Monday, January 26, 2015

My Experiences with Domesticated Wolves

Whether a Wolf is domesticated or not it can be a very unsettling experience for most people. It is the way they tend to look at you. A friend who was trimming our trees had a male wolf in his front seat when he came to trim trees. After being around dogs all my life, a dog feels like humans are his friends or parents more than anything else because they have been "Bred for this kind of reaction to humans".

Whereas a Wolf doesn't necessarily see himself as anything but an equal to a human in his natural state. Because the wolf knows he could "Bring Down" most humans if he needed to. And this is why most humans prefer dogs because they are bred to be "Easier to control" generally than wolves are.

Other traits wolves have that dogs usually don't (unless they are part wolf now).

1. Wolves don't bark. They might howl at the moon but they don't bark and give their location away.
2. Wolves can run backwards almost as fast as they can run forwards. This is an advantage so they can bite something attacking them from behind if they have to or to protect their packs or puppies from harm more easily.
3. Wolves don't necessarily see humans as superior to them. They might not think humans have a right to control them at all. Some dogs might think like this too especially breeds like German Sheppards or Doberman Pincers or other shepparding or work dog breeds that are bred for extreme intelligence rather than just lovability and companionship.
4. A human should respect a Wolf even if it has been trained to be around humans. They can revert to wild behavior very easily too. I have met people who take their wolves into public places so they don't revert and become a problem. I met a lady at a Starbucks who was doing this. She told the wolf to jump up on the starbuck's outside table. It easily did this in one hop. You likely wouldn't see the average dog doing this.
5. Wolves are incredibly smart and can out think some humans. So, if one is not under human supervision at the time it might be potentially dangerous trained or not if the trainer is not present.

So, one must have a lot of respect for all wild things. After all, they survived just fine without mankind for hundreds of thousands of years or more.

Also, some of the trails I have taken my dogs over the years were frequented by someone who walked his 6 wolves. You could sometimes hear other dogs freaking out when they met the wolves in the distance. I wasn't too happy to meet 6 wolves at a time either because they would run ahead of the owner who was an older guy with a long white pony tail on his hair so he was kind of wild like the wolves.

It wasn't that I was necessarily personally afraid of the wolves but they always terrified my daughter's corgi even though my older dog who has now passed on was extremely intelligent like the wolves so they got along with him just fine. Also, he was 70 pounds so wasn't afraid of 125 to 150 to 175 pound wolves either. So, for me, mostly I wanted to make sure they didn't think my corgi dog was a rabbit or something because she might bark at them and set them off onto her as a meal.

I have seen my daughter's corgi approach one barking at it and it just looked at her while slowly running backwards and looking at her like she might make a nice meal for him. But, it was sort of like a cat to a mouse. He was just playing with her like a cat would a toy.

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