The Mudi, Hungary’s "Driver Dog"
Written by: Dr. Péter Pongrácz and Celeste Spadavecchia

A Herding Breed, Past and Present In the long gone past, almost all livestock, such as sheep, cattle, goats, horses and pigs, were kept outdoors year round. They formed smaller or bigger flocks and herds which grazed on the suitable pastures and if their owners sold them at an annual market, they were driven to that place on foot, not rarely from many hundred miles or more. This form of livestock keeping required basically two major activities from the herdsmen, moving and protecting the valuable animals.

A special type of working dog, the herding dog, was developed therefore as a help for these herdsmen quite long ago. We know these dogs from all over the Old World, including Asia, Africa and Europe.

More precisely as well, the need for two functionally and anatomically different types of herding dogs developed to serve the above mentioned major livestock handling functions. The lighter, quicker and extraordinarily keen-to-serve „true" herding dogs developed separately from the heavier, robust, incorruptible livestock guarding dogs. The task of the guarding dogs does not include the interaction with the livestock, they have to stay close to the flock and their job starts when some threatening agent appears on the scene. In contrast, the herding dogs have to have the so called herding instinct which, according to the scientific research of Coppinger and colleagues done in 1987, is an almost complete derivative of the wolves prey stalking, pursuing and catching behavioral sequence, without the end part, the actual catch, kill and devour action.

 Through the cultural history of animal keeping, an amazingly rich variety of herding dog types, today known as breeds, were developed. Some of them are old, but many of them have more recent origins. Even in the New World (the American and Australian continents) people have developed new herding breeds.

Hungary has always been famous for its animal breeding, which is not a surprise, if we think about the Hungarians original occupation as a mostly animal herding nation from the East, but also the historical Hungary’s excellent environmental circumstances for keeping large flocks of grazing animals. As Hungary has original cattle and sheep breeds from the age of the Conquest of the Carpathian Basin more than 1100 years ago, such as the Grey Cow and the Racka Sheep, it is also very likely that some of the Hungarian dog breeds have a long history as well.

Sadly however as the country’s history and development was almost torn apart by the many hundred years of Turkish and Austrian occupations between the 16th and 19th century, we know relatively little about the exact origins of the Hungarian dog breeds.

The recent theories about the formation of these breeds are still more strongly based on the deductive thinking derived from the actual outlook of the breeds, than on the few original documents and comparative history of the related breeds around Hungary. A nice example of this is the supposed relationship between the three medium sized Hungarian herding dogs, the Mudi, Puli and Pumi. As the first herding breed which wrote a breed standard in the first decades of the 20th century was the Puli, the other two younger breeds, the dog experts tried to describe as derivatives of the "ancient" Puli. This type of reasoning is based on the erroneous belief that the difference between the actual dates when the three breeds were described (a couple decades as a maximum) should mean the same chronological order in the appearance of these breeds in history as well.

Today more and more debate goes on about the actual relationship between the Hungarian herding breeds, but this article has a different aim, and that is to talk about how shepherds used past and presently, the Mudi with livestock.

Developing Type

Hungary’s natural circumstances for livestock keeping were and are quite different than those in Western Europe and the British isles. Here the grazing fields are mostly flat and almost endless in comparison to the western countries hillier pastures. Accordingly with large free areas, the original sheep and cattle flocks were also large, and mostly the sheep flocks are still quite numerous today, with 500-1000 animals in one flock. This fact, coupled with the harsh climate (hot summer, cold winter) required tough and athletic herding dogs. A good example for this is the Mudi. The dog’s appearance and outer qualities serve the strength, speed and low maintenance requirements. The size of this breed is a good compromise to be able to herd larger and smaller livestock, although it is primarily a sheepdog. The Mudi is large and strong enough for groundcovering speed beside great flocks of sheep, or for motivating cattle, but it is small enough to be maintained on small quantities of food, which was essential in poorer areas. The breed’s special feature is the quite unique coat type. The Mudi’s fur is not wooly (which is a big difference from the Puli and Pumi), medium long (never short), strongly wavy or slightly curly and of medium texture which is rather soft. This type of fur is excellent against any burry plant seeds and easily repels dirt and snow. Because the Mudi sheds its dead fur, shepherds did not need to cut down the fur annually as they did with the other sheepdogs. Having a lighter summer coat and a heavier winter coat, the Mudi is truly an all season herding dog which could hold up under harsh climatic conditions.

Mudis are still being used for herding not only sheep, but cattle and even pigs. However pigs these days are kept almost exclusively in sheds and enclosures and only the cattle and sheep remain as herdable subjects for the dogs.

There are significant and very interesting differences in herding of these two types of livestock. These differences originate themselves from the fact that sheep and cattle possess different temperaments, strength and behavioral habits. If we consider herding as a type of predator activity for a moment, then we can understand that predators also use different techniques to hunt different quarries. Similarly, a sheep flock needs a differently behaving and trained herding dog than a herd of cattle does.

Tough Enough

The major difference between livestock lies in the size, temperament and behavior. Cattle are large animals and much depends on the breed, sex and age, but they can be mean and hostile. If the pasture contains bushy areas, cattle like to hide within the thickets, especially cows with calves. Cattle also lack the very strong flock instinct of the sheep, therefore cattle herding requires more one-on-one interaction by the dog with particular individuals than moving a whole flock together.

Cattle herding Mudi’s have multiple tasks such as finding and moving individual cows from the bushes (usually thorny plants, like wild rose, or blackberry), moving grazing cattle from one area to another and keeping the cattle out of a particular area. Occasionally cattle have to be separated and penned as well. Generally the following rules apply when working with cattle, the bulls are harder to herd than cows, younger animals are easier to herd than adults, beef cows are wilder than dairy cows and single cows are less dangerous than those with calves. On average, cattle are more likely to start a fight with the dog and harder to start or stop than sheep. One reason is obvious if we think about the size difference between a cow and a Mudi. Therefore cattle herders prefer to use bigger dogs, harder dogs and more dogs beside their cattle herds.

A cattle herding Mudi has to have not only herding instinct, but the desire and ability to bite the cow. As the shepherds tell it, without physical contact many of the cows and bulls will ignore the dogs, in vain, they bark and chase after them. Moreover, cattle tend to fight and even destroy dogs. Sooner or later the cattle should learn that the dogs are dangerous and painful enemies and from that point the herding job will be easier, because the „trained" cattle will obey the dogs more easily. Accordingly, the training of the cattle herding dogs mostly includes the awakening of the dog’s gripping or biting instinct, besides the tricks of herding and following the shepherd’s commands.

We differentiate three types of cattle herding Mudis, those who drive from behind (at the tail and heels of the cows), those who drive from the front (at the nose of the cattle); and those who drive from both directions. These herding styles are seemingly inborn, which means that they are not taught, but the shepherd figures out after a time, which group his new dog belongs in. Obviously, rear driving dogs are especially useful for starting the cattle, while front driving dogs can effectively stop, or turn them. This, and the difficulty of working with big and aggressive livestock, makes it necessary to use at least 2 to 3 dogs for even a smaller cattle herd. When a cow or bull decides to fight, one dog is not usually enough to make it change its opinion. Using more than one dog makes it harder for the cow to perform a dangerous attack on any dog individually, because its focus will be scattered.

The Soft Side

All the shepherds I have met and talked with told the same thing, „without a dog they could not work, as the single dog does as much work as five or more people with the sheep". The Mudis have multiple tasks with the livestock. At the barns, they help to drive out the sheep from the enclosures or sheds. They help to separate different age classes, such as the newborn lambs which remain in the barn from the mother sheep that go out to graze, the dog moves the adult sheep through the barn door while the shepherd keeps the newborn lambs inside. Also in the barns the dogs help to push the sheep through narrow sections, such as when the sheep are being bathed against parasites, they have to be forced into a smaller pond filled with water in which medicine was dissolved. The sheep which are accustomed to being moved by dogs are quite easy to handle, as they don’t fight back and don’t panic easily, but the work with the larger flock, especially when the sheep don’t want to do something, is quite hard. As the major characteristic of sheep is the flocking instinct, a dense flock is much more difficult to move from a narrower part of the pen if the dog is driving on only one end of the flock. The sheep standing at the front won’t move if the ones at the end are being driven forward. Therefore the work in confined areas requires good cooperation between the shepherd and the dog, because they have to work on different ends of the flock and they have to do different things. While the dog remains at the rear end of the flock and barks at the sheep, sometimes even nipping them, the shepherd goes to move the sheep at the front.