The Karelean Bear Dog is a close cousin of the Russian Laika and there is a great deal of similarity between the two. However, the Carelean bear dog is native to Finland. The Finnish name for the dog is Karjalank Arhukoira. Finland’s early settlers had to survive on rugged land and hunting, rather than farming, was their main source of food. They needed a dog that was strong and fearless in order to hunt and take down the animals of the region, which included deer, elk, moose, and bear. The Carelean Bear Dog has always been the hunting dog of Finland and has changed very little since the earliest times. Because it is from a limited genetic pool, the lines are quite inbred. It became a very popular hunting dog for hunting large game and there were considerable numbers of these dogs at the turn of the century in Northern Europe and Scandinavia. However, the two world wars decimated the population. It is now a rare dog and today all of Carele’s bear dogs can be traced back to just forty dogs still in existence after the war.

The dog has exceptional hunting ability, although not exceptionally great. The height at the withers is approximately 22 to 24 inches. It is always black with white markings. The body is of the Spitz type (short, square back with a tail that curls over the back). The coat is neither abundant nor long, but it is quite dense and double in nature. It is a dog with good “substance” but without the appearance of massiveness. He needs to be a swift and agile hunter and is therefore of moderate size and is slightly longer than he is tall. The ears are erect. It has a keen sense of hearing and smell and is considered a sniffer dog rather than a sighthound.

The Carelean Bear Dog has today gained a popular following in Canada, where it is used as a dog that hunts and shoots down big game and especially bear, but this of course is only done during “hunting season”. of the bear”. However, there is now another use for the bear dog. Today there are resort owners who have two or three of these dogs and use them regularly to patrol their resorts and keep bears away as protection for summer tourists. There just so happens to be an extremely interesting experimental program in progress at a place called the Wind River Institute in Canada that is using Bear Dog to “train” bears to stay away from populated areas. It is unknown at this time if this program is effective, but from all appearances, it is very possible that it is a new and quite useful application from Bear Dog. The dogs are trained to bark and chase away (rather than chase and kill) troublesome bears that raid garbage dumps and such…and consequently, the bears are “trained” to stay away from populated areas. This breed has a brave and fierce natural hunting instinct, will play its game to the end and is persistent and unyielding. This is a breed that has never strayed from its original purpose and should not be owned by the occasional pet owner.