WOLVES

[mamelukesabre]

I became hyper-interested in canids awhile back when I read something about coy-wolf hybrids in the northeast part of the US. I've been reading about them lately. I know there is an ongoing effort to "re-introduce" wolves into certain parts of the united states. This upsets a lot of folks and makes others giddy with excitement.

So, I am sharing my only personal wolf story I can because it is the only one I have. It isn't much since they've been extinct in these parts for a very long time.

My cousin used to tell me stories about the old-timers hanging dead wolves from the eaves of their porch when he was a small boy. This would've been in the early 60s. He and I were business partners for awhile so we used to trade stories a lot. Sometimes I would wonder about the stories he told me and try to double check them by asking his brother, sister, and dad. This wolf story was one of those that I doubted since according to official history, wolves were extinct in that part of the country way before the time period he speaks of.

So I had a discussion with his dad one time when I was out to the old farm doing some odd stuff for him.

He told me "oh gosh no, those weren't wolves...he was mistaken and wasn't old enough to know the difference." I felt like the air was let out of me because I wanted it to be true. Then he said "those were wolf-dogs...half wolf, half dog...bigger and meaner than real wolves".

So then I said to him "you know, according to the experts there were no wolves alive in this area after the 1800s?" He says "yeah, I suppose. They might be right"

Then I say "well, if they were extinct in the 1800s, how the hell you get any wolf dog hybrids around here a hundred years later?"

He says: "Ya got me there, I guess there had to have been at least one more wolf around cuz those were not dogs. They were wolfdogs...And they were a serious problem around here in the 1960s. We were all out to get them around here. I bought a mauser to shoot them with."

Then I said "your son told me he remembers the dead wolves hanging from the eaves of someone's porch around here and they were so big, they were almost touching the ground."

"Yep...that was [i forget the name]'s place. He was old and strange and would hang them by the neck from the roof of his porch and the hind legs would be pretty close to the ground...let 'em hang til they rotted to nuthin. Those wolfdogs treed me once when I was new to this area. I was out on my old ford tractor pulling a wagon and mending fence. My dog warned me and I dropped what I was doing and ran up a tree while he kept them busy as long as he could. Best dog I ever had. He was free...came with the farm...lived under the porch. I was in that tree a long time waiting for the wolfdogs to move on."

I asked around after that. I decided the story wasn't made up.

Another person from that area told me there was a highway cut through some hills and it disrupted the hunting ground of a small isolated pack of wolves. The pack scattered and was on the run. Just a small number survived and bred with feral dogs. The resulting hybrids formed a pack and terrorized the area for years. This was the theory they come up with because the wolfdogs appeared shortly after a new stretch of highway was cut through some virgin hills.

[Mears]

There is a place here in Ipswich,MA called Wolf Hollow.

My daughter keeps telling me to get there and at my age I’d better hurry.

[Mears]

” I had a grown Colley and she was scared to death of this little puppy.”

==

Amazing how your grown dog recognized this little pup as something to be feared.

I hope the little guy was able to rejoin his pack.

We have no wolves in the wild here in MA,at least not yet. I never thought we’d have coyotes here in Eastern MA in my densely populated area, but they are all over the place.

[brytlea]

The story of the Russian Circus dog being used to start the golden retriever is a myth. The breed is actually quite new, being started by Lord Tweedmouth in 1868. He kept excellent records and so we know exactly what dogs he used. Tweed water spaniels, yellow curly coated retrievers, irish setter, black retrievers and bloodhound were used. Interestingly, if you look at a photo of Crocus (from his first mating which was between a tweed water spaniel and a yellow curly coated retriever) you would be hard pressed not to imagine you were looking at a present day golden retriever.
I don’t know where the Russian Circus dog story began, but it was widely accepted, but was proven to be false as his records are quite complete.
As for bad temperaments, they can crop up if you don’t breed for a correct one. I’ve seen the occasional nasty golden, and it must be guarded against, since it’s a breed that you expect to be trustworthy above all else.