Berger Picard

The Berger Picard takes its name from Picardy, the region of northern France around the Somme, where it worked as a general-purpose farm dog moving sheep and cattle and guarding the yard. Written and pictorial evidence of shaggy herding dogs in the region goes back centuries, but the breed was only formally organised in the modern sense in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when French dog shows first began separating the country's herding types from one another.

The First World War was catastrophic for the breed. The trench lines of the Western Front ran directly through the farmland where these dogs lived and worked, and the rural economy that supported them was destroyed. The Second World War repeated the damage. By the late 1940s the Picard survived only in scattered pockets, and a small group of French breeders had to rebuild it from the few dogs that could be found.

The French club reconstituted the breed and the standard was accepted internationally, but numbers have stayed low. Estimates put the world population in the low thousands, most of them in France, with several hundred in Germany and a few hundred across North America. The American Kennel Club granted the Berger Picard full recognition in 2015, placing it in the Herding Group; the breed had previously spent years in the AKC's Foundation Stock Service.

Males stand roughly 24 to 26 inches at the shoulder and females 22 to 24 inches, with most adults weighing somewhere between 50 and 70 pounds. The outline is slightly longer than tall, dry and well muscled rather than heavy, and the movement is easy and ground-covering, the gait of a dog expected to trot beside stock all day.

The coat is the breed's signature: a harsh, crisp outer coat about two to two and a half inches long, with only a light undercoat, giving a tousled and slightly unkempt look. It should never be woolly, curly or silky. Accepted colours are fawn and brindle, in a range of shades from pale to dark, sometimes with grey overlay and small white markings on the chest or toes.

The head carries the other distinguishing features: naturally erect, broad-based, high-set ears carried without cropping, shaggy eyebrows that do not hide the dark oval eyes, and a modest beard and moustache. The expression is often described as open and faintly amused, which is where the breed's reputation for looking as though it is smiling comes from.

Picards are lively, observant and quick to read a situation. They are strongly attached to their own people and want to be involved in whatever is happening, which makes them poor candidates for a life spent in a kennel or alone in a house all day. Within the family they are affectionate and often quite playful well into adulthood.

With strangers the breed is reserved rather than hostile. A well-socialised Picard will stand back, watch, and take its time before deciding a visitor is acceptable. Without early and continued exposure to new people, places and noises, that reserve can harden into genuine wariness, so socialisation in the first year matters more with this breed than with many others.

They are sensitive dogs. Harsh handling shuts a Picard down quickly, while boredom produces the usual herding-breed inventiveness: barking, digging, door-watching, and a tendency to invent jobs if none is provided. Many are also strong-willed in an unhurried way, testing whether a rule is really a rule. Owners describe a dog with a distinct sense of mischief that needs humour as much as firmness.

The original job was mixed farm work in Picardy: driving sheep and cattle to pasture and market, keeping stock out of unfenced crops, and raising the alarm at the farmyard. That combination of herding drive and territorial watchfulness is still present, and some Picards in France continue to work stock today.

For most modern owners the breed's outlet is sport. Picards do well at agility, obedience, rally, tracking, herding trials and canicross, and their stamina suits long hikes, running and cycling company. They are also used occasionally in film and advertising because of their distinctive shaggy appearance, which briefly raised their profile after several film appearances in the 2000s.

As a household dog the Picard functions as a natural alarm dog rather than a guard. It notices and announces; it is not a protection breed and should not be encouraged in that direction.