We can define tibetan terriers like long-legged Apso and lhasa Apso like short-legged apsos. And what does the word apso mean? Apso is a dog who has a coat like a goat, but it is't a goat what we get used to see. We are talking about a tibetan goat what is very small,but what has beautiful long coat.

Dogs in Tibet live very different as how our dogs live, so at the beginning I was terrified, but when time was passing,and when Iearned more and more about their kind of life,I saw that the Tibetan people offer their dogs the best they can.They can't give them more as they have.

The East of Tibet was full of dogs,Tibetan Terriers and lhasa Apso types, and a lot of them were really like the dogs we used to see in Europe. Here I have to mention one very special dog,what I saw and what still is in my mind,even after one year.It was a beautiful male who I fell in love with, a dog who was so typey, that I could take him directly into the show ring here in Europe. He was really a beautiful example of the tibetan terrier.

Tibetan terriers usually live in a garde, on the chain,and when they are lucky, they have a sort of doghouse. The dogs in Tibet are mostly outside all the time,no matter if the weather is bad.But we also saw some tibetan families with their tibetan terriers what lived in the house together.

The most common dog food is the leftovers from their meals, Tsampa (it is a main tibetan food and it is milled barley what looks like flour and they mix it with a ''butter tea'' ,very cheap but very strong black tea, they mix that tea with yaks butter,so at the end that butter tea looked and tasted like a sort of soup. When tsampa is mixed with this tea you'll get a sort of instant corn flour (we call it palenta). The dogs also eat yak bones, rise.......and everything what they could find. The food for the dogs isn't the best,and they don't get lots of food so the most dogs were underfed.

The Tibetan people dont know what dog grooming is,so tibetan breeds have a very ''original'' (read: matted) look. Their coat are mostly that matted,that it is even hard to cut that coat,and it is really impossible to groom it like we are used here in Europe. Some tibetan terriers had such matted coats that they werent able to put their tail up because it was too heavy for them. But surprise was ( if you are thinking about their conditions of life) that they don't have any parasites like flees etc or bad odours. Even their coat is matted it is possible to see that the quality of their coat is excellent. Body structure is mostly very tipical.

The most colours of the Tibetan Terriers we saw are light colours like gold or white, we also saw some darker ones but not that often.

Some dogs had beautiful white teeth.Some of these dogs were allready older age,but still had great bites.Probably the food is the reason they have such excellent white bites.

Mainly the dogowners too dont live that long because of their hard lifes.

Tibetans use dogs as an alarm t owarn if strangers are coming, and these dogs do their work perfectly.

Even if the most dogs live outside in the garden,without any socialisation,what we used to do with our dogs, I can say that tibetan terriers character in Tibet is very good.

I already mentioned that the tibetan people don't separate dogs through breed, but through the type. they take care what males and when they will mate their females. When a female is in the season she is in the house or in a fenced garden, so we can say that their breeding is a sort of planned. They also take care that they mate the same type of dogs,for example,long-legged Apso with long-legged Apso.

I was really surprised when we saw a beautiful 2 years old gray female, very tipical, what never had been mated.When we asked her owners why he never let her have puppies, he told us they couldn't find such type of dog like she is.

Even if the tibetan people are very poor and really need money to survive,it isn't easy to buy a dog from them (it doesn't matter how much money you offer to them) because a dog is a member of their family and it depends on their needs if they will sell you a dog or not.

I would like to mention the case with the dog I fell in love with, they did't want to sell him,and at the end they asked that much money which was too much,even for european standard.

I have the feeling that tibetans don't appreciate that much what they have, because for them a dog is a dog what is usefull for them to do their work. Tibet is still isolated, and too far away, so that is one of the reason's what stops European breeders to come but it is just a matter of time when tibetans will discover some other breeds who are not from Tibet and when they will start to think how great it will be to mix their original breeds into the future breeds who will come to Tibet.

In the late sixties there were 2 native tibetan terriers imported from Nepal to England,these dogs also were registered and used in breedingprogram in the UK. From than untill 2 years (2006) ago nobody ever imported and registered any tibetan terrier from Tibet. The situation has changed,and now in Slovenia do live two native males and one native female imported directly from Tibet. They all produced some very nice litters,and now we just have to follow their offspring to see what they'll bring to us in future.