is cornered and held in place for the hunter. The hortaya has a "soft mouth" like the Retriever breeds. After a quick kill, the game must not be rent as native hunters also use the furs. In the CIS
Commonwealth of Independent States
The Commonwealth of Independent States is a regional organization whose participating countries are former Soviet Republics, formed during the breakup of the Soviet Union....
hunting sight hounds are regularly tested, judged and graded in so-called "hunt trials".
The first hortaya have recently been officially exported with full breeding papers to European countries, e.g. Czech Republic
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
, Slovakia
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
(2004), Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
and Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
. In 2005, the first hortaya was also exported to the USA. Some of these dogs participate in racing and coursing
Coursing
Coursing is the pursuit of game or other animals by dogs—chiefly greyhounds and other sighthounds—catching their prey by speed, running by sight and not by scent. Coursing was a common hunting technique, practised by the nobility, the landed and wealthy, and commoners with sighthounds and lurchers...
, partly out of competition due to the lack of international FCI recognition. Hortaya owned by European owners have shown an aptitude for Agility
Dog agility
Dog agility is a dog sport in which a handler directs a dog through an obstacle course in a race for both time and accuracy. Dogs run off-leash with no food or toys as incentives, and the handler can touch neither dog nor obstacles...
, Breitensport and have proven to be excellent trail
Trail riding
Trail riding sometimes called horse or pony trekking is riding outdoors on natural trails and roads as opposed to riding in an enclosed area such as a riding arena. The term may encompass those who travel on horses, on mountain bikes, or on motorcycles and other motorized all-terrain vehicles...
companions for horseback riders. The first registered litter outside of the hortaya's historical habitat was born in Europe in 2006.
Breeding
The shorthaired sightdog of the southern Eurasian steppes, which today trades under the name of hortaya borzaya, was bred in this habitat for thousands of years, is a breed as old as the Tazi/Saluki and only marginally younger than the Bakhmul/Afghan. For newcomers it would be unwise to be deceived by the relatively recent standard.
Analogous to the oriental and Asian breeds of thoroughbred horses the original breeders of hortaya consider it rightfully as firmly consolidated. An improvement into any direction therefore is not part of breeding hortaya. This is an important and massive difference to the western way of dog breeding and it has far reaching, very positive consequences for the breeding practice.
As no changes are striven for the breeding methods used among other breeds to achieve them, like incest, inbreeding or linebreeding, are practically non-existent. These methods are seriously frowned upon among hortaya breeders. It is extremely rare that ancestors appear twice among the first 4-6 generations of a pedigree. In fact, hortaya breeders try hard to achieve the farthest possible outcross. This is one important reason why the breed is so healthy in spite of its relatively small population.
Another consequence is the application of the breed standard. It does not describe any "ideal dog" which should be bred for, as it is with other dog breeds. Instead the hortaya standard is a standard of exclusion: it only and very simply describes the boundaries outside of which a dog would not be considered acceptable. Anything else would be pointless, as it is the active endeavour of ortaya breeders to preserve the large variety of types and sub-types of the breed, which may seem being totally different breeds to the layman.
Additionally, with the hortaya it is its hunting ability which is the measure of everything, anything else is quite secondary regarding selection.
Looking at all this it also becomes clear, why an international acceptance of this breed by the FCI is not regarded as being very desirable by the majority of hortaya aficionados. The breed's breeding practice, its consolidated state and its truly extreme phenotypical diversity do not really fit into the actual breeding and judging practices of today's FCI or of any other major kynological federation. Any international FCI acceptance which would not result in immediate harm to the breed needs major, important groundwork and decades of preparation. Currently the direct and immediate consequence would be the undesirable separation into show and work lines, and into western and original hortaya.
History
The hortaya is an Asian dog breed, which developed over the centuries in the steppes north of the Black SeaBlack Sea
The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...
, after spreading slowly from the mountains of Afghanistan westwards. Dogs of this type were bred by various peoples of this region, which extends from modern Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
and the south of Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
to the westernmost regions of Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...
. Therefore it is not possible to attribute this breed to a specific people or country. In the east and south-east of its geographical spread it connects to the oriental rsp. Central Asian sight hounds, while it is considered the link to the western sight hound breeds close to the Polish frontiers.
In the year 1951, the USSR laid down the first standard for the breed. Nowadays the Russian Kynological Federation (RKF), the national Russian FCI member association, officially maintains the standard. Currently there exist an estimated 2500-3500 hortaya borzaya worldwide, with less than a few dozen outside of the boundaries of the CIS.
An international recognition by the FCI does not exist so far, however the breed is nationally recognized by all FCI member countries within the CIS
Commonwealth of Independent States
The Commonwealth of Independent States is a regional organization whose participating countries are former Soviet Republics, formed during the breakup of the Soviet Union....
and by many other middle European nations. In some of these states the studbook is maintained directly by the national member organisation of the FCI, in others the hortaya is registered by specialized hunting dog associations.
The owners of these dogs are mostly local hunters, who live in remote, often isolated villages in the steppe. Few of them have any interest in shows. For them the hortaya is a valued co-worker who puts food on the table in winter. In the steppe a good hunting hortaya can be worth as much as a good riding horse.
The hortaya borzaya belongs to the extremely rare sight hound breeds, which - up to our modern times - has been selected exclusively on its hunting abilities and qualities.
External links
- Chortaj.com, an international website about the hortaya borzaya (English, German, Russian)]