The nature of the beast

Serbian Defence Dog is the perfect example of dog creation and trough it you can see how and why these things come to life, from the imagination to an actual physical entity. So this will be the story of its creation.

This is the official description.

“"The Serbian Defence Dog is a re-creation of the old Serbian Mastiff of the Middle Ages, which became extinct during the early 20th century. Initially disregarded as yet another "cocktail" breed, the SDD is today deservedly a well-known and respected guardian in its native Yugoslavia. It was developed by Nenad Gavrilovic, a Bosnian herbalist and medicine man in the early 1980's, but the final standard was written in 1991. Using his domesticated pack of Serbian wolves, working Bosnian Tornjaks, German Rottweilers, Neapolitan Mastiffs, American Staffordshire Terriers and game-bred Pit Bull Terriers, Gavrilovic created a breed of immense physical strength, fantastic guarding instincts and impressive fighting abilities. Even though it wasn't created with the intention of being a gladiator, the Serbian Defense Dog has achieved legendary status in the dog-fighting circles for being an undefeatable canine warrior. Initial stock was indeed tested in a traditional method of matching potential stud dogs against a number of breeds, but once the bravest and strongest examples were selected for further breeding, no further competitions were held. However, the notoriety of early SOPs as excellent fighters made the breed popular with the criminal element in the Balkans, in whose grip the breed received not only some additional blood of other breeds, but also somewhat of a bad name. Routinely defeating even the most tenacious Pit-Bulls and other fighting breeds, it is believed by many to be unfair matching the Srpski Odbrambeni Pas against any dogs other than members of its own breed, but some fanciers consider this ability to actually be a detractor from other qualities the breed possesses, because the Serbian Defence Dog is a versatile Molosser, capable of handling a great number of duties with ease, as well as being a wonderful urban companion for responsible owners."

This story is a bullshit, but the bullshit must be properly studied in order for the truth to be revealed.

Gloves on,masks on and lets dive.

First thing is that this breed is the re creation of old Serbian Mastiff. As far as I know, there is no such thing in our recorded history. Our records never mention this type of dog or any dog for that matter. But for the sake of argument, lets say that this idiot is right, that this breed existed. He states that this breed got extinct in the early 20^th century. I find this to be an absolute bollocks. The Serbian history is more or less, well documented and it is available on the internet. If you look at the timeline you will see that from the beginning of the 19^th century till the early 20^th century, Serbia was in either in war or in some type of turmoil. And that instability is not the right setting for someone to organise fun doggy orgies in order to re create a piece of history, that never actually existed. So he fails again on the history of the breed.

However, the breeder Nenad Gavrilovic is real and he is the herbalist from Bosnia. Herbalist and medicine man is a fancy word for a witch doctor or a shaman. For him, his beliefs might be the truth but for me they are magical thinking, aka the fantasy. So I think that his fantasy is the main cause for the creation of this dog. Wow, that was easy. Now lets go to the fantasy.

The dog is a status symbol. But in the medieval ages, the role of these dogs was to either be a war dogs or defend the sovereign or the monarch, since only they could afford these dogs. Also they need to be fierce and loyal to the one man and untrustworthy towards anyone else. They are in other words, kings personal bodyguards. So where is the king there is a throne and where is the throne there is a palace. But there is no palace and there is no king, so why make the dog for a king that doesn't exists? The only reason why you would make this breed is, if you have the faith that the king will come and that palace will be built and thus that the kingdom will be created. So for 10 years, the shaman was preparing this gift for the future king. But in 1980 Yugoslavia was still an existing state and it didn't had a king, it had a communist leader Josip Broz Tito.

Well almost, cause in the 1980 Tito died. Josip Broz Tito was the one and only man that was holding the Yugoslavia together and after his death, the process of disintegration started. Somehow I think that this was the main trigger for the shaman to start his magic ritual. Why? Well because the Socialistic Federative Republic of Yugoslavia was built up on ashes of Kingdom of Yugoslavia that was burned down during the second world war, and that kingdom was ruled by the Serbian monarch.

A brief history reality check.

The second world war in the Balkans wasn't the only war that was fought. The second world war was a framework for multiple layers of other wars that were fought within it. The first layer was the war for power, fought between remains of Yugoslavian royal army that fought in the name of the King and their goal was to create Greater Serbia and the communist partisans whom fought for communist idea. The bet was, whom ever survives the war, gets the right to rule. Than there is the third layer, where all the nationalities in Yugoslavia were fighting for their vision of the future. Croats wanted great Croatia, Bosnian Muslims joined them in their fight against Serbian desire to create great Serbia, Albanians in Kosovo wanted to create the Great Albania, Bulgarians wanted to create Great Bulgaria, Hungarians also wanted the Great Hungary and so on and so on. All this fighting were waged with merciless brutality and savagery, causing rivers of blood and mountains of bodies. Thanks to the allied help, the communist partisans won the internal power struggle so when the war ended they took the power. All those unsettled scores were pushed under the rug and the whole thing was covered with massive avalanche of cash. Josip Broz Tito balanced between east and the west, during the cold war and was able to get the money from both sides. So when he died, and he was the only guarantee of stability, the whole thing started to fall apart. So as the money flow was cut off during the 80'es, all those skeletons started to appear. The logical escalation was the destruction of Yugoslavia in the remake of world war 2 hostilities.

And that was the thing that the shaman felt, he saw the war coming. And that is why he made the Serbian Defence Dog. But since Defence actually is another name for war, the second name of the Serbian Defence Dog is Serbian War Dog. But in the age of tanks and jets, the war dog is useless, so why make one? Well if you think about the future, yeah, there is no need for a war dog, but the entire Serbian nationalism is based on the glorious past and the rebuilding of old glory days. So in that context, the war dog, the king lap dog and the king body guard, the king himself and the monarchy, all that is the part of that magical thinking that was the base for the creation of pseudo history, up on which the causes for war were formed. So after ten years, in 1991 war broke out and the Serbian War dog was fully operational.

We all know the rest of the story.