One of the great controversies in the dog world is whether the German shepherd is a wolf dog. I will admit that I am agnostic on the subject. It might be, and one of the component regional German sheepdogs from which they were derived was rumored to have been crossed with wolves.
I have never been able to track down the exact truth of the wolf in the German shepherd, but I should note that lots of breeds have wolf in them and not all of them are as lupine in phenotype. Several French griffon hounds, one of which was crossed into the otterhound, were mixed with wolf, because the French houndsmen believed such crosses were better hunters of wolves. The Plott hound is said to have at least one wolf crossed in at some point in its history, and various livestock guardian breeds, including those in Georgia and Turkey, are known to have wolf blood. And we know that Norwegian elkhounds and related Scandinavian spitzes have wolf ancestry, and some Russians have crossed their laikas with wolves, too.
In the annals of this blog, I have documented wolves being used in much the same way dogs have. I have documented wolf and dog crosses that proved useful as working and hunting animals.
So I am not at all unwilling to accept that German shepherds are wolfdogs. I just need proof. The GSDs that I have had tested with Embark have all come back with “low wolfiness” scores. “Wolfiness” is just the amount of ancient wolf DNA that a dog might possess, but it can also be indicative of some wolf crossed into the dog’s ancestry.
I have hear rumors that the original SV (Schäferhund Verein) studbooks do list wolves in foundational pedigrees of German shepherds, but I have not seen them.
I have come across this dog on Pedigree Database. The name “Wolf Rüde” translate as “Wolf Male Dog.” Its pedigree is mysterious. The sire line is the typical tightly-bred sheepdog strains that are the basis of the breed. But the dam line is a mysterious creature called “Gerta Hündin.” The terms Hündin and Rüde mean “bitch” and “dog” in English. I cannot figure out who these dogs were, but the name of one of them is tantalizing in that it might be the name of an actual wolf in the foundational pedigree.
People have been breeding wolves to German shepherd ever since German shepherds became a breed. We have several off-shoot breeds that are wolf-German shepherd crosses. Only the Czechoslovakian wolfdog and the modern Russian Volksoby have shown any promise as being able to do the German shepherd’s job as a military dog. And they aren’t nearly as good at it.
I do know of a story of a first cross between a German shepherd and a wolf in Czechoslovakia that turned out to be a superior working animal. This dog apparently passed all requirements for breeding a German shepherd in that former country, and it even made it as a guide dog. I have been unable to track down the full story of this dog, but it has always interested me in that this creature might be the hopeful monster that could have led to greater crossings between wolves and German shepherds in some working dog programs.
Also, we must tease apart some of the eighteenth and nineteenth century zoological ideas about sheepdogs and wolves. Buffon believed that sheepdogs of France were the closest to the wolf. I have even come across accounts of collies and what became border collies in which the author mentions how wolf-like the dogs are. In that sort of intellectual milieu, it is possible that someone might mis-translate or even get lost on a flight of fancy that these German herding dogs were wolves.
Further, it is one thing to have independent working dogs like scenthounds, hunting spitz, and livestock guardian dogs with wolf blood. It is quite another to breed a wolf to a herding dog, and it is even more to expect that herding dog with wolf ancestry to become an extremely biddable utilitarian working dog.
I will just say I want the evidence. I actually do want to believe that these dogs do have wolf in them, but the evidence is lacking– at least in English.
I am also fully aware that when the breed was introduced to the English-speaking world, there would have been a definite reason to downplay wolf ancestry in the dogs. Most of the English-speaking countries were major sheep producers, and in Australia and North America, wild canids were heavily hunted to make way for sheep husbandry.
So if anyone has the goods. Please let me know. I am certain that German shepherd blood has entered the wild wolf population in Europe. German shepherd makes up a large part of the street dog population in Eastern Europe, where there are still lots of packs of wolves. We now know that the majority of Eurasian wolves have recent dog ancestry, and German shepherd blood course through the veins of some of these wolves.
It just isn’t clear to me that the introgression went the other way.
It was to my understanding that wolfdogs only count as wolfdogs if they actually look like wolves, which would mean that purebred German Shepherds cannot count as being wolfdogs.
Your understanding is simply incorrect. Any dog/wolf cross is a wolfdog. Check out this wolf/spaniel cross on the left. You could not tell that it had wolf in it, but it was known from zoo parents. The other is a first cross between a wolf and West Siberian laika, which is virtually indistinguishable from a regular West Siberian laika: https://retrieverman.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/wolf-hybrid-and-laika.jpeg
Wolfdog just means wolf and dog cross. The reason people use German shepherds and Nordic breeds in pet wolfdog is so that you can have some wolf-like traits retained in the cross, but if you start crossing them with drop-eared dogs you will produce things that don’t look all that wolfy.
I think there is something kind of different about GSD’s. Siberian huskies in some ways seem superficially more wolf like, but GSD’s lack white patches, which is associated with domestication. Huskies also have a softer coat, wheras GSD’s usually have that hard type of coat I haven’t seen in too many other breeds of dog. Sable GSD’s sometimes regurgitate food fore their pups. Also being suspicious of strangers seems less puppy like. They seem to have less neotonous traits than most breeds. Long nose, lack of white patterns, erect ears, aloof with strangers, lots of little things.