The Mudi (pronounced "moody") is one of Hungary's lesser-known herding breeds and probably the most capable dog you've never heard of.

The name is believed to trace back to an 18th-century Hungarian shepherd, Tóth Mihály, who named his dog Mudi -- and the name stuck, eventually becoming the breed's official designation when Dr. Dezső Fényes formally recognized it in Hungary in 1936. The FCI followed in the 1960s. The AKC didn't add the Mudi until 2022, which goes some way toward explaining why most Americans still draw a blank at the name.

They're rare by any measure... a few thousand worldwide, the majority still in Hungary and Finland. And many of the Hungarian ones are working dogs, not show dogs. Hungarian shepherds still use the Mudi to manage flocks of up to 500 sheep, which sounds pretty amazing for such a small dog.

The character description that comes up most often among people who know the breed: a Malinois crossed with a cat. Intensely capable, quick, independent, deeply loyal -- but on their own terms. They herd, they guard, they rat, and they've been documented hunting wild boar. They jump like nothing you've seen from a dog this size. They're an all-purpose farm dog that somehow never made it out of Hungary in any significant numbers, and the breed community seems to want to keep it that way.

The coat comes in several colors -- black, white, brown, ash, yellow, and merle. The merle pattern has its own Hungarian name: cifra. It's visually striking in any breed, but on a Mudi moving across golden Puszta grass, it's something else entirely.

I photographed Kinney and Szikra at the Kentuckiana Cluster in Louisville -- Kinney the solid black, Szikra the cifra merle. Szikra means spark in Hungarian, which feels perfect for a dog whose coat catches light the way hers does.

For the painting, I wanted to put them squarely in the landscape that made them. The Hungarian Great Plain -- the Puszta -- is one of the flattest places in Europe, all open sky and amber grass and that enormous horizon. Behind Kinney and Szikra, a flock of Racka sheep presses close... the breed the Mudi has worked for centuries, with those distinctive long spiral horns that look like something out of a medieval illumination. A traditional sweep well, a gémeskút, sits on the horizon behind them. The setting is specific because the breed is specific. These aren't decorative farm dogs. They're workers, and the Puszta is where that work happened.

Prints of the Mudi painting are available in the 205 Project shop at pouka.com/full-shop/205-project.

If you'd like to commission a portrait of your own dog, you can find information about the process at pouka.com/commissions.

THE MUDI

The Ethics of GAN and LLM Training - Part 3