The Canaan Dog is a pariah (free-living) dog found in Israel and its surrounding area. Nobody really knows the exact truth about their origins. Some say that he is an originally domesticated dog turned feral, while others believe they may in fact be a separate species to the wolf and domestic breeds of today. The reality is that there is no evidence to prove, or disprove, either theory, although the foremost seems more likely. However, it is understood that the Canaan Dog is an ancient breed, or to use a more correct term, land-race.
Pre-biblical drawings and carvings have been found depicting dogs very similar to the Canaan Dog we know today and there is a rock carving from the first to third century BC mid Sinai that depicts a dog which is very like a Canaan type dog. In ancient Ashkelon, a graveyard was discovered, which is believed to be Phoenician from the middle of the fifth century BC. It contained 700 dogs, all carefully buried in the same position, on their sides with legs flexed and tail tucked in around the hind legs. According to the archaeologists, there was a strong similarity between these dogs and the "Bedouin pariah dogs", in other words, the Canaan Dog. A sarcophagus dated from the end of the fourth century BC, was found in Sidon, on which Alexander the Great and the King of Sidon are painted hunting a lion with the help of a hunting dog which is similar in build to the dogs of Ashkelon and similar in appearance to the Canaan Dog.
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 and named, 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 -- the Land of Canaan, today known as part of Israel.
