ESPECIALLY if the thought that they weren't 100% domestic didn't occur to you until some stranger suggested they could be a hybrid.

I cracked up. Someone posted a picture of a husky without a mask and someone said 'what content' and their reply was 'None. He is zero percent wolf. He is a husky' and I'm still laughing my ass off.

Furthermore, you do not WANT your dog to be a wolfdog, coydog, etc. because that opens up your animal up to SERIOUS issues, up to and including being seized and euthanized if anyone even so much as falsely reports them for biting.

Oh man. Where?

Um. "No, It's not starving" fb

Oh boy. Yeah, I'm referring to the "coydog" on DF right now but.

Oh yeah, in this case it was the owner being all 'FFS, no.'

which like never happens

Thankfully. Someone has sense, at least.

But like. Everything I've read says even low content animals of either hybrid REALLY don't act like dogs.

Whereas so many people are like "my dog is a hybrid because they act like [insert description of high-energy, independent, and/or drivey dogs here]!"

Honestly I've known actual hybrids. They're not as different as some of the literature makes it sound to casual observers

the one that lived next to us for a while 20 years ago came across like a badly socialized dog and that was about it.

Mentally fucked but what's new

(Also lived on a chain or in a house, and killed other dogs but. Hey.)

I have admittedly only "known" (ie followed online) one person with a confirmed coydog, and she was. Challenging. The dog, not the person.

yeah I don't know a thing about coydogs. I was under the impression they were actually more rare than wolf hybrids but cannot remember why anymore

something about breeding seasons.

and, you know, a tendency to kill and eat dogs

But if you show me a doggy-looking dog and try to use doggy behaviors to "prove" that they're hybrids I will not be impressed.

...and it having to be a naturally occuring mix, unlike wolf hybrids at this stage but /handwave

and yeah, I'm unimpressed by this person too

I will say that embark results (there's a fb) group often has like 10-12% wolf show up in dogs I would NOT expect it in, but that's like. 10% so I mean.

I believe they are rarer (although I think a couple breeders do exist for some dogawful reason)

...that.

dogawful was a typo but I'll leave it.

Yes. Do. I like it

At that point too you have to wonder how much of it is actually recent wolf heritage and how much of it is coincidence since they are so closely related. I like how thorough Embark is, but I'd like to hear their take on that.

dogawful!!!!

They have a separate category for 'wolf influence in breeds'

that doesn't mean there's no overlap but it shows up as a separate thing (wolfiness score) rather than in the breed breakdown

and they are DEFINITELY evolving and suggest people rerun every year or two

Ah, cool!

I still think UC Davis is the only place that runs a legit DNA test for wolf or coyote content

Although my quick search turned up this place that's selling a DNA test for "Wolf-Fox-Coyote breeds" which sounds SUPER reliable (yikes!).

Hint: it is literally impossible for foxes to hybridize with dogs, wolves, or coyotes.

There, that's my "fox DNA test" pls give me 85$ now.

Well I don't know how legit embark is with it

but they do test for it and breeders do use it

they also have a village dog thing which is neat. And a big ass project

Yeah, but it doesn't sound like they're selling it as "for sure proof your dog is a hybrid".

No.

Just that it's a thing they test for and breeders use for said purposes and accept They even break down wolf types

...which frankly strikes me as dangerous but hey

(Dangerous in the 'oh look you have proof the dog is a hydrbid you're in shit now) OTOH, I suspect most people not gettin 8% results know

A little bit, yeah.

My big issue is I REALLY hope those people don't then go around claiming they have a "wolfdog", for all the reasons above and also because that gives others a horribly skewed perspective of what hybrid animals look and act like.

Here's the UC Davis test info.

And even they're like "may not be 100% accurate, this is for hybrids within 3 generations".

Yeah, embark has that same 3 gen disclaimer on everything

re: accuracy

Yup, and reasonably so

Randomly

and not trying to be snarky

but the color and genetics places on Fb which are mostly made up of scientists and breeders actually don't like UCdavis for at least color testing

and have had more accurate results with Embark

ke of that as you will

Huh, that's good to know

and slightly weird

tbh

Yeah, I want to know what's up with that.

For fun, here's some actual F1 poodle/wolf hybrids:

(D'you think they're hypoallergenic?)

... they're woodles

WOODLES

i have a friend of a friend who insists she owns

i think she's convinced it's an f1 wolfdog

i think?

and she pulled out pictures and i was like "no that's... not a" and she started on this big rant about how she knows about wolves and she's wanted one since she was tiny and her dog acts different and she is positive and i just dropped it

not worth the energy of trying to convince her when she was 100% sure, you know?

if there's any wolf in it then i'm p sure that it's very very low content though and it's for absolute sure not a f1

I hope for her sake nothing happens, and that nobody goes out and gets a high-content animal expecting it to act like hers...

But it's almost impossible to get a f1 dog, because at least in the US 99% of wolfdogs come from long lines of hybrid animals, largely from the defunct wolf fur industry.

It'd be really unusual for someone to get ahold of a pure wolf and then be breeding it to a pure dog, not to mention dangerous for the animals.

*an f1 wolfdog, I mean

yeah no like that's what i tried to tell her that f1s just aren't for sale

like basically people who breed wolfdogs create a new breed and have to do a lot of careful balancing

so they look and act as they want them to

maybe she didn't even show off any pics ider i think she did but this was like half a year ago

but i just know from having looked into it - not even because i've got a super strong desire to own one but just because i research all sorts of things - that f1s aren't for sale

and aren't even legal to own without the same permits as would let you own a wolf mostly

Well, an F1 would be mid-content by definition, and there's definitely a lot of people out there with high-content wolfdogs.

Though you're right, in some states you need special enclosures, special permits, or it's outright illegal.

Sadly there's also a lot of people slapping northern breeds with GSDs and selling them as "wolfdogs" so there's a lot of misinformation out there.

yeah no but there's a difference between an f4 high content and a f1

f1s are unpredictable by their very nature, even high content f4s there's a lot more idea of what to expect

I'm... not sure I've heard that before, honestly.

Mind sourcing? I also know most of this stuff through random research as opposed to first-hand experience, so I'm always trying to learn more.

i'm seeing if i can find the articles it was a while ago

Cool, thanks!

I mean, I know mid-contents can be a bit of a crapshoot behavior-wise, but I'd think high-contents would be more predictably... wolfy. So more difficult animals in general, compared to mid-contents.

oh i mean they are but

gosh dang it i am trying to find these stupid sites but what it boils down to is f1 is half wolf and half dog but unpredictably so

so f1 wolfdogs can look a whole lot more like dogs than like wolves and act more like wolves than like dogs

Yeah, okay, I get you now.

whereas f4+ there's been time for selective breeding to try to make them look more like wolves but act less like them

not like a dog in a wolf suit because you know, there's all sorts of stuff that carries

Though I do know that wolfdog litters are usually a bit of a gamble, because you can have low, mid, and high contents in the same litter.

but there was this article that i just cannot find at the moment which is bugging me that had a bunch of pictures

i mean it depends, since the content is just the percentage of dna that you get, phenotype can vary but the genotype would be the same

so like if you had an f1 50% dog 50% wolf and you crossbred it with a wolf you'd have a 75% wolf 25% dog

even if it still somehow looked pretty much just like a husky

Well, again, it's very rare for pure wolves to be used in breeding wolfdogs. And each embryo would be have a different genotype because it would be from a different egg and different sperm, right?

The way I've seen it explained is if you have two jars of marbles, each have 50 blue and 50 red mixed up. You'd grab 50 marbles from each jar randomly and put it into a new one, and that's your new "pup". It could wind up around 50/50, but you could also wind up with mostly red or mostly blue.

So while the ancestry of the pup would be half wolf, half dog (as each of the parents are exactly half), the actual genes may be more doggy or more wolfy.

And ofc. since you're usually breeding generations of hybrids together, it can be a little more tricky.

yeah but what i'm saying is like

sorry i went back to looking for it and lost my train of though

t

np

okay i think the website is gone

since i've found a few links to something that is no longer there but haven't found the thing

but anyway what it comes down to is that while there's an inherent unpredictability in any hybrid there's more of a handle on how things are gonna go a few generations down the line than the first generation

all right, I think I'm with you now

yeah

cause like you can breed selectively for traits you want - like 'looks more like a wolf' and 'is friendly' then if you just throw a dog and a wolf together

which is a crapshoot

and i'm angry that i can't find that article since there were a lot of very interesting pictures of some f1s

which in some cases were some very bizarre looking mixtures of traits with siblings looking completely different in some cases it was pretty wild

oh yeah, I've seen... idk if it was the same article, but the woodles were an f1 experiment along those lines.

but like ideally in wolfdog breeding the end goal is 'looks like a wolf but acts like a dog' and that never happens 100% but there's control on how it goes- that's one of the articles i found!

back in the day

i don't know if it was the same one it maybe was? or one of them

there's only been a handful of wolfdogs that weren't from like 5 different breeds of dogs

and so every time it happens it's super well documented

there's a wolf-lab mix out there

Yeah, I've seen that one too.

Though I'd argue that quite a few hardcore wolfdog people out there... don't actually want a dog that looks like a wolf. Part of the appeal does seem to be the behavioral aspect as well.

I'm sure they're out there but I doubt they're the majority?

that said when i say 'acts like a dog' i don't mean 'acts like a pug' i mean like

> likes being around people

> trainable

> won't try to eat other pets/children

etc etc

I think they're the majority of the "wolfdog community", honestly. As opposed to people who want a wolf as a pet because it's cool/pretty/their "spirit animal".

Otherwise they wouldn't be going for wolfdog-wolfdogs, they'd be going for recent wolf content dog breeds like the Czech, Saarloos, etc.