Giant Afghans?

I work with a guy who I believe to be a chronic BSer. He always has a story to tell that is just better than anyone else's. Today during lunch someone was talking about their 90lb adolescent Berner and this guy pipes in with a story about his family having a "Giant Afghan hound" when he was a kid (The guy recently turned 70. He claims the dog was a 170lb dog that had parents that were used to hunt Snow Leopards.

I don't know anything about Afghans but I have never heard of Giant Afghans and can't find any info on the net about them. Is/was there such a thing? If there was wouldn't they be LGDs not hunting dogs at that size?

remember, he was a kid. When I was little, I thought Afghans were giant too.

My uncle had a monstrously huge afghan when I was a kid. My dad is over 6' tall and Rang would jump up and put his paws on my dad's shoulders and lick his face every time we visited. When he did that he was taller than my dad. I was really surprised the first time I saw a correct afghan, at how much smaller they were.

So yeah, huge out of standard afghans exist. But there don't seem to be any special strains or anything.

Rang definitely didn't weigh anywhere near 170 lbs though. :rofl1: Best guess is that he was maybe 110 tops.

Though, I did meet one 38 inch male borzoi who is 165 lbs. He is grotesquely overweight though, and wouldn't be able to catch anything aside from the occasional teddy bear if his life depended on it.

People over guess the weight of dog's all the time. Afghans are slim little ones. I don't doubt the possibility of him having a overly large one but 170lbs? Well... that may be pushing it.

Lol, I remember our shepherd being GIANT. He was only 65 lbs, but he looked huge to me as a kid!

He stressed that it was a different line but maybe it was just a bending of the truth.

actually I wouldn't be surprised if he meant a CAO or similar.

They actually were used to hunt/defend flocks from predators in a the range where snow leopards are found. They also DO reach that size...pretty often actually.

Perhaps he got the breed name wrong but there are Asian Shepherd breeds in Afghanistan that attain that size and when snow leopards were more common they perhaps DID need to chase them off when lambing or calving season was on.

There are also dogs of that size in Afghanistan, used today, to fight.

Possible but he grew up in Northern Wisconsin in the 1940s and 1950s. When did they start to import CAOs to the USA?

who knows? I do know we've pretty much always allowed servicemen and well, anyone to import dogs tho. Perhaps someone liked a puppy they saw on their travels and brought it over.

Akitas were being brought over at that time by servicemen and others so I know importation was allowable then.

And who knows what that breed/type might've been called then either? LOL. Maybe just a "hound from Afghanistan"?

show him a pic of a tazi or borzoi & a modern afghan and ask him which one they looked like. if he says neither than get him pics of the sage kooche. if he still says no then get him to come up w/ a pic.

I remember seeing a photo of the dogs that Pops refers to; Tazi or Taiga(n) dogs. There is a hunting festival in Kyrgyzstan; with falcons and hounds; this picture showed a dog that was large, powerful/haired and could've been "similar" to what your acquaintance is mentioning.

I think this link is worth a check; Anatolian Perspectives - Comparative Analysis of Two Different Strains of Anatolian Shepherd Dogs: Yoruks and Kangals by Guvener Isik

AFGHAN HOUND BREED HISTORY - KYRGZYSTAN has another photo;

I wonder about the dog getting so heavy; I don't think they'd do too well hauling ass over the countryside at that weight; but hair often gives the illusion of heft.

Here is Kim (Central Asian Shepherd) in shape; short summer coat

Here she is looking very "sight-houndish" in silhouette; and I'll tell you; she acts very sight-houndish.



I could see where possibly; before big hair was all the rage; where you could be told that "this dog here" is an afghan hound; and it could look similar to these types.

I don't know how heavy Kim is; but she is; 28.5" at the shoulder.

Fitmin

Looking at these dogs; they appear to be the same height as Kim; or more; so they should be very sizable.

Interesting links and info.

the only giant afghan i know of was a afghan x great dane mix...other than the sheere size of the dog he lookled like a badly bred afghan...

properly tazi is the term for turkish sighthounds, the term is generally used to describe the asian family of sighthounds that includes the russian borzoi & taigan, the afghan (which looked very similar to the turkish mountain bred tazi before the show fancy overdid the coat) the saluki, sloughi & azawak. there are significant differences in type & personality that allow knowledgeable houndsmen to easily tell the tazi stock from the european stock of sighthounds.
FTR asian peoples have used their sighthounds to hunt everything you can think of and some things you wouldn't. this includes snow leopards.

A 170 pound Afghan Hound? I don't believe that for a minute. Afghans are deceptively light for their size. Even a very large male is only about 60-70 pounds. It's all that hair that makes them look bigger.

I think it is a 99% chance my associate is a pathological BSer and 1% chance that his family actually had one of the breeds mentioned by the fantastically knowledgeable chazzers. Especially the "sage kooche" dog which I had never heard of but could fit the bill but I doubt one ever made it to Fox River Valley of Wisconsin in the late forties or 1950s.

its probably the same stuff as the "SHILOH SHEPHERDS" huge designed dogs..meant to be somewhat like a breed (except with no drive, and totally unworkable) like making a giant beagle with no sense of smell lol . OF COURSE when you were little these dogs seemed bigger.. YOU WERE A CHILD! lol these "breeds" IMO are even worse than the doodles.. just another designer breed.

i think this is a mix of this guy having a BIG afgan hound, plus him being a kid and seeing his dog alot of bigger than it actually was