The Canaan Dog has been in the area of Israel since pre-Biblical times. The Hebrews knew them as Kelef Kananni, which means Canaan Dog. Drawings on tombs dated to the 2nd Millenium BCE depict dogs which show an unmistakable resemblance to the Canaan Dog of today.
Always useful to man, the Canaan Dog was the watch dog of the ancient Israelites. They guarded their camps and protected their flocks against intruders. The breed was plentiful in the region until the Diaspora, the dispersal of the Hebrew people by the Romans circa 70 CE. As the Hebrew population dropped, so did that of the Kelev Kannani, with the majority of the dogs seeking refuge in the Negev Desert, then a natural reservoir for Israeli wildlife. Avoiding extinction through war and famine, they became mostly untamed, with some retaining a form of domesticity by living with the Bedouin, earning their keep guarding the herds and camps through the years just as their ancestors had done. Some were guards for the Druze people on Mt. Carmel. This was the situation of the Canaan Dog in Palestine until the early 1930s.
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