For centuries dogs similar to the Caucasian mountain dogs have served shepherds in the
Caucasus Mountains as
livestock guardian dogs, defending sheep from predators, mainly
wolves and human sheep-thieves. These dogs are distributed over a wide area, and there are considerable regional variations: those in Azerbaijan are fairly tall and lightly built; those in Dagestan are smaller and roughly square in outline; those of the former
Checheno-Ingush ASSR, now
Ingushetia and
Chechnya, are heavily built and very large. It is widely accepted that those of
Georgia are better and more uniform than those of other regions. During the twentieth century Soviet breeders selected some of these varieties among Caucasian dogs and created the Caucasian Shepherd Dog breed. Caucasian shepherds were first scientifically described by the Russian cynologist Aleksandr Mazover, noting that the center of distribution of the breed, both in terms of numbers and quality, were Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Dagestan. While the dogs from different areas of the region shared the general features today present in Caucasian shepherds, Caucasian Shepherds from Georgia were considered to be the best examples of the breed due to their size, powerful musculoskeletal structure, and attractive long fur. For this reason, the
Georgian SSR became the principal region for cultivating Caucasian Shepherd dogs in the Soviet Union. The breed was definitively accepted by the
Fédération Cynologique Internationale in 1984, under the patronage of the Soviet Union. == Characteristics ==