I have no intention of starting a debate as to the merits or dangers of wolf-hybrids.
That just happens to be the type of animal that bit two children in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, on Thursday. It could just as easily have been any other dog.
The word “mauled”, as used in the article, might be a bit much since the young girl received three stitches and the word “gash”, although undefined and unquantifiable, seems to have come into vogue as the new description of someone’s injuries.
Caveat has done a good job of showing the owner’s stupidity and blindness. I won’t repeat that effort here.
I’d just like to point out some quotes from a second article about the same incident and let you draw your own conclusions.
The owner of what’s been called a husky-wolf-cross says it’s not her family’s fault.
“We’re not to blame. We didn’t ask for this to happen,” said Jeanette McIvor.
The last time her son saw the dog it was chained up in the backyard.
Mystique’s owners believe she may have been protecting her offspring. She gave birth to a litter of seven puppies a few weeks ago, and two were with her when the attack happened last Thursday.
The McIvors are fighting to make sure their pet isn’t put to sleep. “I really don’t want that to happen. It goes against our religion,” McIvor said.
Tim Dack, chief operating officer for Winnipeg’s animal control agency, said the city doesn’t have a wolf-hybrid ban, either. Regardless, Dack advised people not to make pets of the animals. “Evidence and studies have shown that these types of hybrid dogs can be quite difficult to handle and quite dangerous,” said Dack. “When they get nasty, they get nasty.”
I’ll make one comment about this owner. As far as I’m concerned, when you leave a dog unsupervised where someone else, particularly a child, can get to it, you ARE at fault. Expecting other people’s children to stay away from your dogs is not realistic. At least one third of all children killed by dogs in this country wandered unsupervised into chained dogs’ territory or were inside that territory unsupervised. In at least another quarter to one third, dogs had broken loose from their chains or yards.
I wouldn’t put a whole lot of faith in Tim Dack’s description of any breed’s temperament. He was one of the architect’s of Winnipeg’s “pit bull” ban and testified at Ontario’s hearings in favour of that province’s ban. The man admits that the “pit bull” has been replaced in Winnipeg by other breeds (not wolf-hybrids, by the way), even though the “pit bull” type dog was not the number one biter when that city’s ban was implemented. He now seems to be an expert on wolf-hybrids.
Considering how rare a true wolf-hybrid is, I’m not sure how Mr. Dack is able to make such a blanket statement. Seems to me like he took the same words he used for “pit bulls” and just changed the breed name.