[4][6] Nenets Herding Laika are small to medium-sized dogs with a thick double coats that are either solid or bicolored, coming in grey, tan, red, black or white.

[1] Nenets Herding Laika are muscular dogs with a moderate wedge-shaped heads, small, prick ears and a tail that curves over the back or is kept down depending on mood.

The Nenets Laika is one of the oldest dog breeds, surviving from the Paleolithic era to the present day almost unchanged with little genetic inflow.

[4]As infrastructure and mechanized travel made Arctic regions more accessible, non-native dogs began to intermix with the Nenets Herding Laika population.

This, combined with a prevalent belief during the Soviet era that only registered purebred dogs had any value, contributed to Nenets Herding Laika’s decline.

[15][5] By the 1980s, a collective effort was made to replace the Nenets Herding Laika with humans on all-terrain vehicles and snowmobiles, citing the use of dogs as an antiquated method.