The Island Under Guard

A story told by Tatiana Polozhentseva, owner of Star Escort Kennel.

This story begins almost like a fairy tale.

There was one summer, one island, tents by the water, and several enormous Caucasian Shepherd Dogs that no one had appointed as guards.

But they decided for themselves that guarding was their job.

Two groups of friends were camping on the island. They lived close to one another, helped each other, and shared a boat that connected them with the mainland, but each group had its own kitchen, its own guests and its own space.

There were tents, boats, motors and fishing equipment.

There were adults.

There were children.

And there were dogs.

The Caucasian Shepherds were part of everyday life in the camp. They were not kept permanently tied up or shut away somewhere far from the people.

Visitors were told in advance that there were large dogs on the island, while the children were taught to respect their space.

Tatiana found it especially interesting to watch how the dogs would make sense of this small but rather complicated world on their own.

Because, when you think about it, the situation was not simple at all.

Two groups.

Two kitchens.

Familiar people and strangers.

Guests belonging to one group and guests belonging to the other.

Children running between the tents.

Boats, motors and belongings.

And an island where someone was almost always moving from one place to another.

No one explained the rules to the dogs.

But they began creating their own.

The lead female chose the most important observation point — a place from which she could clearly see her people’s belongings.

The younger dogs took less important positions.

No one arranged them.

No one told them:

“You guard here.”

“You watch over there.”

“This belongs to us, and that belongs to someone else.”

They simply watched.

And remembered.

Guests who had been introduced to the dogs could move freely around the camp.

But when someone appeared who had not been introduced, the dogs reacted differently — they stopped the person and announced their presence with barking.

Even more remarkably, they clearly distinguished between people visiting their own group and guests of the neighbouring camp.

It was as though invisible boundaries existed across the island.

No human had drawn them.

But the dogs could see them.

There were also places that the dogs themselves placed under closer protection.

One was the area around Tatiana’s tent.

The other was the place where the children were.

And that proved to be very important.

There was another persistent problem on the islands.

Theft.

Boats, fishing equipment and other belongings would disappear.

People knew someone was stealing, but for a long time they could not understand where the thieves were coming from or how they managed to approach unnoticed.

Tatiana’s camp, however, had guards.

And those guards had four legs.

It was the dogs that discovered where the thieves were coming from.

From the water.

They turned out to be divers.

They approached the islands quietly and tried to reach the camps to take boats and fishing equipment.

Tatiana has not yet told all the details of exactly how they were caught.

But one thing was clear.

For a long time, the people could not work out where the thieves were coming from.

The dogs did.

To them, it made no difference that a person had not approached along a path.

It made no difference that he had not entered through some imaginary gate.

He could arrive from the water.

If he reached for something the dogs had already accepted as belonging to their people, the rule remained the same.

But the most powerful stories from that summer were not about boats.

They were about children.

One day, a woman arrived on the island with a small child.

She did not like the presence of the large dogs and openly showed her displeasure.

Tatiana did not argue with her.

To avoid tension, she told Zhavari not to go into the neighbouring part of the camp.

Zhavari understood.

She withdrew to her favourite hollow by the shore and lay down there.

At a distance.

Everything was peaceful.

The woman relaxed.

Sunshine, water, beer...

And at some point, she fell asleep.

The child was playing near the water.

Then a motorboat passed the island.

A large wave followed behind it.

The wave reached the child and pulled the little one towards deeper water.

The mother was asleep.

But Zhavari was not.

She saw what was happening.

She did not wait for someone to call her name.

She did not wait for a command.

She did not run to find a person.

She reacted immediately.

She grabbed the child by the clothing and pulled the little one back.

That was when the others saw the dog beside the child.

People shouted.

Panic broke out.

And the mother, still unaware of what had actually happened, immediately began blaming the dog.

“I told you to keep that dog away!”

When the commotion began, Zhavari moved away.

At first, no one fully understood what had happened.

Then a fisherman came towards the shore.

He often fished nearby.

And this time, he had seen everything.

He told them about the motorboat.

About the wave.

About the child being pulled towards deeper water.

And about the dog that had intervened.

The woman realised that the Caucasian Shepherd she had so recently insisted should be kept away from her child had actually saved the child’s life.

Later, she apologised.

But to Tatiana and Zhavari, that no longer mattered very much.

Only one thing mattered:

the child had not drowned.

When Tatiana tells this story, she finishes it with a simple phrase:

“And people… people are different.”

Later, the same fisherman told Tatiana another story.

This one happened very early in the morning.

The camp was still asleep.

The sun was only beginning to rise.

But small children have a strange habit of waking much earlier than adults.

A very small child came out onto the shore.

Barely able to walk.

Still unsteady on little legs.

The child wandered along the sand, collecting shells, throwing them down, picking them up again and talking quietly to themselves.

And beside the child walked three enormous Caucasian Shepherd Dogs.

Imagine the scene.

A quiet island at sunrise.

All the adults asleep.

One tiny child walking along the shore.

And around that child — three huge dogs.

The fisherman watched from a distance.

Then he noticed something even more remarkable.

Whenever the child headed towards the water, the dogs moved between the child and the shoreline.

Whenever the child wandered too far from the camp, they blocked the way.

They did not frighten the child.

They did not push roughly.

They simply stood where they did not want the child to go and gradually guided the little one back.

There was not a single adult nearby.

No one had said:

“Guard the child.”

There had been no command.

No special training for that situation.

There was simply one tiny human being and three enormous dogs that had apparently decided the child should not reach a dangerous place.

And something more than a story remained from that morning.

A photograph remained too.

The same child.

The same dogs.

The same life on the island.

Tatiana ends this story by saying:

“Yes, this is a story about Caucasian Shepherd Dogs. The very dogs that many people consider vicious and excessively aggressive.”

Perhaps that was the most remarkable thing about that summer.

No one trained the dogs to divide the island into sectors.

No one explained which visitors belonged to one group and which belonged to the other.

No one ordered them to guard the tent, the boats or the children’s area.

No one told them to look for thieves in the water.

No one told Zhavari to pull the child out.

And no one ordered the three enormous dogs to accompany their little friend at sunrise.

They watched the life around them.

They learned its rules.

And gradually, it was as though they drew their own invisible map of the island.

These are our people.

These are their belongings.

Those are the guests.

This is allowed.

That is not.

And the children?

It seemed there was a separate rule for them.

They must be protected.

And so an ordinary summer campsite became an island under guard.

Without fences.

Without guard posts.

Without commands.

Only people, children and several Caucasian Shepherd Dogs who knew very well what had been entrusted to them.

Tatiana sums up these stories in her own words:

“All of this confirms how unique the Caucasian Shepherd is in its intelligence. Like no other, it knows how to make decisions independently. There are many guardian breeds, but in my opinion the Caucasian Shepherd still holds first place precisely because of its ability to assess a situation and make its own decision. Dogs that live and work in the mountains do not attend training centres, yet they understand what their owner requires of them almost from a single glance.”

— Tatiana Polozhentseva, Star Escort

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