Khechoyan's BB, owner Pia W, Old Washoe Ranch

ABOUT THE CLUB

In the early 90s, soon after Armenia gained independence from the USSR, a large group of people convened to write a standard for the breed and began documenting many dogs in order to save the breed. This collaboration took many months and while the website is no longer updated, the cataloged work can still be seen.   Some of the people who contributed to this project were Andrey Kurbet-Davidiantz, Garnik Ohanyan, Armen Khechoyan, Avetik Asatrian, Karen Manvelian, Edward Sargsyan, Viktoria Maloyan, Norayr Chilingaryan, N. Abajian, Naira Avagyan and Tigran Nazaryan,, among others.

The group commissioned the painting for the stamp at left, which was created from the image in an old photo from Andrey Davidiantz, at right

Also in the 1990's, Armen Khechoyan personally went across Nagorno-Karabakh, or Artsakh as it is known historically, collecting as many Gamprs as he could , saving those who were left behind due to war. Armen  kept the dogs, got them healthy and later when villagers and shepherds were ready, he placed them back into the community, which earned him the nickname the "Godfather of Gamprs".  

Armen with  10 year old Chapo, in Gyumi

In 1998 ,Tigran Nazaryan, collected data on 300+ Gamprs & mixes in Armenia and posted 100 of them on his Tiknapah website.  Tigran, Armen Khechoyan and a veterinarian friend Avetik arranged for the transportation of several dogs to the United States in order to establish the breed. Some of the dogs were lost and a few were bred.

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During this time, other kennel clubs formed, such as Aspar, Gampr, Aralez and several others, which registered and showed Armenian Gamprs in traditional dog club fashion.  However, due to internal disagreements,  the clubs disbanded and not much progress resulted.

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As a result of the imports through Tiknapah club, our Club founder, Rohana Mayer became involved in 2007 and formed the Armenian Gampr Club of America.  Without her dedication & determination over the years, our breed would not be where it is today and we would not be so fortunate to have Gamprs protecting our farms & livestock.  Due to this increased breed activity, our sister Club, the Armenian Gampr Club of Canada, was founded in December 2016 to handle the influx of new Gamprs in Canada, which is managed by President, Erin Ingham.

Since then, our Club has grown exponentially and continues to seek out working aboriginal Gamprs and facilitate placements to homes and farms across the US & Canada while maintaining  the largest, most in-depth pedigree database in the world.  Today the Board continues to remain focused toward the on going efforts to increase breed awareness, education and the conservation efforts to save the breed from extinction.

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