Alaunt Information & Dog Breed Facts

The Alaunt is an ancient mastiff-type of dog breed that is extinct now, and which was thought to first originate from the central parts of Asia. It is thought that the breed can trace its origins back to the early 5^th or 6^th century.

According to the most widely accepted theory, the Alaunt was developed by nomads of Sarmatian Indo-Iranian ancestry in order to help them with work around the 6^th century. It is thought that the breed came to existence by crossing the working breeds from central Asia including the Sarmatian Mastiff and the Armenian Grampr. The Alaunt became massively well-known and popular when these nomadic tribes began to breed and train them during war times, in order to help people domesticate horses. The tribes that bred the Alaunt always migrated towards other nations, thus the Alaunt spread across tribes and nations in the central parts of Asia and around Europe. The breed’s gene pool also increased, because of the fact that during the migration, people added other local dogs into the breeding mix, with the aim of creating new dogs perfectly fit for the desired purposes. These local dogs included the Molosser breeds, the Mountain Dog, and the Metchkars. As a result of this gene pool expansion and several cross breeding, the white Balkan type of Alaunt evolved, which was directly related to Albanian and Greek breeds.

The original type of Alaunt was known as the Alaunt de Boucherie, and it was a mastiff-looking helping dog for humans throughout the world. Then, as the migration trend increased further, the Alaunt spread over the southern countries of Europe including Portugal, Spain, and France, where the breed got mixed with some local breeds in order to serve better as working dogs. Through the crossbreeding with several sighthounds and scent-hounds, some Alaunts became well-esteemed hunting dogs, which were mainly used to pursue larger game, thanks to the dogs’ larger physique. In Italy, the Alaunt was trained and used for herding cattle, meanwhile, in Spain, three different kinds emerged: the Mastins, the Alanos, and the Lebrels. These varieties were also trained to be herding dogs. In France, the Alaunt divided into two categories, the first was the lightest type, the Alaunt Gentile, which was a greyhound kind of breed, while the other type was the original mastiff-like variety, which played a crucial part in the development of fighting and baiting culture in France.

The constant migration of the nomadic tribes, and the many cross-breeding processes, prevented people from focusing on increasing the original, pure Alaunt population or preventing their extinction. For the reason that, in the central parts of Asia, the dogs were primarily used as fighting and war dogs, the Alaunt’s population numbers quickly decreased, and the breed is considered to went extinct in the late 17^th century. According to the relics and depictions of the breed, it is believed that the Alaunt was a loyal, independent, active, and energetic dog breed, which was renewed from its intelligence and adaptable nature. According to some, the closest modern breed to the Alaunt is the Great Dane, moreover, the Italians call the Great Dane “Alano” in Italy.