Hmmm .. you just have to wonder about people who won't accept DNA evidence .. *L*
Anyway, back to the original topic .. I've had contact with quite a number of wolf-hybrids, as they were once very popular here in Alaska. In fact, there was a breeder about ten miles from me here and she used to bring her animals into the vet clinic when I was a tech. She also produced (and sold) full-blooded wolves. I had the somewhat dubious pleasure of working with one of these wolves.
In all honesty, most of the people who I've seen who claim their dog is a wolf hybrid are just saying that. Most of those animals didn't appear to be hybrids to me (after being around many). They didn't have the physical look or the personality that I've seen in the "real" thing. It was popular to have a hybrid and so people would make the assumption that their dog (usually a husky, shepherd or malemute mix) had wolf because they had a bit of a wolfy look.
The problem with mixing a wolf with a dog is that the animal can easily have personality traits that are consistent with a wild animal. Even the wolves that were bred and born in captivity were NOT anything like a domestic dog. The wolf that came to me for training was nine months old and had been hand-raised from the age of two weeks. His owner brought him into the shop where I did my private training and I had her drop the leash so he could explore. I had everyone do this at first. But this animal didn't act like a dog .. he explored things in a much more thorough way. A box wasn't merely sniffed in passing - it was examined in depth, to the point of sniffing all the sides and even pushing it a bit. When he came to the fridge, he nosed the towel that was tied to the handle (I had been training a dog to open the fridge to fetch a beer). He nosed it, sniffed it, then grabbed the towel in his mouth and yanked the door open! Scared himself, too .. he jumped back and watched it while it closed.
His movement, his persistence in examining everything about him .. these were not like any dog I'd been around (or have been around since then). And his way of dealing with things was interesting too. He would lay claim to something and then defend it even though it was something unimportant (it seemed). He picked up one of the dog beds that was on the floor and started carrying it around! And his owner said "well, we can't take it from him now". I approached him and he froze, hackles came up and he started to growl. So I took a handful of meat and just stood there talking to him .. I knew he couldn't get the meat without dropping the bed .. *L* .. eventually he made the choice to drop the bed and approach me for the meat, and I took his leash and walked him away from the bed so we could put it up.
He had a number of problems, caused by a combination of ignorance on the part of the owner and Wraith's inability to understand humans. He was a wolf, not bred to be a companion of man, but bred to live in the wild - and here he was, confined and collared and made to be a pet. It was a bad match and his way of dealing with it was to become aggressive.
Using lots of reinforcement and little to no confrontations, we were able to work through some of the problems. He learned to willingly go into a crate. He learned to accept having a harness put on him. But his owner wanted him to pull a sled, and I tried to get her to understand that he was not bred to pull a sled .. it was sad because he was a gorgeous animal and so unsuited to what she actually wanted. But she said she'd had a wolf hybrid at one point and it was the best sled dog she'd ever had. So in her mind, a full wolf should be even better.
I see NO reason for anyone to purposely get a hybrid dog, other than to feed their own egos. Wild creatures should not be treated like domestic dogs and at times it becomes a dangerous situation because the wild side has no clue as to how to live with us puny humans. While we will always hear stories of "I had a wolf hybrid and it was the BEST DOG" .. most true hybrids retain a great number of the wolf traits and that eventually creates problems.
Let the wild creatures live in the wild .. we have enough domesticated animals already.
BTW, Wraith was eventually euthanized because of continuing aggression .. he never had a chance ..
Melanie and the gang in Alaska
