Understanding the Rough-Faced Pyrenean Shepherd Head

Understanding the Rough-Faced Pyrenean Shepherd Head

The secret to the headpiece of the Pyrenean Shepherd is to understand that it is not just beautiful but also highly functional. Type is not arbitrary here, it’s not a matter of taste or artistic license. Type relates directly to the job the Pyr Shep performed in its natural working environment. This is a wilderness herding dog, living out in the high mountain wilds for months at a time with only the dogs’ anatomy to protect them and allow them to do their job. Our goal is to introduce the reader to the Pyrenean Shepherd through the words of the Breed Standard.

To begin, the first line of the Standard speaks of the “vibrant expression of his unique triangular head and windswept face” and emphasizes that the dog’s appearance is “characteristic of no other breed.” The standard says he is a “superb athlete,” but how does that relate to the head? Doesn’t the soundness of the dog matter more than type, more than appearance?  What about the function of the dog? Isn’t head type largely window dressing?

The head should be triangular with a windswept appearance? Why on Earth would that matter to the dog’s working ability? Why do we harp on about how the coat should be rustic and “uncoiffed?” Where’s the harm if a show dog is a little bit fancy? Why does the Standard state in bold capital letters, “NO RIBBON SHALL BE AWARDED TO A DOG WHOSE COAT HAS BEEN SCISSORED, ESPECIALLY ON THE FACE, EXCEPT FOR NEATENING OF THE FEET?” The Coat section doesn’t just say they shouldn’t be scissored. It says, “no ribbon shall be awarded” to a scissored dog. Isn’t that a bit over the top?

So, let us share why the shape of the head is so important, and why the coat on it matters so much. Typey head shape and coat are necessary specifically because they play important functional roles.

The triangular head with a “nearly flat” topskull and “slightly shorter” muzzle “lets the skull dominate the face.” In other words, it puts the eyes on the front of the face, but “neither prominent nor deeply set,” i.e., not bulging nor hidden in bone. Support for the eyes comes from the fill underneath and between the eyes. This is why the Standard says that the skull “slopes gently” to the muzzle with “no marked stop.” Head planes are not parallel but only “nearly” parallel, which is to say the head is ever so slightly down-faced. This contributes to letting the skull dominate the face. Being “well-filled-in under the eyes” is the result of the zygomatics, which are crucial to producing the triangle. This fill under the eye produces the almond shape described in the Standard. If it’s too chiseled out under the eye, it loses the proper almond shape. Note that the eye is open and expressive. That means it is not a small, narrow almond. It is perhaps useful to think of this eye as being the shape of an almond with the shell on, whereas many breeds seem to use the nutmeat as a guide. A skull that is not “almost flat” on top will also not carry the ears correctly. A round or apple-shaped skull is almost always accompanied by a low ear set, which is not saved by cropping.

It can be perplexing to read that the muzzle is rather narrow whereas the backskull has only a “slight development of the occiput.” Most narrow-muzzled dogs have narrow backskulls with a prominent occiput, even a sagittal crest. How can the dog have a somewhat narrow muzzle but have a skull with what is essentially the base of a triangle? The key is to see that it is a broad-based triangle that tapers to the nose. As a rule of thumb, you can think of the skull itself as about as wide, side to side, as it is long, from stop to occiput, with a muzzle from the stop to the nose just slightly less than that. OK, so how does the working dog profit from this?

This shape gives the dog an increased overlap in the field of vision of each eye. This crucial anatomical feature allows increased stereoscopic vision, which gives better depth of field. The Pyrenean landscape in the high mountains has huge boulders and sharp crags that the dogs need to navigate with split-second timing. It doesn’t matter how soundly the dog can trot if he can’t tell where to put his feet.

Texture is what keeps the hair from veiling the eyes and obscuring the vision, as well as giving the rounded look to the straight-across crop or straight tip-line of the ears.

The Pyr Shep cannot fulfill this indispensable working function without the correct head shape. That head shape provides the ability to focus on objects not only in the distance but up close, right in front of them, while moving at high speed. The depth of field allows them to go up and over boulders and outcrops effectively and without injury. This allows them to streak from one side of a valley to the other to prevent ewes from falling off cliffs—and they absolutely do, even today. They also get stuck partway down outcrops, able to go neither up nor down. The human shepherd then risks his life rescuing these marooned sheep, or he must abandon them when the flock moves on in the traditional manner of nomadic transhumance pastoralism in which grass is rather sparse, and the flock is constantly traveling in search of grazing. As one area gets depleted, they move on to the next valley. Animals that wander off or don’t keep up are taken by predators.

This need for speed also explains why the head is “rather small in proportion to the size of the dog” with a neck that is “rather long” and “well-arched.” A large head would throw this “lightly boned and sinewy” “high energy” dog off balance as it tears across the valley skidding around boulders, leaping across streams, scrambling up rocky escarpments. A small head on a reachy neck is the sign of a fast-running dog, which she is indeed, with her flying trot and double suspension gallop.

As mentioned, the fill under the eye provides crucial support and strength to the eye, and is evidenced by the correct almond eye shape. A round eye is a dead giveaway that the dog lacks fill under the eye. The almond shape also protects the eye from debris, as does the fringe of hair in front of it.

Coat on the head must have the right texture—not as decoration but as a functional aspect of the dog. Correct texture is what gives the windswept look to the face. It is shorter near the nose and whiskers, and thus, the Pyr Shep should never have a mustache or muzzle hair that hangs straight down, but rather, a somewhat bristly texture that makes it stand up off the skin a bit and appear swept up toward the cheeks—as if by a gust of wind—as it gradually lengthens on the cheeks and around the eyes and over the head. The texture lifts the hair up away from the cheeks and eyes. Combined with well-set ears rounded by correct fringing (whether cropped or not), it gives an almost heart-shaped appearance when looking directly into the dog’s face. Texture is what keeps the hair from veiling the eyes and obscuring the vision, as well as giving the rounded look to the straight-across crop or straight tip-line of the ears. The resulting fringes in front of the eyes are necessary to provide protection and to allow the dog to sense wind direction, another indication of large objects on the landscape.

Similarly, the fringes on the ears offer protection as well as an increased ability to sense the environment. Correct texture helps to keep the ears from matting shut—an important feature when combined with the traditional ear crop the shepherds developed (seen even in the earliest depictions of the breed from hundreds of years ago), and all the more crucial in an uncropped ear. It’s not like the dogs were being brushed out regularly; a matted ear muffles sound and can lead to infection and hearing loss. A correct natural ear must tip a bit for protection, but not too much—from a third to a half of the leather. It can tip forward, but most have rose ears that tip a little to the side (aka “roof” ears that, when the head is seen from the front, make it look a little like the rooftops of the traditional farmhouses and taverns of the Pyrenees).

A dog with soft texture on the head will not only lack the windswept look, it will also have correspondingly soft texture in the body coat. Thus, a glance at the head and expression also tells you about the body coat. Lack of the windswept face and fringes is a telltale sign of poor coat on the rest of the dog.

The dog must have coarse texture on the body for protection from harsh weather and from burrs, weeds, twigs, etc., that will stick in a soft coat and weigh it down, even cause injury to the skin. A soft coat mats to the skin, causing infections and tearing of the skin. Cords (properly called cadenettes for the thin cords and matelots for the thicker cords) are not a contradiction. Dogs with cadenettes do not mat to the skin. There’s a half-inch or so length of un-matted hair holding the cord onto the body. Correct cadenettes don’t work without correct coat texture. Cords on a dog with soft coat texture will pull off and tear out. The coarse hair gives the necessary strength to the cord.

Scissoring or plucking the head makes it very difficult to evaluate texture and fringing. Is the dog missing this hair as the result of genetic insufficiency, or is it just poor grooming? A judge has no choice but to assume the former. Scissoring obscures the head shape, giving even an excellent head a faulty appearance—whether it be rectangular, square, or rounded. The correct wind-swept facial hair basically cannot be faked. Efforts to do so just result in a downward spiral as one attempt to improve things just ruins some other aspect. Pulling out hair may make the eyes more visible, but that ruins the correct fringes. Only correct coat texture can give the correct windswept look with its fringes.

Again, this is a wilderness herding dog, out in the high mountain wilds for months at a time with only the dogs’ anatomy to protect them and allow them to do their job. The breed was shaped largely by natural selection within their natural setting. As the great French connoisseur Guy Mansencal once said, “This breed is not the work of humans. It was made by the wind and the rain, and the mountain.” The Pyrenean Shepherd essentially walked down out of the mountains with these features. It’s our job to preserve them.

As the great French connoisseur Guy Mansencal once said, “This breed is not the work of humans. It was made by the wind and the rain, and the mountain.” The Pyrenean Shepherd essentially walked down out of the mountains with these features. It’s our job to preserve them.