What were they originally bred for?
For a very long time, the Bedouins and Druse people used, and indeed still use, Pariah Dogs of the Canaan Dog type to guard their flocks and camps. However, they have never bred them, and merely take males from the free-living and semi-free litters when they need one. It wasn’t until 1934 that the Canaan Dog was domestically bred, when Professor Rudolphina Menzel, together with her husband, began a domesticated breeding programme for the purpose of supplying dogs to the Haganah (Jewish Defence Forces). After looking at various breeds of dogs, Menzel soon turned her attention to the local pariah dog in which she found a dog with all the traits that would make them a good service dog — an alert and agile dog, being territorial and with highly developed senses, and capable of surviving the harsh terrain and climate. Menzel began by capturing free-living pariah dogs and litters of puppies, naming the type of pariah Canaan Dog after the land where she found them most abundant.
