I continually receive enquiries for Kangal Puppies.    I only breed registered Anatolian Shepherd Dogs.

“But they look the same!”  “Aren’t they the same breed of dog?”

There are now two very separate and well defined breeds in Australia.

The Turkish Kennel Club (KIF) has been accepted as an Associate Member of the FCI, the international governing body for many of the Kennel Clubs around the world, including the Australian National Kennel Club (ANKC).

The Turkish Kennel Club have  gone on to develop a standard specific to the Kangal Dog and have been issuing pedigrees to dogs which apparently abide by this standard, within Turkey.   This standard varies considerably to the Anatolian Shepherd Dog standard in size, colours, head structures, etc.

You can read the KIF Kangal Standard here.

The Turkish Kennel Club wished to establish the Kangal Dog as a breed separate and distinct from what they consider to be something of a mongrel mix of Turkish working dogs created by Westerners that make up the Anatolian Shepherds around the world.   And indeed Coban Kopegi in Turkey and around the world tolerates a wide variety of type, coat and colour.

As of August 2018, the FCI has moved to remove Anatolian Shepherd Dog as an FCI recognised breed and replaced it entirely with the Kangal Shepherd Dog and a different standard.

Therefore, the breed Anatolian Shepherd no longer exists according to the FCI.  Naturally this has somewhat disenfranchised those of us who have been involved in the breed for many decades!

Fortunately not all countries are part of the FCI so countries like the USA and Great Britain are maintaining two separate breeds.

In Australia, we now have both registered Kangal dogs and registered Anatolian Dogs – two separate breeds with different standards.

Here in Australia, some keen fanciers of what is considered to be this true version of a Kangal dog have imported Kangal dogs on KIF (Turkish) pedigrees into Australia since 2014.

The first of these imports (namely Aust Ch BC’Dan Dortgoz Tribocie) was registered in Australia as an Anatolian Shepherd Dog.

However, most Kangal imports since then  have not yet been registered at all, as the name “Anatolian” is somewhat offensive to keen Kangal fanciers.

The way is now open for those importers of true KIF Kangal Shepherd Dogs to register them as Kangals in Australia.

As always, there seem to be scammers selling pure Kangal dogs on Gumtree but since it costs close to $20,000 to import just one dog from Turkey into Australia, some of these adverts are clearly fraudulent.

Therefore, if you are of Turkish origin and feel strongly the need to have a Kangal dog, don’t call me asking for puppies because I do not breed or own Kangal dogs.  But there are a small number of pure KIF Kangal dogs in Australia that have been correctly imported and they are being bred.