Page 141 - THE SLOUGHI REVIEW - ISSUE 13

T H E S L O U G H I R E V I E W 1 4 1

Imani Schuru-esch-Schams with the “hare” at a coursing event © Popov

But what characterises the Sloughi in its self-image and character form? We have to see
in his origin the guard dog as well as the efficient and strong hunter who works
independently and lives with us as a socially independent individual. Whoever owns a
Sloughi in the western world does not wear him out with occasional racing, coursing or
walking on the leash. Even if Sloughis are allowed to let off steam once in a while in
controlled situations, for example in an indoor riding arena, it does not do justice to their

need for mental exercise. Such low-stimulus environments cause the Sloughi to
atrophy. Therefore, once again, a brief look back at when man and dog found each other.

Before the existence of sedentary cultures, which developed at the earliest around 10,000
years before Christ, the dog was already integrated into the human family as a member.
This results in a scenario that must be a stage before domestication (“domestic animal
development”, from Latin domus, the house), as an expression of a form of nomadic

coexistence of humans and dogs. Before the sedentary form, however, people lived
nomadically, staying only for certain periods of time in certain, possibly recurring, same
areas, as we have seen in Henri Lhote's diagram of the Tuareg. We want to describe this
symbiotic form of proto-domestication of the dog as “approaching posture” or as
“associated” as Raymond Coppinger suggests.

As Kurt Kotrschal and his colleagues in science describe it, there must have been a
convergence of man and dog based on selection for tameness. This seems rather
unlikely with the consequences shown by Belayev's silver fox experiment.