Vladimir Putin's Karakachan Shepherd is renamed Buffy

Dima Sokolov meets the dog he named

It was a five-year old boy who came up with the name Putin liked best so anything I could say in criticism would make me a humbug. But what a name for such a breed of dog. The puppy was originally named Ares, for the Greek god of war, then the name was changed to Yorgo (after a Bulgarian sea resort); that was before he was gifted to Vladimir Putin.

The original name is far better suited than the second two. The cuddly looks of a Karakachan puppy belie the nature of the breed. Those dogs are warriors -- unafraid to fight bears and wolves to protect their flocks, and they are just as fierce in defending their human charges. Today they're used mostly to guard livestock but they were used extensively for a long time as watchdogs to help the army's border guards.

The Karakachan shepherd is one of Europe's oldest canine breeds, going back to the Third Millennium B.C.; it's descended from the dogs of the Thracians. The Karakachan shepherd's temperament, according to Wikipedia, is "proud, domineering, weary to strangers; a brave and intelligent dog of tough, steady and independent character. ... The Karakachan Dog's bravery and dignity, together with its incredible loyalty, make this dog an invaluable friend and helper."

Ah well. Putin is such a huge animal lover that I think I can see why he chose a cuddly-sounding name above all the others that were submitted by the public:

"It's soft, kind and sounds nice," Putin told Dima.

It seems Putin was unaware of the American TV show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is aired in Russia, but even though the fictitious Buffy is female she's a fierce fighter, so I suppose that by stretching it one could still claim the male puppy is well-named.

As to Buffy News, he's getting along fine with Koni (or Connie, as some accounts incorrectly refer to Putin's aging Black Labrador). She simply snarls at him when he nips at her ears and tail too much. No word on how the two poodles who belong to Putin's wife are taking to him but given that one of Buffy's first acts on arriving at the Putin household was to pee in Putin's slippers, I don't think the poodles will be a problem for him.

Putin joked to reporters that Buffy "can't do a thing," whereupon the dog contradicted him by obediently sitting on his command.

"The restless canine then weaved among the reporters, pushing his nose right down a camera lens," observed the Associated Press.

A sheepdog is a sheepdog. I've read that it takes about a year for their herding instincts to fully manifest. So, right now he's a playful puppy but a year from now he'll take up his duties as master of the household.

Canada's National Post has culled some Buffy Briefings from various news accounts:

• The PM said he’s growing daily.

• Originally PM Putin said he wasn’t sure how his black lab Connie would interact with Buffy, but Connie was very “friendly” while Buffy likes to pull Connie by the ears, he said.

• The Voice of Russia reported that the PM says Buffy is a “pushy guy.” He likes to open the door by running and getting on his hind legs to then push the door open.

Also, he has found his favorite spot in the house: the kitchen. And he has already gotten used to his new name, responding when he's called "Buffy."

As to the child who provided the winning name for the puppy -- from a Moscow News report:

He said the name was found on the Internet with the help of his parents, Kommersant reported.

“Our own imagination isn’t that good,” Yulia Sokolova, Dima’s mother, told journalists.

Despite a huge range of suggestions, few names came close to winning Putin’s approval. One other candidate reflected the pet’s Bulgarian roots – and “Balkan” also carried a hint of the traditional Russian dogs’ name Polkan. The dog was given to Putin as a gift last month after Bulgarian PM Boyko Borisov marked the signing of his country’s commitment to the South Stream energy pipeline.

The Sokolovs were invited to meet the Bulgarian shepherd puppy at Putin’s Novo-Ogaryovo dacha.

And little Dima left with a signed football and a call-up to the national youth squad.

“In 2018 you will be 13, and will play for the national youth team,” Putin told the boy, Newsru reported.

That last comment is in reference to the 2018 World Cup soccer games, to be held in Russia, for those who've been hanging out in a cave during the past week.

All right; here's one last look at a baby picture, taken when he was eight weeks old:


And Buffy as he looks today:

Alexy Druzhinin / AFP / Getty Images

"Five Operas and a Symphony" and one Russian farce: Pundita weeps about names proposed for Vladimir Putin's sheepdog puppy

Do I look like an edible Japanese chestnut?

Never before in history has a dog been introduced to the world with such pomp, and never before has a puppy showed such aplomb at being gifted from one head of state to another, and with such unerring knowledge of its best camera angles! And look at the eyes, the eyes!

And the heart-rending gaze of farewell at its former responsibility -- er, master:


Where is my Kleenex box? Why, every tear-jerker Russian classical literary and musical work is reflected in the puppy's eyes. And there are people who want to name this very operatic dog, this -- this emblem of Russian drama "Balkan" or "Kuri?" A kuri is an edible Japanese chestnut -- somewhat ominously a popular name for dogs in Japan.

Bah! [dabbing at her eyes with a Kleenex] Cretins! It should be fairly obvious even to an imbecile that the best name for the dog is "Glinka."

[blowing her nose loudly] But no, that might irritate Russia's Communist Party, if one recalls the fate of Glinka's national anthem, Patrioticheskaya Pesnya, which, by the way, was played at Putin's first inauguration as Russia's President. The anthem, a favorite of the Russian Orthodox Church, was short-lived; to keep the peace Putin resurrected a Soviet anthem and gave it refurbished lyrics.

[reaching for another Kleenex and studying the name suggestions entered at the Russian Federation's website]

Most of the names come from the people and things Russians most commonly associate with Bulgaria: Bratko, Shipka, Theodore (a Bulgarian tsar) and Perets ('perets' is the Russian word for pepper, and bell pepper is widely known in Russia as 'bolgarsky perets' – 'Bulgarian pepper'). Russian-Bulgarian relations were also a popular theme: Borus (a contraction of 'Bolgaria', the Russian spelling of Bulgaria, and Russia), Brin (Bulgarian-Russian initiatives). However, the most popular name in this vein was Balkan.

Patriotic names were also common. Suggestions included Ros (Russia is called 'Rossiya' in Russian), Rus or Rossi. The author of the last suggestion explained that it was meant to suggest both the word 'Rossiya' and the name Carlo Rossi, the famous Italian architect whose works adorn St Petersburg and its suburbs. Another suggestion was Nabur, an acronym of the phrase 'nadezhda na budushchee Rossii' (which means 'hope for Russia's future').

Nabur? Brin? Why not then simply name the dog "Generic" or "Bound to Offend No One?"

The trouble with the Russians is that they don't know what Russia is. Is Russia Eastern? Western? A patchwork of ethnic clans? This attempt to retreat from confusion is well-reflected in the pedestrian name offerings for Putin's puppy.

Perhaps the Prime Minister should turn to Columbia University professor Boris Gasparov for help in naming the puppy. Gasparov, one of the great scholars of Russian and Slavic history, wrote the magisterial Five Operas and a Symphony, in which he interprets Russian cultural and literary history through six of its most enduring classical musical pieces: Glinka’s Ruslan and Ludmilla, Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades, and Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony.

If the professor would frown on my choice of a name then I challenge him to propose a better one. However, I will close with a plug for my candidate.

Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (1804–1857), one of Russia's greatest opera composers; considered the father of Russian classical music

Next to God, humankind's best friend -- but what about a TSA airport scanner's? And more about Putin and the sheepdog puppy.

UPDATE
I should have stuck with "Koni," the spelling I first used for the name of Putin's Labrador. The spelling is the right one according to the Russian Federation's website, which also explains how the dog came to be named. So I don't know how the Moscow Times picked up "Connie." (See below)
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I don't think so lol

Whoops! Two corrections to yesterday's post on the Vladimir Putin-Karakachan sheepdog story: The puppy is a male, and at least according to the Moscow Times the name of Putin's black Labrador is "Connie," not "Koni." The Times has a wonderfully sour-grapes take (with accompanying cartoon, above) on the excitement about the puppy and Putin's call to Russians to help him pick a name for the puppy:

... The puppy was carried in by a vast entourage and seemed to take to his new master, giving Putin a lick on the cheek.

Some pointed out that the sad-eyed puppy with adorable white socks will later morph into an enormous shaggy guard dog. Putin’s Labrador Connie, graying now, may not know what has hit her. She was shown lying on the sofa as Putin and his wife Lyudmila were filmed taking part in the census in a horribly awkward stunt. Putin joked that Connie was his “first wife” and certainly showed her more affection, giving her a rub as she laid on her back with her paws in the air. But then Labradors like everyone.

Rights activists complained that to leave a name suggestion on Putin’s web site you had to fill in your entire contact details, presumably to crack down on the saboteurs who tried to submit puns in paw taste or brought up poisoned umbrellas. So far bloggers have been taking it all a bit too seriously, suggesting that the poor puppy should be called “kickback” or “power vertical.”
[...]

"Poor" puppy?

From a CNN report today:

Inside the science of how dogs think
[...]
Duke University's Canine Cognition Center in Durham, North Carolina, is one of the few labs in the country focused on how dogs think.

"We're excited about describing the psychology of our dogs," says professor Brian Hare, the lab's director. "Different dogs solve different problems differently. And what we want to understand is: What is it that either makes dogs remarkable as a species or what is it that constrains the ability of dogs to solve problems?"

To test the dogs' ability, Hare and a team of graduate students put dogs through a variety of games similar to those you might play with young children.

"We don't want to look at cute pet tricks. What we want to know is, what does the dog understand about its world?" Hare said.

Hare has been analyzing our four-legged friends for about 15 years. He says dogs have figured out how to read human behavior and human gestures better than any other species has, even chimpanzees.

"The way they think about their world is that people are superimportant and they can solve almost any problem if they rely on people," says Hare.

Children start relying on adults' gestures when they're about a year old. That's about the same age that dogs start to recognize and rely on humans, too, Hare says.
[...]
The professor says even though domestication has made dogs smarter, they are not perfect. Still, they're so smart, he says, that they can understand the principle of connectivity.

"They know they're connected on a leash and [dogs reason] 'Well, now I have to listen, because if I don't do what you say you can stop me. Where if I'm ... not on a leash, well, yeah, I know the command but I don't have to listen to you now,'" explains Hare.

And just like children, dogs also understand that if you turn your back, they can misbehave, especially after their owners have told them not to do something.

"Your dog takes the food you just told it not to take, and you're really upset because your dog disobeyed you, and you think that your dog is not obedient. Well, no, no, no, your dog was obedient but it realized that it could get away with it," says Hare.

At the end of the day, dogs may rely on humans, but they also use their skills to manipulate their owners and the world they live in. And even though dog owners like to think they're in command, the professor says it may actually be Fido who is really in charge.

Breaking News! Uppity responds to the CNN report: "My dog manipulate me? Naaaaaaaah. I walk in the pouring rain in a soaked hoodie, holding an umbrella over her. Nahhhhhhhh."

But then again, next to God, dogs are humankind's best friend. And while I rarely like to quote him I think it was Gandhi who said that one can judge a nation by how its people treat their animals. One thing is certain; there is no better judge of a person's character than how he treats a dog. Another certainty, from an October 22 Popsci report:

... After six years and nearly $19 billion in spending, the Pentagon task force assigned to create better ways to detect bombs has revealed their findings: The best bomb detector is -- a dog.

The Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, or JIEDDO (the Pentagon should really take a page from DARPA and make catchier acronyms) has been working on this problem for years, but it's only getting more serious. There have been more roadside bombs in Afghanistan in the first eight months of this year than in the same period in 2009, so the work JIEDDO is doing is under extra scrutiny.

That made it even more embarrassing when the director of the organization told a conference yesterday that "Dogs are the best detectors."

As it turns out, the most sophisticated detectors JIEDDO could come up with tend to locate only 50% of IEDs in Afghanistan and Iraq. When soldiers are accompanied by bomb-sniffing dogs, that number goes up to 80%. ...

Actually, the Army man in charge of defeating roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Michael L. Oates, said that the most effective bomb detector is "two men and a dog."

Oates's statement might apply in even greater measure to detecting bomb-wearing humans. Dogs sense much more than the odor from bomb chemicals when they sniff a person; they can arrive at a judgment that they've encountered suspicious behavior. I think they're able to clearly communicate their judgment to an observant human companion.

To those who say that much 'suspicious behavior' is often a simple fear of dogs -- I think dogs, at least mature ones, can sense the difference between fear of them and fear or hatred of their human companion.

In any event the evidence is now clear that dogs working in tandem with humans make the best bomb detectors. So why is the TSA continuing to invest more in very expensive and highly controversial full-body scanner technology?

Some light might be shed on this question by noting that politically-connected lobbies and individuals pushed the scanners in the wake of the Underwear Bomber's attempted attack on Christmas Day last year.

(Reportedly George Soros sold his 11,300 shares in Rapiscan the day after the San Francisco Examiner's muckraking report named him as one of the company's investors.)

Perhaps a way airline passengers could legally avoid the scanners and the equally controversial 'intimate' body pat down in U.S. airports would be to wave a copy of the JIEDDO research findings at the airport and demand to be checked out by a dog. Would that work?

Belgian Shepherd Malinois on duty

A Karakachan sheepdog puppy adopts Vladimir Putin (Updated 2X)

UPDATE
The puppy has been renamed "Buffy." See this December 14 post for Pundita's anguished reaction to the choice of name and for all the latest Buffy Briefings.
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After planting a kiss on his nose, a futile attempt to show the sheepdog who's boss

I think you have given me a superstar  

The sheepdog will be running his life within a month

Photo: AP/Valentina Petrova
Oh right; here's something about the gas pipleine deal.

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Update

Photo: Reuters

He's also going to make a wonderful companion for Putin's aging Labrador, Koni (or "Connie," as some news reports identify her), who's 11 years old.

Paw Nation wondered if the gift, from Bulgaria's Prime Minister Boyko Borissov (a dog lover), was a complete surprise to Putin (another dog lover). I don't think so, because the Bulgarian press couldn't resist spilling the beans ahead of Putin's visit, which was to discuss energy matters and sign an agreement for a joint company that will construct the South Stream pipeline.

However, The Paw Nation blogger watched the video of Borissov presenting the sheepdog to Putin and recounted in amusement that there was a look of "kind of panicked surprise" in Putin's eyes at first. It could be that he was surprised by the size of the puppy, which is bigger than many full-grown dogs. According to the Karakachan Dog Association of America website, a full-grown Karakachan can weigh 130 pounds.

Paw Nation has the video.

Huffington Post chimed in with a photo gallery of the newest addition to the Putin family and mentioned a droll story that Reuters mined from President George W. Bush's just-released memoir, Decision Points:

... Bush says he had introduced then-Russian President Putin to his Scottish terrier, Barney, on a visit to the U.S. presidential retreat, Camp David.

Putin returned the favor when Bush visited Russia and Putin was giving him a tour of the grounds of his dacha.

"A big black Labrador came charging across the lawn. With a twinkle in his eye, Vladimir said, 'Bigger, stronger, faster than Barney,'" Bush writes. ...

Bush says he later told the story to the Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, who replied: "You're lucky he only showed you his dog."