In December, I went to the Yamnuska Wolfdog Sanctuary just west of Cochrane to learn about wolfdogs.
As you can see, they are beautiful animals but their story is a little sad. It turns out that wolfdogs are not generally the result of accidental inter-breeding between wolves and domestic dogs. Rather, most are the result of intentional breeding. The portrayal of wolfdogs or wolves as great companion animals on television and movies leads some people to decide they want to own one. They find a breeder who will sell them a wolfdog but it may not really be what they think. This is because it is very hard to confirm how much “wolf content” there is in any particular wolfdog. According to the Yamnuska Wolfdog Sanctuary, roughly 90 percent of wolfdogs are misrepresented. That’s the first problem.
The second problem is that the portrayal of the animals on the screen is often inaccurate. Gorgeous though they are, wolfdogs can become more and more difficult to control as they mature and the wolf behaviours kick in. When the adopter finds that it isn’t trainable and the situation is unmanageable, the animal loses its home and in some cases, its life.
Yamnuska takes in abandoned and neglected wolfdogs. The staff use a technique called “phenotyping” to estimate the wolf content in each one. This means they examine the animal for biological, physical and behavioural traits to rate it as high-, medium- or low-wolf content. That way they can decide who can share an enclosure with whom. They will also adopt the low-content ones out to people who have the knowledge and means to care for them properly.
Since wolfdogs are pretty shy, some of them stayed quite far away from me, but hopefully I have identified them correctly.
There was also a fellow called Rango, who is a coydog. He has quite the magnificent tail, doesn’t he?
