Imagine being plucked, or better yet, purchased against your will, by an alien species. You are removed from your family and friends, and prior to this horrifying abduction the only interaction you’ve had with your new owners is watching them destroy your home and inhabit your surrounding environment. It gets even better! Your new environment is not the landscape of nature but a loud, scary unfamiliar setting where you are to eat the same food for the entirety of you life, with the occasional treat of course, that deters from the usual brown clumps. You exercise when told. You are allowed to empty your bladder when these aliens deem it convenient.
This is domestication through the eyes of a wolf, the theft of their wild.
The domestication of wild animals has been going on for thousands of years dating back to our ancestral Indians. This domestication process of wild animals is cruel, unintelligent and a thorn in the side of our cherished “Nature.” Whatever happened to wanting to take a long trip into the backcountry of Yellowstone National Park in hopes that you may see a wolf or bear, or have some natural, spiritual experience in the wild? Nowadays, people aren’t content unless they have a wolf or a wolf-dog hybrid in their back yards. We have all heard the story about someone purchasing or acquiring a “Wolf” or a “Big Cat” from some remote or exotic place, either from a friend, a friend of a friend, on the news, or certainly exploited by animal rights activists. From ferrets to black panthers we have discovered the idealistic or romantic notion that a wild, instinctive creature could survive under a human’s care.
In a cage in our living rooms or in a plastic bubble of a home in our back yards, fenced in and contained. Again… not much more than our own prisons! Yeah I know, the thought of having a wild, furry and cuddly creature has crossed my own mind as well, BUT then my adoration and respect for these animals and the wilderness they inhabit make me scurry back to my rationale and plan my next trip to one of the remote landscapes I may be blessed with seeing them in.
One of the most popular and widely owned wild animals is the wolf, or the hybrid, which is a crossbreed of a dog and a wolf. In present day North America there are roughly 2 million wolf or wolf hybrids forced to suffer an existence in high-rise apartment buildings, suburban back yards, or ever so slightly more lucky, on a ranch setting out west somewhere, as pets. This statistic is grotesque when compared to the 15 to 25 thousand wild wolves that inhabit our wilderness areas today.
The majority of wild wolves, very similar to humans, live in packs or families, so to take them away from that safety and comfort is indescribably threatening to begin with. Wolves tend to function as one unit, hunting, sleeping, eating, mating, and playing all within their families. Humans are not an adequate substitute for that behavior or bond. Whether literally taken from the wild or by breeding over the years, the wild is still permanently nourished by their instincts. Not to say that humans and wolves don’t bond because they can. That is how this whole idea started thousands of years ago. It’s simply that… well… let me paint a little picture for you…
A friend of mine was naïve enough to think that she could raise a wolf hybrid. She is a very outdoorsy type that loves to trek into remote areas, so her initial thought was what better animal to take on her journies. Wolves, she had read, were known for their loyalty, intelligence, and sense of family. “Great,” she thinks!
In trying to raise an animal that belongs at the center of our wildlife ecosystem, she gave little thought to the world of stress, chaos, and destruction that awaited her, and more importantly the wolf!
When a wolf is bred with a domestic dog the result will most likely be an animal that “gets his instinctive and behavioral wires crossed.” Sometimes a dog other times a wolf. It becomes a lifetime of trying to figure out which one will show up and when! A wolf, like any wild animal, runs on its instincts. Wolves are very territorial. In laymen’s terms; when you have a guest over, or worse a girlfriend or boyfriend, your wolf will either try to dominate you date with posturing (raised back- hair along with tail, ear, eye and body positioning to show ranking within the pack) and rough intrusive play. Or your wolf may cower so fiercely from the scent of another person, that you find you have to take the conversation outside, before you cause “your pet” to have an anxiety attack!
Along with defending or defining their territory comes scent marking i.e. urine soaked furniture! Clean it, you suggest? That would be more incentive to lift the leg again…and again…and again. Cleaning their safety and territory would be like a rival pack infringing upon their home.
In the wild wolves crush and chew the bones of their prey for the marrow and nutrition as well as for fun and play. Translation-your couches, chairs, and other carefully purchased furniture becomes giant “chew toys” that can be devoured all while you’re on a quick trip to Dunkin Donuts. Oh, and by the way, don’t keep anything in the house that smells like food or more importantly rotten food i.e. trash. Wolves are excellent scavengers as well as predators.
People need to truly comprehend how ridiculous it is to try and tame a wild animal. Bottom line- it is cruel. My friend was not cruel by any standard means, but she went through hell trying to raise this wild animal, and eventually she lost the battle. Her animal had to be put to sleep at the age of four! The wolf’s instincts about territory and especially hierarchy of her “pack” caused her to continually dominate the local dog population, until one day the wolf killed a one-year-old golden retriever. Contrary to the belief of the owners of the retriever, it was not the wolf’s fault. It was my friend’s fault and the fault of the people who decided to breed these animals! The majority of animals that are either wolf or have some wolf in them suffer an early death much like this. The confusion of wanting to be wild and the stress of not being able to live this way is enormous threat to their health and survival. Of course, there have been a few exceptions where the situation seemingly works. Works out for whom? I am not sure.
A wolf needs to be with other wolves, same as dogs need to be with other dogs. Period! A wolf needs space, free and open, and far away from people and domestication. They need the 100 square miles that they can cover in a single day. They need to hunt and inhabit the territories they have dominated forever, without the disturbance of man in any shape or form.
The wolf balances our wildlife ecosystem. The pack patiently observes the herd, preying on the weak, enabling the herd of elk, deer or caribou to remain strong. After the wolves have made the kill, other animals are drawn out of the shadows. Grizzly bears, coyotes, ravens and eagles feed on the remains of the carcass. Whatever they don’t finish the ground animals, rodents and earth feeders scrounge from the remaining bones breaking it down and decomposing back into the earth, replenishing the meadow grasses that will lure the herds to feed again next year… keeping the circle of life revolving and healthy. Keep the wolf wild!