Alopekis

The figures in the table below are taken from the text of the Greek breed standard published by breed enthusiasts (dogpark.gr, “Πρότυπο Φυλής Αλωπεκίς”) and from Greek breed reference literature. One thing must be understood: the standard exists as a document and can be read, but it is not approved by any official registry. It therefore describes a desired dog, not an extract from a stud book.

Note how the height is worded. The standard gives no separate ranges for dogs and bitches — it sets a ceiling (30 cm plus tolerance) and a floor (20 cm), and it explains separately what the floor is for: to keep signs of dwarfism out of the breed. Popular descriptions, by contrast, very often circulate “male” and “female” ranges that are not in the text of the standard at all. We quote what the document says.

The Kennel Club of Greece keeps a list of Greek breeds. It has seven entries: the Hellenikos Ichnilatis (Greek hound), the Greek shepherd dog, the Kokoni, the Cretan hound, the Greek white shepherd dog, the Molossus of Epirus and the Rhodes hound. The Alopekis is not on that list. The Greek breed reference states it plainly: the breed is so far recognised by no canine organisation, either nationally or internationally.

Its closest relative by fate is the Kokoni. In 2004 the ΚΟΕ recognised it first among the small Greek dogs, and since then an official document of origin can be obtained for a Kokoni. For the Alopekis no such procedure yet exists. The difference between the two breeds lies not in the quality of the dogs but in the fact that one group of enthusiasts carried the procedure through and the other has not yet.

The procedure itself explains why this takes so long. Since 1991 the ΚΟΕ has allowed dogs without papers but with the right phenotype to be entered in the register: such a dog receives a BEA1 mark after examination by a morphology judge. Its offspring then pass BEA2 and BEA3 under the club’s supervision, and only when five or more generations of registered animals have accumulated does the line move into the full register (BEK). Recognition of a breed, in other words, is neither a vote nor one person’s decision but a multi-year chain of examinations and matings that somebody has to run and document. For a breed whose carriers are scattered across villages and farms, that is the hardest part.

The practical conclusion for a buyer is simple and unpleasant: no document attesting that an Alopekis is an Alopekis exists. Any advert offering an “Alopekis pedigree” therefore deserves very careful reading — no official registry issues such papers. The only things to lean on are the reputation of particular Greek enthusiasts and an assessment of the phenotype against the text of the standard.

It is customary to write that the Alopekis was described by Xenophon, Aristotle and Aristophanes. That claim deserves to be taken apart piece by piece, because each piece behaves differently — and this is exactly where the main trap of the breed literature is hidden.

Xenophon is a genuine citation. In the treatise Cynegeticus (III, 1) he writes that there are two kinds of hunting dog: the Castorian and the ἀλωπεκίδες, the “foxy” ones. And he explains the name at once: the second kind supposedly descends from the dog and the fox, whose natures have mingled over the ages. The word does exist in the ancient text, it stands in a properly canine context, and it can be read in any edition of Xenophon.

But the dog described there is not this one. The academic lexicon of ancient Greek (Liddell–Scott–Jones) gives ἀλωπεκίς three senses: a cross of fox and dog (synonym of κυναλώπηξ) — and the sole reference here is precisely Xenophon, Cynegeticus 3.1; a cap of fox fur — Xenophon, Anabasis 7.4.4; and a grape variety so named for its colour, in Pliny the Elder. The Spanish dictionary of ancient Greek (DGE) adds a decisive detail to the first sense: the ἀλωπεκίς is a variety of Laconian dog. And the Laconian dog of antiquity is a hound for hare hunting — the very dog Xenophon teaches you to lay on the line in that same treatise — not a small 25 cm yard watchdog.

Aristotle speaks of Laconian dogs, not of the Alopekis. In the History of Animals, among his examples of crossings between species, he states that in Cyrenaica wolves mate with dogs and produce offspring, and that Laconian dogs are born of a dog and a fox. The word ἀλωπεκίς does not appear in that passage: what appears is the same legend of fox blood, attached to the Laconian hound.

Aristophanes, for his part, uses the word as an insult. The lexicon records κυναλώπηξ (“dog-fox”) in him twice, and both times as a nickname aimed at a man: in Lysistrata a procurer, in the Knights the politician Cleon. Later Lucian would fling the same word at the Cynic philosophers. In comedy, then, “dog-fox” denotes a cunning and shameless creature, not a canine breed. Reading that line as a mention of the Alopekis is like taking a modern “what a fox!” for a cynological record.

And a word about the legend itself. A cross between dog and fox is biologically impossible: their chromosome sets differ, and such a union produces no viable offspring. The ancient authors believed in it sincerely and used the name to explain an outward resemblance; we should read their words as evidence of what the Greeks imagined, not of the dog’s genealogy.

What is left? Something solid and honest is left: the word ἀλωπεκίς really is ancient, it really did denote a dog, and the Greeks really did see a fox in a small reddish dog. But identifying the ancient ἀλωπεκίς with the modern breed is Greek breed tradition, not an established fact. That is exactly how we present it.

Material evidence is scarcer than textual evidence, but more concrete. The Greek breed reference rests on three things.

• An incised pithos from Thessaly, about 3000 BC. The silhouette of a dog is scratched into the large jar; the piece is kept in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens and is considered the oldest image of a dog from Greek lands.
• A comparable find at Askitario near Rafina, dated to the Early Bronze Age — 2500–2100 BC.
• Dog bones in the lower layers of the Neolithic settlements of Sitagroi and Sesklo. They are described as close to the Central European finds of the “peat dog” (Canis familiaris palustris), the small domestic dog of the lake settlements.

Interpretation begins after that. The fact that small domestic dogs lived on Greek soil in the Neolithic does not automatically mean that today’s Alopekis descends from them in a straight line: between a silhouette on a jar and a living dog in a village near Serres lie several thousand years, during which populations mixed, vanished and returned. Tellingly, having listed these finds, the Greek breed reference itself presents the comparison of DNA from Neolithic bones with modern dogs as a task still to be carried out. Continuity “from the Neolithic to the present day” is therefore a hypothesis the breed considers plausible and wants to test, not the result of a test.

One more detail is worth keeping in mind: all small dogs in the world — from the Prague ratter to the Alopekis — carry a shared genetic trace of size reduction. A study published in Science in 2007 showed that one haplotype of the IGF1 gene is present in practically every small breed and almost absent in giant ones. That explains why “miniaturisation” took similar routes in different corners of the world. But it is a conclusion about small dogs in general; the Alopekis was not genotyped in that study, and we will not credit the breed with a result that does not name it.

Its role in the Greek village, on the other hand, is well documented without any archaeology. Alopekis destroyed rats and mice, guarded poultry from foxes and martens, worked alongside the big shepherd dogs and, in some districts — the prefecture of Serres in particular — accompanied herds of buffalo and cattle. That is a rare specialisation: dogs used with cattle are usually large, of molossoid build. Unlike a narrow specialist such as the Hellenic Hound, the Alopekis remained an all-rounder that does a bit of everything.

The text of the standard reads like the description of a working dog, not an ornamental one. The proportions are given as numbers: the body exceeds the height at the withers by about 10–15 %, and the height-to-length ratio is somewhere around 4:5 to 4:5.5. The chest is deep — at least half the total height from withers to ground. Muzzle and skull are of equal length. This is the format of an enduring trotter in miniature, not an elongated trunk on short legs as in the Welsh Corgi Pembroke: the standard expressly warns that the limbs must be neither chondrodystrophic nor visibly shortened, and calls an acquired curvature of the forelegs undesirable.

• Head: reminiscent of a fox. The muzzle is wedge-shaped, tapering evenly and gradually, with no sharp point and no undershot bite. The stop is light — shallow but visible and clearly drawn. The nasal bridge is straight.
• Skull: broad, very slightly domed, roomy for the brain. Cheeks developed but not protruding. The occiput does not stand out strongly. The frontal furrow is marked at the brows and fades softly towards the top of the skull.
• Teeth and lips: strong jaws, an even and complete dental arch, tightly fitting lips.
• Eyes: fairly large, almond-shaped to nearly round, bright, normally set — neither sunken nor bulging. The colour harmonises with the coat. The standard explicitly requires both eyes to be the same colour and rejects blue, washed-out or pale yellow eyes with a predatory expression.
• Ears: triangular, fairly large, slightly rounded at the tips, erect and very mobile.
• Neck: of moderate length, strong, cylindro-conical, without dewlap, with a clear but not exaggerated nape.
• Tail: long, sickle-shaped, reaching the hocks, set on and carried fairly high, with an elegant curve — but it does not lie on the back and does not stick up vertically. At rest it hangs straight, without kinks or deviations. The hair on its underside is longer.
• Feet: ellipsoid, neither as round nor as tight as a cat’s; nails short and strong, pads thick and springy. The hind feet are slightly smaller than the front ones.

A separate point of the standard concerns males: both testicles must be normal in appearance and position. That is not a decorative requirement — cryptorchidism occurs in dogs generally, and that is precisely why it is written into the standard as a condition of admission to breeding.

This is where popular descriptions simplify most. The Greek breed reference describes not one coat but three varieties — all of them obligatorily with an undercoat:

• short, harsh and smooth;
• semi-long, abundant, rough;
• semi-long, harsh, wiry.

The standard sets clear limits: guard hair harsh, smooth and water-repellent, undercoat soft and dense, length no more than 5 cm, the coat denser and longer on the neck, with richer furnishings on the tail, the “trousers” and the back of the forelegs — especially in males. What the coat must never be: fine, sparse, soft and silky; and the undercoat must on no account be missing. The logic is simple — this is a dog that has to live outdoors without difficulty, and the undercoat works here as insulation and as protection at once.

Colour: any colour and any combination of colours is admitted, except depigmented white (albinism). Strong pigmentation is explicitly named as preferred. The commonest are white, black, brown and bicolours — black and white, white with black or chestnut patches, black with white markings, chestnut with tan; more rarely pale white, pale yellow and other shades. In other words, a “white Alopekis” is a normal and even frequent dog; what the standard rejects is the absence of pigment, not a white coat.

The most interesting thing in the Alopekis standard is the way character is written into it. The wording is severe: the breed’s innate typical behaviour is of the highest importance, and timid, asocial or aggressive dogs are excluded not only from shows but also from breeding. Many standards stop at disqualification in the ring; here the psyche is raised to the rank of a breeding filter, on a par with anatomy.

The desired portrait is described in detail: a house dog, companionable, highly cooperative, faithful and devoted, obedient and lively, watchful and active — but not nervous. Self-assured, outgoing, friendly, sociable, cheerful. Protective and gentle with the other animals of the household, an implacable enemy of vermin, hard-working, extremely trainable, with a marked hunting instinct and a keen appetite for play.

In practice this means the following. The hunting instinct is nothing decorative: a dog kept for centuries against rats does not stop being a hunter because it has moved into a flat. With a hamster, a fancy rat or a parrot in the same room, coexistence has to be built deliberately, not left to the dog’s good nature.

Then comes the voice. Watchfulness and a tendency to warn by barking are written into the standard as desirable. Excellent for a yard, middling for a block of flats: here the “quiet” command has to be taught in the first weeks, not “some time later”. The dog learns well, so the task is solvable — but it exists.

With other dogs the Alopekis generally gets on easily, large ones included. It is of course not an Alano Español capable of stopping a bull, nor a flock guardian like the Akbash, which works on its own beside the herd: its role is different — to raise the alarm and stay close to a person. On a Greek holding that is exactly the pair that took shape historically: the big shepherd dog out on the pasture, the little Alopekis in the yard.

And the main limitation. This is not a dog for an empty house. The breed formed alongside people around the clock — by the henhouse, by the flock, by the hearth; prolonged solitude is unnatural for it and comes out as barking, digging and damaged belongings. If nobody is home for ten hours at a stretch, another breed is worth considering honestly.

Let us begin with a methodological warning, because this is where the reader is most often misled. We do not give a list of breed diseases with figures we would be prepared to put our name to: breed epidemiology for the Alopekis — a sample of several thousand dogs, a record of diagnoses, a screening programme for breeding stock — does not exist.

It does not follow that the breed is free of risk. An absence of description is a gap in the data, not a certificate. A breed in which nobody has counted diagnoses is easy to describe as trouble-free, because there is nobody to object. That is precisely why breed literature so readily turns the silence of the data into a compliment: the praise rests not on a record but on its absence. We draw no such conclusions and advise against relying on them when choosing a puppy.

What, then, can usefully be said? Two solid levels can be leaned on: what is documented for small dogs in general, and what is documented for dogs living in Greece.

The kneecap. The largest British study of first-opinion veterinary practice (VetCompass) covered 210,824 dogs and gave a prevalence of diagnosed patellar luxation of 1.30 % (95 % CI 1.21–1.39). The median weight of a diagnosed dog is 8.0 kg — exactly the weight category the Alopekis lives in. And a detail that matters specifically for breeding small dogs: raised odds were found in dogs that were lighter than the average weight of their own breed. That is an argument against the chase for miniature size — and it explains, incidentally, why the Greek standard deliberately sets a floor of 20 cm and warns separately against dwarfism. In practice: if a puppy starts to “skip” on a hind leg while running, or to carry it for a few strides, that is a reason to see an orthopaedic vet, not to wait.

Teeth. In the same first-opinion data the annual prevalence of diagnosed periodontal disease was 12.52 % (95 % CI 12.09–12.97) in a sample of 22,333 dogs, and the odds fell progressively as adult body weight rose — meaning small dogs are in the higher-risk group simply because of jaw size. For the Alopekis this implies mundane but non-negotiable work: get the puppy used to tooth brushing in the first months, while it is still taken for a game, and do not put the first oral examination off “until old age”.

Mediterranean vector-borne infections. This is the most concrete risk tied to the breed’s homeland, and it is well measured. A study on the Greek islands of the Ionian and Aegean seas examined 1,154 dogs: 25.6 % had been exposed to at least one vector-borne pathogen. Seroprevalence was 15.3 % for Leishmania spp., 7.5 % for Ehrlichia spp. and 2.3 % for Anaplasma spp.; Borrelia burgdorferi was not detected. Among seropositive dogs, 27.4 % showed clinical signs — skin lesions, enlarged lymph nodes, pale mucous membranes, onychogryphosis, weight loss. The authors stress protection with repellents and vaccination.

Why does this concern the Alopekis in particular? Because its traditional way of life — outdoors, about the holding, all year round — is exactly the profile of high exposure to the sandflies that carry the parasite. A dog that sleeps in a yard under the Greek sky and a dog that sleeps in a flat do not share the same risk, genetics being equal. If you take your dog to southern Europe, or take a puppy from there, external antiparasitic treatment belongs in the travel plan alongside the paperwork.

Weight. The Alopekis is not fussy about food — and that, paradoxically, is a risk factor: a dog that is not fussy eats everything it is given. Excess weight in a small breed strikes on several fronts at once: joints, heart, stamina on a walk. The ribs should be palpable under light pressure and the waist visible from above. This is the simplest prevention there is, and the only one entirely in your hands.

What to ask the breeder. Since no compulsory breed tests exist, what remains is to ask about specifics: has an orthopaedic vet examined the parents’ stifles; are there dogs in the line that reached old age, and what did they die of; are the adult animals vaccinated and treated against parasites; what are the parents like by behaviour rather than by description. The standard, remember, requires timid and aggressive dogs to be excluded from breeding — and that is a requirement a conscientious breeder meets without a registry.

The Alopekis adapts easily: a flat in town, a house in the country, a yard with a run in the warm season — all of it suits, provided there are people nearby. In winter the dog should come indoors: the undercoat saves it from cool weather, not from frost, and the Greek climate in which the breed formed is poor preparation for our winters.

Coat. Care is minimal but regular. Brushing once or twice a week with a rubber mitt or a brush, daily during the moult. Bathing is rare: two or three times a year, or when the dog is genuinely dirty, because frequent washing strips the protective layer of sebum from the skin. The breed reference notes separately that the texture of the coat helps it stay clean and that these dogs groom themselves a great deal and thoroughly.

Nails. A dog that moves a lot on hard ground wears them down itself. But if the Alopekis lives exclusively in a flat on soft floor coverings, check them once a month: an overgrown nail changes the set of the foot and the load on the joint.

Ears and eyes. Erect ears ventilate well — an advantage over drop-eared breeds — but a weekly check is still worth doing, especially after a walk through grass. The eyes are large and fairly open: close attention to redness or discharge is more warranted here than in dogs with a deep-set eye.

Movement. This is the breed’s one strict requirement. The standard describes a dog able to cover long distances tirelessly — fast, agile, with lightning reactions. Two short comfort breaks are not enough for such a dog: it needs daily active walks and, just as importantly, work for its head. Search games, kibble scattered in the grass, simple nosework, varied routes — for the Alopekis this is not a luxury but the way to stop it inventing occupations of its own.

Trainability is written into the standard in an explicit phrase: “extremely trainable”. Owners confirm it in practice: the dog picks commands up quickly and works willingly as long as the session resembles a game. Monotonous repetition of the same exercise, on the other hand, bores this clever creature almost instantly, and instead of obedience you get creative improvisation.

The winning rhythm is therefore short and frequent: five to seven minutes several times a day with varied tasks, rather than half an hour on one exercise. The method: positive reinforcement only. Harsh methods, with a breed whose standard makes timidity grounds for exclusion from breeding, work against you: a frightened Alopekis does not become more obedient, it becomes less sure of itself.

Three things worth establishing from the first weeks:

• The “quiet” command. Watchfulness is a breed trait: it cannot be removed altogether, and it should not be. But the dog must be able to fall silent on a word.
• Recall against the hunting instinct. Train it where there are distractions, not only in an empty yard: a cat or a squirrel will test your preparation sooner than you expect.
• Calm when alone. Short absences from the first week, gradually lengthened — precisely because this dog is a “clinger” by construction.

As for disciplines, the breed suits agility, freestyle, trick training and scent work: anything that calls for thinking fast and moving fast. Socialisation should be broad — town, transport, other dogs, children — because self-assurance is written into the standard as the norm, and it is built before six months of age.

The breed reference describes the Alopekis as a dog of moderate demands that does not fuss at the bowl. Its peasant origin shows: the breed took shape where people ate what there was. The downside of that virtue has already been mentioned — such a dog overeats easily.

• Prepared food: a complete food for small breeds with moderate activity; kibble sized for a small jaw, so that the dog chews rather than swallows.
• Home-prepared feeding: the base is lean meat (beef, turkey), offal, grains (rice, buckwheat) and seasonal vegetables. Such a ration has to be formulated together with a vet, otherwise a small dog quickly accumulates calcium and phosphorus imbalances.
• What not to do: permanently mix two strategies in the same bowl, feed from the table, and compensate for a lack of attention with treats — that is exactly how a sociable dog puts on weight.

Fresh water in a separate bowl, changed daily, especially in hot weather. Treats are conveniently “spent” not for nothing but on training: for a breed that needs work for its head, the benefit is double.

The rarity of the Alopekis is not a marketing epithet but the result of several factors that came together.

Biology. The Greek breed reference describes a trait untypical of modern breeds: Alopekis bitches come into season once a year rather than twice, and usually whelp 3–4 puppies, 5 at most. This is an observation from the breed literature, not the result of a controlled study — but it is consistent with the small size and the semi-primitive type. The arithmetic is simple: with an equal number of bitches, such a breed restores its numbers two or three times more slowly than an ordinary one.

Geography. The breed’s carriers are scattered across villages and population density is low. In practice this means an owner has nowhere to take a bitch — and mates her with whichever dog is nearby. Every such mating dilutes the type.

Social change. From the late 1970s and early 1980s foreign small breeds were imported into Greece in quantity and fashion moved to them. At the same time villages and livestock farming were contracting — that is, the very holdings where the Alopekis had work were disappearing.

Neutering campaigns. This is the sharpest and most paradoxical factor. Veterinary teams studying the breed point it out: mass neutering programmes for stray dogs also catch animals of a clean breed phenotype — because to an outsider a semi-free village Alopekis looks like an ordinary yard dog. A breed with no papers also has no way of proving that it is a breed.

How many are there? No exact figure has been published. The most concrete known number belongs to a veterinary team led by Spyros Chliounakis: from February 2005 to September 2012 they surveyed the prefecture of Serres in northern Greece and documented 58 dogs there matching the morphological type of the breed. In February 2013 the researchers made their results public and warned openly of the threat of extinction. That number describes one district and one period, not the whole of Greece — but it is the only one resting on fieldwork rather than on an estimate.

Conservation of the breed is carried by Greek enthusiasts — notably the society for the protection of indigenous domestic breeds “Amalthia” and the cynologists who earlier took the Kokoni through to recognition. Their task today is less about shows than about a census: finding and describing the dogs still left in the villages.

These two small Greek dogs are constantly mixed up — above all when a long-coated individual is involved. Yet the difference is clear and visible even in a photograph.

• Ears. The most reliable sign. In the Alopekis the ears are large and erect. In the Kokoni they are moderate, set high, but drop.
• Tail. In the Alopekis a long sickle with an elegant curve, carried fairly high but not laid on the back. In the Kokoni the tail is heavily furnished, forms a plume and is carried high in a half-circle over the back, with the hair falling to one side.
• Coat. In the Alopekis the guard hair is even over the body and no longer than 5 cm. In the Kokoni it is short on the face and forelegs, noticeably longer on the body and neck, and longest on the tail and hindquarters.
• Height. By its standard the Kokoni is smaller — 23–28 cm; the Alopekis goes up to 30 cm with tolerance.
• Papers. The most practical difference: the Kokoni has been recognised by the ΚΟΕ since 2004 and an official document of origin can be obtained for it. For the Alopekis, not yet.

It is precisely because of that last point that adverts deserve particular attention. A very long-coated individual sold as a “rare long-haired Alopekis” should, Greek specialists advise, be considered first within the Kokoni group — or as a crossbreed.

• The name comes from the ancient Greek ἀλώπηξ, “fox”. The other ancient name for the same type of dog is κυναλώπηξ, “dog-fox”.
• In Aristophanes “dog-fox” is not a breed but an insult: it is what Cleon is called in the Knights and a procurer in Lysistrata.
• The same Greek word ἀλωπεκίς also meant a cap of fox fur (Xenophon mentions one in the Anabasis) and even a grape variety, so named for its colour.
• Ancient authors sincerely believed these dogs descended from the fox. That is biologically impossible: dog and fox have different chromosome sets.
• The local names for the breed in Greece are descriptive and affectionate: alepouditsa (“little vixen”), venetaki on Crete, zacharoskylo on Skiathos, bobis and bouboudi in the Serres area.
• The Alopekis is one of the few small European breeds used with livestock; in the prefecture of Serres dogs of this type were described alongside herds of buffalo.
• The breed standard excludes timid and aggressive dogs from breeding — the requirement on the psyche stands here on a par with the requirements on anatomy.
• For a long time these dogs were not distinguished as a breed and passed for ordinary mongrels — which nearly made them disappear through interbreeding.

Is the Alopekis a recognised breed?
No. The breed is recognised neither by the Kennel Club of Greece nor by the FCI. The ΚΟΕ list of Greek breeds has seven entries, and the Alopekis is not among them. A breed standard text exists and has been published by Greek enthusiasts, but it carries no official status.

Did Xenophon and Aristotle really describe this breed?
Xenophon does indeed write in the Cynegeticus about ἀλωπεκίδες as one of the two kinds of hunting dog. But dictionaries of ancient Greek attach the word to a variety of Laconian dog — a hunting hound, not a small yard dog. Aristotle, in the History of Animals, mentions Laconian dogs supposedly born of a dog and a fox, without using the word ἀλωπεκίς. So the name is ancient, while identifying the ancient dog with the modern breed is Greek breed tradition.

How ancient is this breed?
The Greek breed reference rests on an incised pithos from Thessaly of about 3000 BC, a comparable find at Askitario near Rafina (2500–2100 BC), and bones of small domestic dogs at the Neolithic sites of Sitagroi and Sesklo. Direct descent from these finds to the modern Alopekis has not been checked genetically — the Greek reference itself presents that DNA comparison as a task still to be done.

How long does an Alopekis live?
The breed literature puts life expectancy at roughly 12–15 years and more. That is an estimate based on owners’ observations rather than a record: no regular longevity statistics are kept for the breed.

How does the Alopekis differ from the Kokoni?
The most reliable sign is the ears: large and erect in the Alopekis, drop in the Kokoni. The Kokoni’s tail is heavily furnished and carried in a half-circle over the back, and its body coat is noticeably longer. The Kokoni is also smaller (23–28 cm) and, unlike the Alopekis, has been recognised by the ΚΟΕ since 2004.

Is the Alopekis suitable for allergy sufferers?
No. This is a breed with a double coat and an obligatory undercoat, and it sheds seasonally. It should not be regarded as hypoallergenic.

Do they bark a lot?
The tendency to warn by barking is written into the standard as a desirable trait of a watchful dog. For a yard that is an advantage; for a flat it is a task: the “quiet” command should be taught from the first weeks, and the breed picks it up easily.

What should you look at when choosing a puppy?
Since no compulsory breed tests exist, ask for specifics: has an orthopaedic vet examined the parents’ stifles, what are the parents like by observation, are the adults vaccinated and treated against parasites, how long did earlier generations of the line live. And remember: no registry currently issues an official pedigree for an Alopekis.

Where should you look for a puppy?
In practice, only in Greece, from the enthusiasts who keep the breed going. The breed is rare, and online adverts deserve the closest scrutiny: ordinary crossbreeds or long-coated Kokoni are often passed off as a “rare Greek breed”.