Hungarian Mudi

About the Hungarian Mudi

The Hungarian Mudi is one of the country's three native herding breeds and the least known of them, a medium-sized farm dog that drove cattle and sheep, killed vermin and announced visitors. It was described formally only in the 1930s, having been left to sort itself out on Hungarian farms for generations.

Dogs stand 41 to 47 cm, with a smooth short face and a dense wavy or curly coat over the body. Black is commonest, but white, fawn, ash and the merle pattern the Hungarians call cifra all occur. Two cifra dogs must not be mated together, because a puppy inheriting the pattern from both sides may be born deaf, blind or both. A stud should be quick, sound and confident with strangers.

Ask for hip scores and a current eye certificate; hip dysplasia and cataract have both been recorded in the breed. Patellar luxation is worth a question in a small, athletic dog. Because the world population is small and concentrated in Hungary, ask about the coefficient of inbreeding for the mating and about epilepsy anywhere in the pedigree, which no test can rule out.

Health & breeding

We check every hip, elbow, eye and DNA result you give us against the Royal Kennel Club’s public records by hand, and we record who checked it and when. The Royal Kennel Club’s public records may not include all the screening a dog has had, so a dog with no Royal Kennel Club record showing is not necessarily untested.