Social testing

Figure 46

     Popular accounts would have you believe that a pet hybrid will take the first opportunity to challenge, even attack its owner. The reality is much more complex than this. Although a wolf is open to challenging a dominant pack member, including a human "pack member," this will generally only occur under certain circumstances such as:

1. The animal is maturing sexually and is testing and achieving dominance over other canine pack members.
2. The animal is fence-fighting with a non-pack member and, already highly aroused, redirects aggression on a person in the pen.
3. The animal has a history of aggression and has learned to challenge people.
4. The animal becomes overstimulated during an excited greeting and "boils-over" to an aggressive state.
5. The animal is kept in an inadequately small pen leading to boredom and excitability, and/or is not worked with, socialized and trained adequately.
6. The owner trips and falls and is suddenly and conspicuously vulnerable.
7. The owner develops a fear of the animal and acts conspicuously vunerable or afraid.
8. The owner rewards aggression in the animal or allows aggressive behaviors to continue unabated.
9. The owner fails to understand and compensate for seasonal aggression. This is especially common for males (of both species).
10. The owner triggers a critical reaction by trying to force the animal to do something, or puts the animal into a situation where the animal becomes defensive.

     The other, younger female, is over half wolf and is testing the teenager. Although it was not the case here, such "testing" is perceived by some owners as "play," but it is not play; it is quite serious and can lead to a bite or even an attack if not suppressed through proper training. Although she took a lot of work and training, this animal continues to do well years later, but due to the heightened social aggression between female wolves, she is no longer living with any other female canines.

Figure 48

Hunting

Wolves, hybrids and children

Figure 52 Figure 53 Figure 54

     Most zoo wolves, figure 53, where the animals have unrestricted access to viewing children, will show predatory behavior like this young black male is doing as he stalks a child. The same can easily happen in a pet situation. What is also very interesting in figure 53 are the expressions of the people. Click on the image to get a larger version and you can see both parents and both children are very excited and happy. The mother is grinning ear to ear. It is very common for parents to be happy and excited when animals show an interest in their children. However, there have been cases where children have been seriously bitten by dogs and wolfdogs when such predatory behavior went unrecognized and there are no physical barriers separating the animal from the people. It is also important to point out that this behavior can generally be thought of as a product of captivity. Unhabituated to people, wolves in the wild do not think of children as anything more than something to be avoided -- as they would avoid all mankind.

     Mickey, figure 54, was a pet wolf in Michigan who killed a child. Mickey was kept chained in a back yard. When a three-year-old walked up to him, he knocked the child over and treated him like small prey. Mickey had reportedly been "good" with children up to this point. Children less than five years old are particularly at risk around dogs of all kinds, especially large breeds, and are the most likely to be killed in a biting incident.

Dogs can also be
dangerous and destructive

Figure 55 Figure 56

     In fact, predatory behavior can be quite varied depending on the circumstances. A dog which has been perfectly good with the house cat, may chase and even kill a cat outside. Sometimes that may even be the same cat it was good with when indoors.

     It was not until the owners of the dog saw the blood on the dog and then were taken to see what had happened to the sheep that they realized that their dog was a dog, a predator capable of doing predatory things...

     Although dogs, to varying degrees, will exhibit predatory behavior, with few exceptions, wolves have a lower triggering threshold for exhibiting predatory behavior. Also, when it is triggered, this behavior is much more intense, much more likely to follow through the entire sequence of give eye, stalk, chase, catch, kill and eat. This sheep survived an attack by a dog, but it is unlikely that it would have survived one by a wolf. Again, a hybrid would have been somewhere in the middle, more likely to do damage than the average dog, less likely than most wolves.

     Bux and McDowell (1992) report an estimated that between one and four million persons per year are bitten by dogs in the United States. Gershman, et. al. (1994) estimates 585,000 injuries result in the need for medical attention yearly and that children are the most frequent victims. Wright (1985) estimates that a risk of two fatalities per 1,000 reported dog bites may exist nationwide while a comprehensive survey by Sacks et al (1989) identified 157 fatalities attributed to dog bites from 1979 through 1988. In the latter, the authors report that the death rate for young children was almost 370 times that of adults 30 to 49 years of age and that 70% of the deaths occurred among children who were less than ten years of age. In the 101 cases where the breed of dog was reported, pit bull breeds were involved in 42 (41.6%) of the cases. Wolf hybrids were reported in only five cases. In a listing of newspaper accounts of attacks by dogs in Canada and the U.S. from 1982-1995 privately published by an organization called Animal People, wolf hybrids were listed as having attacked and done serious harm to 27 out of 210 (12.9%) listed cases. However, this was not a scientific study, only a listing of what was reported in the popular press. All accounts reporting dog bite statistics listed pit bull breeds in the majority.

Do bad dogs justify
keeping pet wolves?

Figure 57

Figure 58

Figure 59

      Wolves, and most high wolf-content hybrids are very curious, and on average much more destructive than dogs. Even under "controlled" circumstances, most wolves will get into things. In figure 57, Imbo, Wolf Park's former alpha male, is led into the Visitor Center kitchen where he climbs up on a table and pulls things down to investigate them by pulling them apart (figure 58). If left to their own devices, wolves can be quite destructive; even the garden hose is not safe (figure 59).

     So how to explain this discrepancy? How can it be that a wolf or a wolfdog hybrid is more difficult to keep than a dog, yet dogs are higher on the bite statistics lists? Studies have concluded that nothing can be definitively concluded regarding statistics on wolfdogs.

     There are too many people who misrepresent their animals. There are too great a range of percentages and breeding combinations (due to the lack of any concise breeding program in the U.S. these animals are unfortunately the ultimate mutts). And, there is a strong tendency across the board, from research facilities, to one time owners of a single animal, for people to lie about their animal -- to claim it is just a dog if it should ever get into trouble ... and especially if it should ever bite someone. The fault here is a legitimately based fear that the animal will be immediatly euthanized for rabies testing, an issue which will be addressed in a later section.

     There is also the possibility that there may be a stronger statistical relationship between the quality of wolfdog owner and the result you see in the animal in comparison to that of a general dog owner and the resultant behavior in their dog. At least a bias may exist in the direction of the bad, ignorant of training and social requirements, or the neglectful owner.

     There is such a narrow margin of error with most wolfdogs, relative to dogs, that in general a wolfdog owner who does not do a good job with their animal usually does not keep them very long relative to the same situation with the average dog. The reason being that a poorly socialized wolfdog will generally be much shier than the average dog making a less handleable and perhaps less desirable pet. A wolf or a high content wolfdog also requires much earlier socialization than a dog. Most wolfdogs and nearly all pure wolves will have a greater tendency to avoid people if free and away from their "territory" regardless of their socialization history. By default, this would result in the animal getting into less trouble if it avoided people.

     Many owners also realize early on that they have an animal which will require more work. They will either they put in that extra work, or they put the animal in a situation where it will be less likely to get into trouble, or they may even put the animal down. The net result is that perhaps, just perhaps, wolfdogs are somewhat self regulating when put into a "pet" situation.