The Saarloos Wolfhound is one of the rare dog breeds that over time has been addressed as the:

•    Saarloos Wolfhound
•    Dutch Wolfdog
•    European Wolfdog

The Saarloos Wolfdog or Wolfhound was named after Dutch dog breeder Leendert Saarloos (1884-1969) who developed the breed. By the early 20th century Leendert Saarloos had become profoundly and adequately disillusioned with the direction that genetic breeding of the domestic dog had taken to take it upon himself to save Canis familiaris (domestic dog) from the inexorable and slippery decline of genetic degeneration.

Leendert Saarloos was of the opinion that centuries of selective breeding had in effect genetically weakened the domestic dog to the point that hereditary disease was rife in almost every breed. Furthermore he also strongly believed that the domestic dog had long since lost its true canine qualities as a result of such prolonged selective breeding. Thus he decided there was only one course of action left and that was to re-infuse the domestic dog genes from “the original source,” its ancestor Canis lupus, the wolf.

Creation of A Wolf Dog

In 1920 Leendert Saarloos embarked on his project of creating a new and genetically rejuvenated dog breed, a project that was to consume him for the rest of his life. Leendert began the creation of the European Wolfdog (as it was then known) by crossing a German Shepherd Dog called Gerard with a female wolf called Fleur. That pairing between GSD and Fleur the wolf produced a total of 20 wolf-dog hybrids over time. Leendert Saarloos then crossed those half-wolves back with their father the German Shepherd Dog Gerard producing a new stock of hybrids that were just quarter wolf.

Leendert felt comfortable that he had attained the genetic perfection and consolidation with the quarter-wolf litter and set about training his “new and improved canine.” Leendert had high expectations for his new dog breed after all the dogs supposedly came equipped with the innate and insightful intelligence of the Canadian Timber Wolf combined with the unparalleled smarts of the German Shepherd Dog which so happened to be one of the brightest dog breeds. Unfortunately he was to be sorely disappointed.

His quarter wolf-dog mix canines were extremely shy and wary of people something 12,000 years of domestication had apparently relieved the domestic dog of. Wild wolves are notoriously shy and wary of people and generally avoid them as much as possible. Furthermore his Saarloos Wolfhounds were little disposed to the usual methods of training and overall made for lousy work dogs. The Wolfdogs were lousy guard dogs because they just plain refused to attack and made for equally bad watchdogs because just like the wolf barking simply was not their thing.

In effect by injecting a fresh infusion of wolf genes into his Saarloos Wolfhound breed Leendert diluted those genetic properties that make the domestic dog such a comfortable fit with people. The Wolfdogs performed equally dismally at trial shows and in fcat the only thing they appeared to excel at was looking good!

Saarloos Wolfhound Was Too Much Wolf Not Enough Dog

What it really boiled down to was that the Saarloos Wolfdog had inherited a tad too much of the wolf gene. Wolves are highly intelligent animals that are very adept at escaping confinement within manmade enclosures, something that the average domestic dog is not. It is in fact now believed that wild canids learn through insight whereas the domestic dog learns by rote and repetition. Yet people tend to think of dogs that do their bidding willingly and eagerly as intelligent and those that don’t as dumb. Many independent thinking dog breeds that are little predisposed to obeying human commands are commonly labeled as primitive breeds (suggesting an inferior intellect), but such animals like the wolf are more adept and skilled at insightful learning and assessing any given situation on their own. The Saarloos Wolfdog fell within this category.

Anyway despite his initial failure Leendert Saarloos continued refining his Wolfhound dog breed with no real success to show over the years. Then in1963 Leendert decided to infuse a little more wolf blood into his dog breed by crossing his quarter-wolf mix dogs with a female Wolf called Fleur II. Unsurprisingly there was little improvement in the temperament and behavioral characteristics of that new stock of wolf dogs. In 1969 Leendert Saarloos passed away and within short thrift his Saarloos Wolfhound dog breed fell into rapid decline.

If it hadn’t been for the timely intervention of the Dutch Canine Authorities in 1975 it is quite likely that the Saarloos Wolfdog breed would have disappeared in a haze of free-for-all breeding frenzy that paid no heed to the quality of genetic standard that Leendert Saarloos had been so particular about!

Anyway Leendert’s wolf dog breed was saved from extinction in 1975 when it also came to be officially recognized by the Dutch Canine Authority as a true dog breed at which time it was designated the name Saarloos Wolfhound in honor of its deceased creator!

Saarloos Wolfdog Characteristics

Height: 24 – 29 1/2 inches (60 – 75 cm)

Weight: 80 -90 lbs (36 -41 kg)

This dog retains many wolf qualities and has a string pack instinct and needs plenty of space to sate it roaming appetite; thus the Saarloos Wolfhound is not cut out for apartment life. This breed of dog is inherently strong-willed and as mentioned previously does not adapt well to obedience training. It is imperative for the owner to establish the dominant alpha position. The Saarloos Wolfdog is not recommended for households with young children. This is breed does not make for an ideal watchdog because like the wolf it rarely barks at all. It is best suited to cold climates and does well living outdoors. The Saarloos dog requires plenty of exercise every day!

Life Expectancy And Health

The Saarloos Wolfhound has a lifespan of approximately 10 -12 years. Like the German Shepherd it is prone to hip dysplasia as well as spondylosis of the spine. Grooming requirements of this dog breed necessitate regular combing and brushing of its weather resistant coat and bathing should be on a as need basis in order not to deplete the natural oils in its skin.

Article on saarloos wolfdog written by Kayye Nynne

For a wild animal such as the wolf, the ability to communicate properly with other members of its species is an invaluable and essential trait because it is through this means that unnecessary conflict is avoided. From the wolf’s perspective conflict is a counter-productive activity because it could very well result in serious injury to one of the individuals involved in the conflict. And injury in the wild is something best avoided because it could seriously undermine an animal’s ability to perform certain activities necessary for survival such as hunting. And unlike us humans, in the wolf kingdom conflict is never associated with something as esoteric as saving face illustrating yet another reason why conflict is counterproductive.

luckily the wolf has conferred that very same trait of conflict avoidance and conflict resolution down to the domestic dog, the only problem being that somewhere down the line, due to a number of factors, many of today’s dogs are no longer able to properly interpret many of the signals required to resolve or avoid conflict. Listed among those factors are improper socialization with other dogs, and socio-cultural confusion that may arise due to isolated interaction with only people.

Consider the following account; although not specically related to the topic of dogs, it does emphasize the importance of proper socialization no matter the species concerned!

For thousand of years rhinos and elephants have co-existed in harmony side by side on the plains of Africa. Both these large creatures are herbivores so neither predates on the other. Both animals possess enormous mass and enormous strength but overall the elephant considerably out matches the rhino in every aspect including intelligence. Recently researchers in the field have observed a very disturbing phenomenon. In increasingly more and more frequent occurrences, young adult bull elephants were attacking, killing and raping rhinos. Such bizarre and often fatal attacks were unheard of in the past.

Further investigation into this disturbing trend revealed that those young bulls perpetrating the attacks were doing so because they actually knew no better (something akin to a maladjusted and destructive teenager acting out; one who had no proper family social structure during the formative years).The reason why those elephants were behaving in the manner that they were was because they had never been properly socialized or taught correct elephant behavior. That unusually violent younger generation of elephants became that way because most of the older elephants that would have schooled them how to behave were no longer around to do so. Most of them had fallen prey to the harsh and cruel ivory trade!

Your Dog May Be Acting Out Because He Is Frustrated And Anxious!

But enough of elephants and back to our topic of dogs! Like the young bull elephants mentioned above many dogs today find themselves in a somewhat similar situation; unable to cope appropriately with the daily demands of everyday modern life. Such dogs tend to be aggressive both to people as well as to other dogs. Unlike the elephants however the maladjustment of such dogs cannot be blamed solely on improper parental socialization, or lack thereof as the case may be, and it is more likely that the cause of such errant misbehavior is due to a stressful and frustrating relationship with the owner of the dog.

When you talk to your dog although you are communicating with him/her you evidently aren’t talking “dog speak or dog lingo”. When your dog “talks” to you (barking, whining, growling etc) he is communicating with you to the best of his abilities but in his own language of dog speak. A livestock guarding dog communicates with its wards (for example a flock of sheep) in a similar fashion, and although the two species do not speak the same “dialect” they can still communicate with one another. If the livestock guardian dog could not communicate with its flock then it would be unable to control and protect them.

Lost In Translation

Miscommunication between owner and dog is probably the single biggest reason that the sweetest of dogs becomes a nuisance overnight! I mean imagine how you would feel every time you tried to communicate with your so-called best friend (dog’s owner) and all you got in return for your efforts was a disapproving glare, harsh words and a scolding! Think of how a child would respond to such parenting…not good right? There’s a very good chance that somewhere down the line that child is going to start acting out. So it isn’t too far of a stretch to see how your frustrated misunderstood dog could also start acting out; in many cases such acting out will manifest as an overly aggressive dog.

The real tragedy of this situation is that many dog owners are unaware that far too often they are completely misinterpreting their dog’s responses to any given request. You see other than the obvious forms of vocalizations that dogs commonly exhibit, such as barking, whining, growling, yelping etc., dogs actually possess a myriad of signals that make up a good potion of their everyday vocabulary. Unfortunately your average dog owner is completely clueless of this unvocalized “dogspeak” so that when he or she tells their dog to do something and the dog in turn responds in doggie lingo with an unvocalized response which happens not to be the desired response the owner was looking for, and so the owner responds in a harsh scolding voice BAD DOG!

Article on aggressive dogs written by Kayye Nynne

African Wild Dog

The preeminent evolutionist Charles Darwin postulated that evolution took place gradually, pacing along slowly across the thread of time covering the span of multiple generations. At its most basic evolutionary change occurs as a response to environmental changes, a dynamism that makes pretty logical sense; why after all would an organism undertake the biological expense of morphological and genetic change if there was no call for it? One need only look to the crocodile to see a species that has changed little over 40 million years and yet even today is superbly adapted to excel in its particular environmental niche!

The dog too is another exemplary case of evolutionary success. Descended from wolves there are approximately 400 million dogs worldwide compared to 400, 000 wolves; in other words dogs today outnumber wolves by a multiple of 1000. In fact when one considers when dogs made their debut on earth as a distinct species (widely accepted as anywhere between 15,000 – 10,000 years ago; although the jury is still out concerning the date they first appeared) then the dog’s evolution into the more than 400 breeds that exist today is nothing short of a miracle! Fifteen thousand years on the evolutionary scale of things is no time at all!

Bred For Selectivity?

Popular opinion favors the idea that the dog evolved so rapidly because it was selectively bred by man for particular traits that defined the various dog breeds. Though there is ample evidence that dogs existed 8000 years ago, such evidence of their existence around and beyond 15,000 years ago is scanty at best. Which begs the question, how could a species such as the dog come into its own so thoroughly in the span of a mere 5000 – 7000 years?

This cannot be credited to selective breeding by mankind; Mesolithic humans certainly did not have the time, the tools, the knowledge, the intelligence or a large enough population of tame wolves with which to conduct a successful and trait-selective breeding program. There’s fairly concrete evidence though that a good number of dog breeds were in existence around 3000-4000 years ago and that by the time of the Romans many of the common breeds of today already existed.

Tameness Trait Coincided With Floppy Ears, Barking And Change In Coat Color!

How the dog’s morphology and genetic composition changed so radically from that of the wolf in such a period has for the longest time been quite the mystery. However, as so often happens in these cases, an experimental research conducted on an entirely different animal revealed the clue to how the change came about. In the 1950s, a Russian scientist called Dmitri Belyaev began selectively breeding silver foxes (Vulpes vulpes) solely for tameness. The initial purpose of the experiment was to produce a fox that was more approachable and manageable by humans which would have greatly helped in the breeding and raising of those animals for their fur.

The problem the breeders were experiencing was that despite the fact the animals they were dealing with had been bred in captivity for more than 50 years by no stretch of the imagination could they be considered as tame or domesticated; certainly not in the manner that a dog is! The foxes frequently avoided their keepers, sometimes even bit them, and at other times the animals harmed themselves in an effort to evade their keepers.

Belyaev and his colleagues thus selected the foxes that exhibited the least fear/shyness of people for their breeding program; their aim was to selectively breed for a tame trait. With successive generations of selective breeding the foxes became tamer and tamer such that by the eighteenth generation they had bred a fox that exhibited all the characteristics of a domestic dog. The foxes would actually approach people, clamber over them, roll over to get their bellies tickled and even answered to their names.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the selective breeding program was that the foxes no longer resembled foxes but looked and acted like dogs. The coats of the foxes were no longer the characteristic silver fur much sought after by the fur industry but were black and white piebald instead. What is more, the foxes’ tails were curly and upward turned, their ears were floppy and to crown it all the animals even barked like dogs! Dmitri Belyaev had not sought nor bred for these characteristics but all the same they still manifested!

A subsequent investigation into the unexpected side effects revealed that breeding for tameness set off an entire cascade of hormonal changes in the animals. It was observed that the “domesticated” foxes had considerably lower levels of adrenaline which explained their tameness (reduction in flight-or-fight reflex) but didn’t explain the other observed changes. However it didn’t take long before Belyaev and his colleagues made the connection; the hormone adrenaline shares a biochemical pathway with melanin, a hormone that plays a significant role in an animal’s coat color.

Simply put, selective breeding for the tameness trait set off and stimulated an entire slew of genetic changes within the animals in a surprisingly short period. It is now widely believed that the wolf underwent a similar transition to eventually evolve into the domestic dog.

The story of how the dog got domesticated is literally a puzzle of missing pieces which ever so slowly is gradually becoming complete. Popular lore of how the dog became domesticated holds that as humans evolved from the Paleolithic period (during which time man captured his prey using axes and heavy stones) to the Mesolithic period (when the use of stone-blade tipped arrows became widespread) they began using dogs to hunt down their prey which they killed off with their newly devised weaponry.

Indeed firm archaeological evidence puts the dog as the first species of animal to have ever been domesticated, around the tail end of the last Ice Age when human subsistence still revolved around the hunter-gathering system. Presently the earliest evidence pointing to the domestication of the dog consists of a mandible found in a grave at Oberkassel in Germany dating back to the late Paleolithic period (approximately 14,000 years ago).

Such evidence though does not explain how the dog came into being as a species or how the long lasting relationship between dog and man evolved.

Man Tames The Wolf…maybe!

As far back as the Middle Pleistocene period wolf bones have been discovered in association with those of early hominids. Some examples include the 400,000 year old site of Boxgrove in Kent, England; the 300,000 year old Zhoukoudian site in North China; and the 150,000 year old cave of Lazeret located near Nice (southern France). Those commingled human and wolf fossils indicate that hominid populations of the time must have overlapped wolf territories. Humans probably killed wolves as a food source and also to use the wolf skin/furs as clothing.

Perhaps, on occasion, a wolf pup was adopted as a pet or companion. Could such “tamed” wolves have indeed been the precursor of the dog and could this have truly been the means by which the modern dog first evolved? Remains of these “tamed” wolves have been described from sites located in Central Europe and interestingly enough they exhibit morphological differences from those of wild wolves. The so-called tamed wolf was characteristically smaller in size, had a shortened facial region, compacted teeth and toe bones that were more slender than those of the average wolf.

A comparison of the head size of a dog weighing approximately 100 lbs (average weight of a mature wolf) with that of a wolf amply illustrates that the head of the dog is about 20% smaller. For a dog skull to approximate the same skull size as that of the average wolf, the dog would necessarily have to be one of the larger breeds (wolfhound) and that dog would have to weigh anywhere between 150-180 lbs. Curiously though the brain size of that dog (which outweighs the wolf by 50-80 lbs) is 10% smaller than the wolf’s!

Process Of Domestication

Characteristics that are extremely valuable for survival in the wild are by their very nature an impediment to domestication. Such characteristics include large size, wariness, big brain size and independence. In other words those features that jeopardize survival in the wild (lack of fear, high tolerance to stress, decreased intelligence and docility) are conversely highly desirable traits in domesticated animals. This makes a lot of sense because humans domesticate animals to do their bidding and a willful, overly intelligent independent animal would have a hard time existing within such confines.

The biological process of domestication closely resembles natural evolution by the manner in which a reproductive population of animals becomes isolated from the rest of the wild population and inbreeds within the confines of the separated group. Initially this “source group” of animals would be largely inbred but as their numbers multiplied the genetic pool would become more diverse and varied in response to their new environment, which in the case of the tamed wolves, would be an environment that revolved around humans.

It is postulated that the reduction in size of the wolf during domestication was due to the fact those initial tamed individuals were not fed sufficient quantities of food to attain the natural full size they would have otherwise attained in the wild. This scenario appears quite appealing especially when one takes into account that those wolves were tamed by hunter-gathering societies. It is natural to assume that the people would satiate themselves first before feeding their wolf pets scraps and any leftovers.

Smaller sized wolves, in an opposite scenario to that found in the wild, would have been better adapted to survive in captivity because of their diminished feeding requirements. It is even possible that their human caretakers perhaps drove off or more likely killed the larger individuals because of their high maintenance cost! As for the reduction in skull size, teeth size and brain those would have occurred naturally over time through hormonal changes in response to the requirements of the new environment. The shrinking head size would have come about due to the reduction in brain size which would have happened because a large brain requires more calories and was no longer warranted.

Other traits, which though highly valuable for survival in the wild but no longer useful in the tamed animal would also have been lost somewhere along the line, included acute hearing and vision and a hyper alertness to the wolves environment.

The above description for how the domestication of the dog came about seems very plausible except for one rather gaping flaw…

Tamed Wolves Do Not Produce Tame Offspring!

It seems very unlikely that the humans of 15,000 years ago (Mesolithic period; the time when it is believed dogs truly came into being) had the time or the intelligence to invest in a selective breeding program that aimed for a tamer wolf! The people of that period would have been too busy grappling with the basics of everyday survival: finding food, keeping warm and keeping safe. And on the rather implausible chance that they did have both the time and smarts to invest in such a breeding program there is not a shred of evidence that supports the likelihood that those people had a large enough tame-wolf population to embark on such a program.

Furthermore those folks would have had another problem on their hands; the fact that taming an individual animal does not automatically result in tame offspring even over a span of several generations. Modern day wolf researchers are well aware that tame wolves behave nothing like dogs and retain many of the characteristics undesirable in a domesticated animal; namely independence and wariness of people.

When a tame wolf gives birth, it produces naturally wild offspring which is in stark contrast to the offspring of dogs which are inherently tame right from the get go! If a wolf pup from a tamed individual is not socialized by humans before its eyes open that animal will have problems dealing with people; the same is not true of dogs even for much older puppies of several months! In other words, the taming of individual animals does not bestow genetic modification upon its offspring even over a span of many generations. Simply put, the idea that people from the Mesolithic period tamed the wolf and gradually transformed it into the domesticated dog seems to rest on very shaky ground indeed!

The Wolf Tamed Itself Into The Dog!

Instinctive as it is to assume that humanity tamed the wolf eventually into the domesticated dog, perhaps there is an alternative and somewhat more credible scenario…the wolf initiated the process of domestication!

In any population of animals there are always individuals that exhibit anomalous traits not apparent in the majority of the group and of little value or desirable for the survival of the species. Normally such individuals would not survive long in the wild and thus such undesirable traits would not be spread to the rest of the population through reproduction. But sometimes circumstances arise that ensure the continuity of such traits. Perhaps such an undesirable trait in the wolf led to the evolution of the domestic dog.

Around the time of the Mesolithic period is when humanity first started establishing permanent settlements; it is no coincidence that this is also the period that dogs are thought to have first appeared. One result of any area long populated by people is the creation of dump sites. Such a dump site would naturally have attracted animals including wolves which are not above scavenging.

Since even then man hunted wolves, they would have been wary of humans; and therein lies the wolf’s problem as an efficient dump scavenger. The wolf is far too skittish to make an efficient scavenger, running a long distance off at the slightest hint of danger or the approach of anybody. Compounding this skittish nature is the fact that most wolves will take an inordinately long time before daring to venture back to the dump site…all in all a rather inefficient means of feeding.

But just suppose there were certain wolves that didn’t display the usual level of skittishness the other wolves did. Maybe such wolves were less wary because they were driven by a need to sate their hunger. Such wolves would have been smaller than the other individuals in the wolf pack and thus would have been weaker and ranked lowest in the social structure of the pack. This meant they would have eaten last and gotten the least amount of nourishment thereby compounding their relatively small stature. A human dump site would have been especially appealing to such a wolf.

Over time this type of wolf may have dissociated itself from the pack and stuck around the human settlement instead. After all the settlement offered everything necessary for its survival without the wolf pack: a steady food source, relative protection (other animals would have been wary of the location) and comparative shelter.

Gradually such wolves would have become habituated to humans losing all fear of them altogether. The wolf had good reason to lose its fear because humans “ensured” it had a steady supply of food (dumping refuse). Eventually a couple of such wolves would have mated and raised a litter of pups which from an early age would have been in close proximity to people. This would have accounted for the isolation and inbreeding necessary for a species to evolve from another.

In conclusion, the last scenario which hypothesizes the wolf initiated the taming process to eventually evolve into the domestic dog is much more credible than the one which would have us believe that Mesolithic man conducted selective breeding programs to cultivate a tamer wolf; such a supposition would by necessity mean that Mesolithic humans had hundreds of tame wolves with which to select desired traits from!

Article On Dog Domestication by Kayye Nynne