This is a West Siberian Laika, a traditional multipurpose hunting dog from West Siberia and the Northern Urals. It is used on a wide variety of game species, for the Russians living in remote areas really didn’t have a culture or tradition of specialized hunting dogs. A hunting dog has to be able to do lots of things– including baying wild boar, moose, and bears. They also are great at treeing marten and sable, which are valuable fur-bearers.
And flush and retrieve birds.
This particular dog is hunting pheasants in the Ukraine, and he fetches one from the water.
The Russians do use laikas to retrieve waterfowl. They even have a hunting test for it.
Erm… what? I thought they were made after the rescued mutt terrier Laika who died after being launched into space… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laika If they’re really sticking to standard, they should be killing mice, not retrieving, that or being launched into space, lol. But I guess whatever floats their boat.
Laikas are Russian husky-type dogs.
The Siberian husky is derived from a type of laika.
The dog called Laika who was put in space was a street dog and had nothing to do with laikas.
http://www.ukcdogs.com/WebSite.nsf/Breeds/WestSiberianLaika
Nice jest, and a good sense of humour too.
However, as always, I gotta be the smartass in the room: “laika” [лайка] means “barker” in Russian. It can be applied to any dog in Russian society. In fact, Russian literature often translate things such as “Norwegian Elkhound [Norsk Elghund] as “норвежская лосиная лайка” or literally “Norwegian Elk Laika”. Similarly, there are финская птичья лайка “Karelo-Finnish Laika” or in our language “Finnish Spitz”; якутская лайка [Yakut Laika], or in our language “Siberian Husky” and so on. In fact, the early writers translated “laika” as “husky”, which was not entirely accurate translation; but it was an acute observation which conveyed the right idea.
We call the dog in the video West Siberian Laika in our part of the world because in the ’90s, they were imported to the Eastern seaboard as squirrel dogs by a famous Russian zoologist.
My mistake: “карело-финская лайка [Karelo-Finnish Laika]”, not “финская птичья лайка”