In this article about Ryan Bokyo collecting DNA samples from village dogs throughout the world, I found this amazing quote:
“It was also a good thing this collaborator was used to dealing with large mammals since the shepherds’ dogs near the [Lebanese] border with Syria were very large and not used to handling,” he adds. “There were also enormous guard dogs in that area. After the DNA was analyzed, we found out one of these dogs was actually a full-blooded wolf.”
In Lebanon, the wolf sometimes guards the sheep.
This wolf was probably raised from a pup to live with the livestock guardian dogs, and it adopted their mores and “culture,” which involves considering sheep as part of the family group and doing the utmost to protect them from predation.
I’d like to see how Coppinger would handle that one. In his theory, only dogs that have been bred to have no predatory behavior can ever be livestock guardian dogs. Exactly how many wolves have undergone that selection pressure?
There are no dogs that will never exhibit predatory behavior. There are only dogs that have a lowered tendency to exhibit it and that have also learned from other dogs what the proper behavior is. And those same dogs have to have bonded with the stock at some point. Otherwise, why would any dog consider a sheep part of its family group?
But Coppinger, in his book, incessantly uses Northern wolves for his comparisons. Aren’t the Lebanese wolves the more docile southern wolves?
Yes. And almost all European and North American dog and wolf comparisons use Northern wolves for comparison, which is a major methodological error.
“There were also enormous guard dogs in that area. After the DNA was analyzed, we found out one of these dogs was actually a full-blooded wolf.”
Well he first mentions “shepherds’ dogs” and then :”There were also enormous guard dogs”. It does not sounds like
the they are the same thing….
Han:I have read about a timber wolfs being kept as pets
in Israel as early the 80ies so just because it is the middle east it have to be a native wolf.
The American wolfdog craze is or was actually global, strangely enough when the wolfdog trend started in Sweden a couple of decades ago .It was the American hybrids that was imported not the saarloos or czechoslovakian breeds.
It is not so far fetched to think
that pure or nearly pure wolfs have been imported for use in an “American”wolfdog program in the middle east. Some of the early ones in Sweden where very % wolf, almost pure north American wolf.
There was a wolf hybrid that guarded sheep in New York.
It was in Central Park in the early 1900′s or late 1800′s. I can’t remember the source.
This is in the Middle East where there are German shepherd guard dogs, but they aren’t used to guard sheep.
However, there are dogs like the Canaan dog-type that could be mistaken for wolves and a wolf could easily blend in with those.
And they do guard sheep, goats, and camps.
http://www.digitaldog.com/images/breeds/canaan%20dog.jpg
They aren’t normally that color.
But the Bedouin have kept them for thousands of years.
The Israelis have turned them into a working dog, but their main function is stock and camp guardian.
“Enormous guard dogs” does not sound like a small local wolf or like some thing that could mistaken for a canaan dog.
The wolf of that region isn’t big either.
It may be bigger than the typical village dog.
The shepherds’ dogs “were very large ” and guard dogs “enormous”.The canaani is neither….
It could be a pallipes wolf, rather than an arabs wolf. And pallipes wolves would look like Canaan dogs and would be enormous. Of course, Canaan dogs are the Israeli version. It’s possible that there are larger ones further up the Levant.
I only use Canaan dog an analogy and to keep people from assuming that all livestock guardians are molossoids.
Here are some wolf-like livestock guardian dogs– which aren’t large– but this type is relatively widespread and quite variable. African dogs were introduced from the Middle East.
I wouldn’t be surprised if these dogs didin’t have Ethiopian wolf in them. Ethiopian wolves are a very unique species, which is chemically interfertile with dogs.
http://wolfdog.ws/html/pallipes.html
Pallipes wolves are native to Syria and Lebanon and are occasionally kept as pets.
Syrian sheep dog described as being like a collie (or wolf?) but much larger:
http://books.google.com/books?id=TB4FAAAAQAAJ&dq=syrian%20sheep%20dog&pg=PA290-IA4#v=onepage&q&f=false
Those ethiopian dogs are very interesting.I have seen them
earlier in a documentary about ethiopian wolfs ,they did cross breed with the female wolfs so the reverse is not that far fetched…
They do look a bit like some spitz breeds but that is probably what you get with long haired on pariah dogs.
Greece have their molosser type sheepdogs as do turkey etc that type is common in this region ,why would the lebanese not have them?
I did find this syrian sheepdog that looks like it could have it have some anatolian etc blood.http://www.flickr.com/photos/charlesfred/5286557508/
But I also found this interesting blog http://doglawreporter.blogspot.com/ which among other
interesting things have a photo and a description of some syrian dogs.
“These [roaming] sheep are often brought back by the dogs, which the shepherd sends after them [W.M.] Thomson regards these shepherd dogs of Syria as lazy, half-starved, ill-conditioned, furious barking, mean curs, and not at all the noble animal known to us, like the St. Bernard dog. And [H.B.] Tristram says that the sheep dog is the pariah dog of the town, an outlaw and scavenger, but attached to a person owner or shepherd.”
It could be, but much more common in the actual Middle East is something like the Canaan dog.
Kurds live in both Syria and Turkey, and their dogs are much more of this type. However, I don’t know of any Arabs who have livestock guardian mastiffs, unless you want to count the Moroccan sheepdog as a molossoid. Kurds and turks are on the other side of the Syrian border.
It said it was not a noble dog like a St. Bernard, but at the time, the St. Bernard was one of hte most popular pet dog in England, and one that would have been almost like the generic Western dog that would have been used for comparison.
I don’t think one would confuse a large guard dog of this type for a wolf, but they obviously did. So that means that at least some Syrian and Lebanese guard dogs and sheep dogs are not exactly like Anatolians.
Hard to tell from the quote if the wolf was a lgd, a herding dog or a large guard dog not associated with the sheep. Scotti seems to think it was a lgd and I’m inclined to agree that if it was being brought up with the dogs would make it learn their behaviours/culture and ”train” it up.
I also suspect working the wolf with other lgd would inhibit any prey drive towards the sheep. E;g the wolf goes after a sheep (maybe when young and prey drive kicks in) and the other lgd’s attack it. The wolf finds that a very scary consequence and learns not to attack sheep.
I have heard of numerous situations were a dog will correct another dog for behavior it believes is wrong. Don’t see why this wouldn’t work with a wolf!
With regards to the native lgds looking wolfie. I suspect if you use a wolf as a lgd it will breed with your dogs and you will have lgd wolfdogs! Also the native lgds tend to be naturally selective as they have pretty natural and hard lives, like wolves so they end up the same look.
Adam