Karelian Bear Dogs

I'm hearing/reading a lot of contradictory information about Karelians, so any experience would be helpful. The worse (contradiction wise) is how friendly Karelians are with people and strangers.

I've hear they aren't tolerant of children, I've heard they tolerate and protect children.

I've heard they are wary of strangers and very protective of their owners, I've heard they love people and could even hack it as a therapy dog.

Thoughts? Insight?

Well from my understanding. They are protective dogs, Im sure if they are raised with children they would be find. They sound like thery are pretty intense, brave little dogs that don'y put up with alot. Hell they are used to scare away bears. You gotta be tough as nails to do that!

They are a breed I have looked into. In BC they use them quite alot to keep away and run bears.

here is a breeder in BC: Beardogs

Thank you! I'm not really sure why I'm nervous, because I'm pretty fine with either- but I really want to know what to expect and what I can do if I get a Karelian. I don't NEED a therapy dog, but if that's an option I'm interested. IT hard though because the information I have found on them varies so much. It's not just the two extremes, but there are people who claim they fall in between.

So I just want to know, temperament wise, should I expect a Husky, or a Chow Chow?

Thats a hard one. I "think" you would expect more on the Husky side, but I guess it would depend also were you get the dog. Im sure a dog from show lines would be way different from a dog from working lines.

True. I'm looking mostly at working lines now. I'm not sure if I want to get into showing in the future, but I have a lot of interests (and no hands on experience, haha) like agility, SAR, therapy, game retrieval (and I don't even hunt). I would like a Karelian with bear instinct, because there are many black bears up here and our home has been visited by large predators before, namely, bobcats. I want a dog I can take hiking and backpacking. Plus, a Karelian can tolerate pretty much all seasons. I want at least one dog I can work in the summer.

they're a laika originally used for hunting bears. the original stock brought over wasn't the best hunting stock because the importers wanted a rare dog for the sake of having a rare dog. they'll chase a bear a little but they won't stay with them & make them tree or bay. the east & west siberian laikas being brought in now ARE hunting stock. they should stay w/a bear until it's treed or bayed. rustic laikas should be fairly protective & territorial towards their people while being suspicious or hostile toward strangers. keep in mind most dogs, but especially rustic breeds, will tend to view adolescents the same as adults. so to us a 13 YO is child but to a dog they are a grown man and subject to the same hostility.
keep in mind the karrelian laikas have been in north america for about 3 decades. individual breeders have taken their temperaments in whatever direction they prefer and gone a long way from the rustic dogs that were brought over. i'd really develop a relationship w/ the breeder and get the whole truth about their line.

It's a breed I looked into a lot before we got the borzois. From what I've seen meeting them in person and talking to breeders, there's a lot of variation as far as how friendly and biddable they are.

My sister's next door neighbor (so a few miles away) in Fairbanks had a pack he kept for hunting and to keep big game off his property. They did a pretty good job running off the moose and bear, though he did lose some to wolves.

They were aggressive toward people they didn't know and aggressive toward dogs outside their pack. She hated them because sometimes they'd wander onto her property and attack her dogs. That neighbor didn't bother training or socializing them much though.

There was one breeder I considered getting a dog from. She'd been in the breed a couple of decades, and originally got into them as bear deterrent. Her dogs got along well with her livestock and protected their poultry, not all will do that. She had one six month old puppy that treed a black bear sow and two cubs when they wandered into the yard while she and her grandson were playing outside. She was sure the dog was going to get killed, but it was just psycho enough to frighten the bear. Dogs from her lines adored children, but she did caution me to meet the parents of any dogs before I got one because some lines just weren't very tolerant.