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Take a good look down the long snout and into the deeply intelligent eyes of a German shepherd, and you can't miss its wild, wolfish ancestry. Now some dog fanciers want more. For them, domesticated means dull-and thousands of Americans are snapping up the latest fad in exotic pets: the wolf-dog hybrid. But many buyers have no idea what they're really buying. "These animals are not family pets," declares Lisa Barrington, who has found them impossible to train in her dog-obedience classes in North Bend, Ore. Not merely disobedient, hybrids are "predators at heart," explains Randall Lockwood, a wolf behavior expert at the Humane Society of the United States. Owners train them not to fear humans as wild wolves do-sometimes with tragic results. In the past three years, at least six children have been killed by wolf-hybrid pets; many more have been severely mauled. One particularly grim attack took place last April in New Jersey, when a hybrid severed the right arm of Tyler Olson, then l6 months old. "The hybrids are wild and will always be wild," says Barrington. "You might as well have a cougar in your yard."
Wildness is part of the attraction. "People think that with a wolf hybrid, they are getting close to nature," says Lockwood. Others are drawn to the wolf-dog's macho image. "To some people, this is a dangerous animal that only they can control," says Monty Sloan, a specialist in animal behavior at Wolf Park, a wildlife research and education facility in Lafayette, Ind. But ask wolf-hybrid breeder Nancy Kelham of Ft. Wayne why she keeps seven as pets, and you'll hear deep affection in her voice. "We like their intelligence and their love," she says. "If you wean them early and bottlefeed them, they bond to you as their parents. You have a communication with them that you don't with a dog."
The hybrid's popularity has grown rapidly, particularly in the West and Northwest. Sloan estimates that 1 million to 2 million animals are being called wolf hybrids, but the real number is closer to 300,000. Sellers charge from $250 to $1,500-sometimes for animals with little or no wolf content. Only eight states so far have imposed strict regulations governing licensing and ownership.
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The danger for children is real. To a hybrid, a small child running or screaming can look just like "distressed prey." The animal may be playful, even wagging its tail-and then suddenly pounce. One shelter in Ft. Walton Beach, Fla., advertised a wolf-dog as "pet of the week." Within hours of arriving at its new home, the animal attacked and killed a neighbor's child.
When a hybrid proves unmanageable, the owner may have little choice but to have the animal humanely destroyed. Shelters are often reluctant to take them. Releasing a hybrid into the wild, as some well meaning owners do, can be a death sentence: the pet would not have learned how to forage for food or elude other predators.
Even the hybrids' most vigorous champions acknowledge that they must be kept securely penned, with double fences and locked gates. Some concerned breeders won't sell to families with young children, and require buyers to answer an exhaustive series of questions about their home and kennel plans. Other animal advocates insist the wolf dogs should never have been bred as pets. "These animals are trapped between two worlds," says the Humane Society's Lockwood. "They can't live in the wild, or as successful companion animals." Lisa Barrington puts the problem more dramatically. Owning a hybrid, she says, "is like living with an alcoholic. You never know when the time bomb will go off."
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