A Walk on the Wolfish Side

As many of you know (or should, from my previous writings), I am a dedicated Canis familiaris person (as well as a Canis lupus admirer), having had Siberian Husky and Malamute dogs (mostly the former) for the past 30 years. Although our family had a small (but feisty) Pekingese dog when I was a small child, my very first ‘serious’ dog was an Alaskan Malamute named, appropriate to its natural habitat up north, ‘Chugiak’ (or ‘Chugatch’ as I Romanised the name (which is that of the indigenous Chugiak peoples of Siberia); supposedly the North American Indian tribes all stem from the ancient immigration of ancient Siberians to Alaska and Canada via the land bridge that geologists tell us once existed where the Bering Strait is now).

This personal association with what we broadly term ‘Spitz Type’ canines (a family of dogs that comprises the northern-most dog breeds) began when I was an undergrad at Bezerkeley, after taking a natural history course that covered the pioneering early 30s animal behavioral studies of Austrian Konrad Lorenz. Consequently, I quickly gained an appreciation of these closest-to-wolf domestic canines, impressed to no uncertain extent by the fact that these several ‘Northern Dog’ breeds branched off from their Lupine ancestors roughly 15-17 thousand years ago (in fact, contemporary genetic researches have revealed the astounding finding that today’s domestic dogs…all dogs, both big and small…still retain about 99.97% of the DNA matrices of their wild wolfish ancestors). That factoid still amazes me, despite my 30+ years accumulation of knowledge of and familiarity with both types!

The backstory behind the divergence of paths between wild wolves and our modern domestic canines is both fascinating and complex…too complicated to cover even briefly in a few casual paragraphs. Suffice it to say, however, that what some New Yorker might view as ‘merely’ a small Chihuahua dog that is someone’s pet is in fact a very closely linked relative of primordial wild wolfish forebears!

Furthermore, although most people may perhaps easily associate Huskies, Malamutes, Alaskan Eskimo, and Siberian Laikas (both East and West types), Samoyeds and a few other of the Spitz breeds to their wolfish relatives, owing to their striking appearance, far more are completely unaware that Alsatian dogs (in which category are found German, Belgian and West European Shepherds) are also in that classification of ‘almost wolf’ breeds. And yet, due to hundreds of years of selective domestic breeding, the personalities and basic temperaments of, say, German Shepherds and Siberian Huskies are totally and diametrically different! Again, according to the geneticists, that widely disparate divergence of character in dogs is attributable to the 0.03% genetic variance from their wolf archetypes!

Be all this as it may, my reason for bringing all this up here is to provide some basic understanding that our domestic dogs are essentially ALL still quite wolfish in many of their traits and characteristics, believe it or don’t! And this underlies much of the rampant ignorance and sheer stupidity of far too many naïve dog owners who, usually on a whim and without a lot of careful forethought, go out and ‘adopt’ dogs from shelters and rescue-groups, intending to ‘help those poor doggies’....

With the recent 3 years of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) constraints brought on by the viral pandemic, dog adoptions have increased remarkably, perhaps exponentially. Unfortunately, quite often the same motivations that actuate so many young, liberal progressive, ‘pie-in-the-sky’ idealists’ social and political outlooks also figures considerably in their typically uninformed and visually unaware attitudes regarding pets. Many of these total naïfs (a great number of whom seem to be not so “schmart” to begin with) suddenly find themselves swept up in a great wave of warm-snuggies, smarmy empathy for the plight of abused and neglected dogs and promptly head for the local pound to rescue one or several of those poor pups!

While their hearts are in the right place, their brains many times aren’t. In saying this, I mean it’s a wonderfully altruistic ideal to rescue deserving dogs but when it comes to being fully prepared beforehand to assume and encumber themselves with the full suite of knowledge, awarenesses and responsibilities that MUST be part-and-parcel of any dog human/dog association, they’re clueless!

Most regrettably, Americans are not known for the most part to be deep, analytical thinkers. In this country, ‘knee-jerk’ impulsiveness (co-attended by a lack of understanding of the more subtle complexities of behavior and head-strong, individualistic reactivity) is often a leading causative constituent of nearly everything that our daily activities comprise. Americans are NOT, as the English well know, subtle people.

Thus, in the most recent several years ‘new’ dog owners all too frequently embark (no pun intended, but still drolly apropos, LoL) upon their pet adoptions the same way brand-spanking-new and untested soldiers (like many youths in Putin’s Russian conscript army) head into the teeth of battle, like ritual animals sent to be slaughtered, completely unprepared for what follows.

Well, perhaps it isn’t quite that exact a comparison, but still…let me illustrate what I’m talking about with a couple of recent examples of to what I refer.

Two weeks ago, I took my female Siberian (‘Nala’…she’s a rescue and a lovely little girl of about 65 pounds whom I presume the previous family that had her named Nala after one of the female lions in Disney’s animated ‘The Lion King’) over to the park on her 2nd of three daily, long walks. The park in reference has two kiddie playgrounds, adjacent to each other but spaced about 30 yards apart: one for small children and infants and another for slightly older children. In order to walk through the park with a dog, one has to hug the hedges that are found either along the north or the south borders of it (it’s a fairly small park), so as to stay well clear of the playground swings, slides and such.

And so I did, as I do every day, keeping a weather eye out for the usual total idiots who persist in ignoring all the ‘ALL DOGS MUST BE ON LEASHES’ signs that you can’t fail to see (unless you’re totally blind or a complete reactive idjit). I chose to walk close to the south margin of the park (which lies directly adjacent to one of the city’s numerous, smelly sewage processing plants…thanks a heap, city planners! (Nothing like having a lovely family picnic there amidst the all-pervasive odor of sh*t that wafts over!).

Despite my close lookout, as I hugged the hedges, I thought I might have seen a glimpse of motion in the far-left periphery of my gaze, so I turned to determine if it might be a squirrel or something. Nope, nothing. I was therefore about to continue our walk when I glanced back to my right side and there, ‘nose-to-butt’ was a very small, furry white dog (I call ‘em ‘Foo-foo’ dogs). My girl had not even been aware of this indiscrete (but all too doggy) intrusion of her privacy, so small was the dog and so quickly had it slipped by, under my radar.

The dog apparently belonged to one of several young ‘mothers’ (in the 20s) who were gazing stupidly at their smart-phones (there’s an oxymoron for you!) as their kiddies played on the swings and slides, but no sooner had I noticed the little dog than my 65-pound Husky girl also noticed the intruder and I could see a swift reactive response about to unleash itself on that little fluffball…very much like you see a Timber Rattler coiling up for a strike!

FORTUNATELY, I was able to grab my girl by her sled-type harness and hold her tight, despite the fact that when she’s aroused, she can unleash a firestorm of formidable inertial energy in the blink of an eye. This spared the little white dog, who meanwhile had started yapping ferociously (as I’m sure you know, small dogs can often be absolutely fearless and aggressive, as if in total ignorance of their actual vulnerability in a mix-up with a much bigger dog) and also did not go into an immediate display of universal canine submissive ‘I surrender’ body language, which involves going belly-up, as if to say “Don’t hurt me!” (the canine equivalent of someone raising his hands and saying “Don’t shoot!”; ask any recognised canine behaviorist about this; he or she will quickly affirm it).

Meanwhile the presumed owner of the small unleashed dog, a young white woman, was apparently still so bemused by what she had been reading on her cellphone that she stood there stupidly like a deer caught in someone’s headlights, for a moment or two.

She finally reacted with a start and came rushing over to retrieve her precious little fluffball and snatch him from pending imminent doom!

For my part, with my characteristic, short-fused Irish temper, I was so absolutely furious that I let loose a string of scatological curses that I am certain would have made the wife of an Irish sea captain blush! And sorry I am to admit that, in addition to yelling at her to “get that $#%^*&!^ dog on a leash!” I also called her a flaming, bloody arshole. Not the sort of language fit for general use around small children in a playground, certainly, or for a man to address a strange woman with; but I have experienced this same sort of grossly stupid, vapid behavior by far too many of today’s younger members of society to willingly concede such lapses unremarked!

To the credit of one of the young mothers who were with her, I heard a mumbled “I’m sorry” (but not from the mother whom the dog seemed to belong to). And at that, I stormed quickly off before things got even more expletive. It took me several hours, back at home to get over that (and yes, where are the ‘anger management’ experts at such explosive moments, I wonder? Certainly not in the park, since the park is hardly ever visited by park rangers whose job ostensibly is to enforce such things as city public park ‘leash laws’). As I’ve often remarked, this sort of incident is not a rare occurrence by any means and efforts to get some park enforcement action via Sacramento’s City Hall typically falls on deaf ears. QED.

OK, then two days ago my wifie, who is this smaller statured, 76-year-old Chinese woman who weighs all of about 90 pounds, was walking our girl through the local neighborhood and down a street that she passes by every morning. It was calm and tranquil, as it always is at that early hour (about 8AM) and such ambles are usually a very cathartic, calming experience, given the absence of people, the birds chirping in the trees and the breeze perhaps gently ruffling the branches of the trees.

And then, with the shattering suddenness I would imagine is characteristic of a surprise nuclear attack, a small white dog (yes, another yappy, aggressive ‘Foo-foo’ dog) came bounding down the driveway of one of the homes (apparently from an open garage) and ran over to our girl, who this time was well aware of the small ball of fluff charging towards her and turned abruptly to meet it with an inertial tug on the lead that only a 65+ pound husky can deliver when under ‘attack!’

That tug, coming at a moment when wifie was slightly ‘off-balance’, caught her by surprise and pulled her over, so that she ended up on the ground with the leash still firmly grasped. Meanwhile the two dogs rounded on each other and from what wifie tells me of the incident (I wasn’t there), a woman came rushing down the driveway to retrieve the dog and…violating Rule #1 of any dog-fight…tried to intervene between the two dogs. Wifie, of course, was still on the ground with some bruises and minor contusions, but managed to hold onto our girl’s leash firmly (since she also has long experience with the breed).

The outcome of the woman’s interposing herself between her small dog and our much larger dog apparently resulted in her getting what wifie described as ‘a bite’ on her arm before she managed to wrest her dog away from the fracas and got it back in the house. This according to wifie’s brief summary of what had happened, but since she was on the ground and couldn’t see more clearly what was actually taking place, she presumed the woman’s dog had bitten her.

So we surmised until today, anyway, when passing by a friend’s home along the route (who is an ‘everyone’s gentle soul’ type, despite his 6-feet-two- inch height and 185 pounds), we were informed that he knew the woman in reference (and her dog), which is supposedly the ‘sweetest little bit of fluff in the world’, and that it was OUR dog who had drawn blood, causing (so my friend tells me) an ER visit that "...required no less than 17 stitches to close it up”). Oh, effing GREAT!

Well, the friend continued that when that woman “filled out the paper work” (presumably a police incident report) on this encounter, she had “gracefully acknowledged responsibility for the fracas and listed our dog as ''unknown''”.

Well, thanks a heap, but this needless kerfuffle would never have happened if her (off-leash) precious little fluff ball had not dashed out to sniff our girl’s (who was ON a leash) butt…an indignity that our girl, no matter how friendly and well-mannered she otherwise is, does not easily tolerate from any strange dog!

This is a point that, no matter how hard I try, I cannot seem to get across to all these naive (if well-intended) dog rescuers and new dog owners: that leash laws are intended to protect THEIR dog as much as it is to protect ours. If I had a penny every time I encountered a situation like this, I’d be a bloody millionaire, retired and living on a luxury yacht somewhere off the côté du jour!

Husky dogs are NOT, contrary to a lot of misinformation and bad-press some people circulate about ‘aggressive huskies’, prone to gratuitous violence. They are acknowledged by authoritative dog experts to be among the most gentle, friendly and good-natured of all domestic breeds…excellent with both adults and children alike. But…big qualifier…when it boils down to a dog-on-dog encounter (such as that described), they can be and often are quite assertive and aggressive. In other words, they need to be kept separate from other dogs when they’re on a restraining leash, since their ‘on-leash’ behavior typically differs markedly from ‘off-lead’ doggie peer interactions (such as those characteristic of free-ranging dog parks). This is another nuance of huskies that owners MUST be aware of but it certainly is recommended that ALL dog breed owners know this as well. A responsible husky owner ALWAYS keeps their dog on a strong leash when out in public and away from home. [And that is Husky Rule #2, by the way. Husky Rule #3 is: “Make sure your home yard is ‘husky-proof’”, since they are world-class escape artistes!]

That isn’t to say that many huskies can be so friendly and agreeable that they get along with ALL strange breeds, regardless of the circumstances, but some huskies (like our girl) are what we call ‘Alpha dogs’, or dogs prone to be quite assertive and independent in nature (the so-called ‘Alpha leader’ personality). Females as well as males can have that characteristic trait.

As an interesting illustration of this, the genetic research organisation specializing in canine DNA assays (EMBARK) offers a full report on a dog’s DNA, including what is termed ‘Wolfiness’, or ‘wolfish tendencies’. Depending upon the dog (and it varies markedly sometimes), your husky can have a 3.8 value in wolfiness (which is regarded as somewhat higher than average) or as much as a 10.0 rating (which is considered abnormally high). Although it is not clearly defined what precisely ‘wolfiness’ consists of, the safe assumption is that the higher the value, the more careful one may have to be with one’s husky. In addition to that, ALL husky dogs have extremely HIGH predator responses to most small animals (such as squirrels, cats, small dogs and/or anything that is small and scurries away or emulates ‘prey’ behavior).

All this should emphasise and illustrate the fact that ALL dogs require a substantial information and knowledge data-base on the part of their owner. To abnegate that responsibility in any way opens the door for the sort of encounter my wife had as described above. Such things can, of course, be totally prevented with just a modicum of common sense applied by dog owners, but as we all know common sense is endangered and almost completely absent in far too many Americans these days.

Huskies, pound for pound, are therefore normally 1) docile, 2) friendly, 3) agreeable 4) good natured, and 5) gentle, but when set upon and they have to defend themselves, people need to know that they are also, pound-for-pound quite capable of using that wolfish set of canines to defend themselves quite formidably.

A good example of this occurred several years ago as I and another husky (now departed) of mine were walking calmly down the street on a routine ‘sniff & squirt’ stroll. We had just gotten abreast of a rental home in our neighborhood that had an open garage door (always a sign that increased vigilance for surprise dog encounters may be necessary, in my experience).

‘Laika’, a 5-year-old female husky named for the famous Soviet space dog that first circled the earth in Sputnik-2 (3 Nov 57) was on a firm lead out in front of me, when just at that moment not just one but two American Staffordshire Terriers (AKA:” ‘Pittbulls’) came barreling out of that garage with the open door, deadly silent, heads down and clearly intent on attacking my girl.

It all happened so fast (as it always does in such instances) that I barely knew what was happening before they had BOTH grabbed her in their powerful jaws. I have no doubt whatsoever that, my girl’s defensive capabilities notwithstanding, she would have been killed right then and there…had it not been for two saving circumstances (three, really, if you count on the owner fearlessly grabbing grabbing his Pitts): 1) she was wearing what is called a ‘pronged collar’, often used in training and sometimes to control dogs that aren’t yet quite used to behavior properly on a lead, and 2) most huskies have such luxuriously thick, double-layered fur that the Pitts had grabbed mostly hair (instead of soft neck and belly flesh). The pronged collar kept the Pitts from getting their jaws around her throat in a death-grip and the thick fur made it difficult for them to reach her skin, underneath, with that first lightning strike). Thus, she was spared almost any physical damage by this blood-chilling attack before the Pitts owner and his son were able to haul their dogs off her, back under control and in their yard.

It was, however, an absolutely frightening encounter and a VERY close-call I have no wish to ever repeat, given the well-known fighting ferocity of the Pitt breed. In such a two-dog attack, even a small wolf would likely have some reservations…and although huskies do LOOK like small wolves, they are 100% domesticated canine (at least the purebred ones)! Again, the lesson to be observed is this: all dogs should always be carefully restrained on strong leads whenever they are in public, among others (either other dogs or people). This is especially true for some breeds like Pittbulls, Alsatians, Mastiffs, Presa Canaris dogs and Huskies.

Again, those of you who have perhaps followed me on this venue or read prior blogs know that I am often quite outspoken in my insistence on the need to apply common sense in the handling, maintenance and care of dogs, no matter the breed. I have often complained about the fact that, just as so many people ‘spawn’ human children recklessly, so too are far too many people total naïfs when it comes to knowing how to take proper and breed- appropriate care of their precious little family pets. In fact, it’s no accident that both marriage and dog-owning have been termed ‘the last major preserves of the amateur’…

I very much love my Huskies (and Malamutes, etc.), but owners of such dogs owe it to themselves to learn as much about these fascinating, wonderful breeds as possible before acquiring one (or several). Watching a film like 101 Dalmatians (and wanting a Dalmatian dog) or Game of Thrones (and wanting a small clone of the archetypal, ancient Direwolf prototypes featured therein) is absolutely NO justification for getting a husky type dog without first learning as much as possible about the breed.

It''s taken a good 30 years to acquire as much knowledge about these breeds as I have (despite both consummate reading habits and actual experience with the dogs, both as companion dogs and working dogs) and I can assure you, at age 76 I am STILL learning something new almost every day about them! To do otherwise is both irresponsible and reckless…not to say unfair to these wonderful, modern wolfish replicas of their wild ancestors!

That stated, I can also unreservedly assure all of you that husky dogs have been the single most treasured aspect of my life (wifie excluded, of course!). I simply cannot imagine a fulfilling life without those marvelously mischievous goofballs taking over my home!