The nickname reflects centuries spent hunting gazelle and hare alongside nomadic peoples across North Africa and into the Middle East. In build it belongs to the same wider family as the greyhound, adapted for desert ground: tall at 24 to 29 inches, lean, elegant and built for fast, sight led coursing across open country.
It is also known as the Arabian Greyhound. From Morocco, the Sloughi is a medium sized sighthound whose traditional work was to course game by sight at full speed, from hares to gazelles depending on the homeland. This is one of the oldest bargains in dogs: a day's coursing in exchange for a warm place to sleep it off.
Fashion has edited every old breed at least once, sometimes for better health and sometimes not; the honest breeders working today are usually the ones talking openly about that history.
The breed sits in the Hound group and its home ground is Morocco. Its temperament, Calm, sensitive, dignified and catlike indoors, is the history still running in the modern dog. Progress with a 2/5 trainability Sloughi is measured in weeks of consistency, not in single brilliant sessions.
The fixed facts behind every answer here: medium size, 40 to 63 lb, 10 to 15 years of life, and a temperament summarised as Calm, sensitive, dignified and catlike indoors.
The growth record behind the breed: a Sloughi puppy weighs 8 weeks at about 6 to 9 lb, 9 months at about 30 to 47 lb, 12 months at about 35 to 55 lb, on the way to 40 to 63 lb fully grown at 24 to 29 inches. The breed belongs to the Hound group and its home ground is Morocco.
Grooming of 3/5 and shedding of 3/5 set the housework terms for any Sloughi household. Households should choose with that dog, not an imagined one, in mind, and the Sloughi profile shows the real animal in full. Everything behind these answers, from growth tables to the health list, is laid out on the full Sloughi breed profile.
The modern pet version of the breed is a negotiation between the old job and the modern sofa, and owners who understand the old job negotiate far better.
Owners reading this while choosing a breed should weigh the answer alongside the whole record, not in isolation: a single trait rarely decides a match, but the pattern of traits decides nearly all of them.
Most old breeds carry a few: war dogs, royal companions and one dog whose loyalty became a national story are the usual pattern. The Sloughi profile tells its own breed's famous names in the history section. History also warns: traits bred in for work do not retire just because the work did.
Standards drift with fashion and photography flatters every era's preference. Underneath, the working Sloughi of a century ago, 24 to 29 inches of herding, hunting or guarding dog, is recognisably today's breed. The breed's name itself usually carries its history, and the Sloughi profile unpacks it along with the standard.
Breed clubs keep the deepest archives, including the health and longevity records that never reach general books. Start from the Sloughi profile's sources, then the breed club for Morocco lines if you want the full story.
Family life with a Sloughi examined: the rating, the routine and the honest bottom line.
The honest Sloughi budget: food, insurance, year one and the lifetime total, worked out from the breed's own record.
Usually very lightly: both the Shih Tzu and the Poodle are low shedding parents, so the cross typically is too.
Last updated: November 4, 2026