No Good, Dirty Rotten, Low Down, Thieving Wolves

I get asked a lot if wolfdogs make good pets. This is a funny question to ask, because different sets of owners will give you different answers. For people that have animals that aren't actually wolfdogs and are really just shepherd/husky mixes, the answer is usually yes. Oh, they're protective, they're loyal, they're great dogs, my great uncle's dog's brother's owner had a wolf and it was the best pet and it chased off a robber and cured cancer and flew to the moon and and and....

And so on and so forth, ad nauseum.

If you ask people who actually have wolfdogs if they make good pets, the answer is usually some variation of, "No, they're bad pets, but I like them anyway." This is because we all have varying degrees of Stockholm Syndrome and are very attached to our expensive, neurotic, demanding, and capricious animals.

Let me tell you, Bast is a bad pet. I love him, but he is a nightmare to live with. It's hard to describe exactly why he's such a monster, but you can kind of put it in terms of other animals' characteristics.

Take the independence, aloofness, and don't-give-a-shit-what-you-want personality of a cat. Add to it the intelligence, energy, and determination of a dog. Then give it a ferret's pathological, compulsive need to destroy and steal things, add about 60 pounds, and you have Bastas.

Surely not. This face would never be a bad pet. Right...?

Bast's thieving tendencies are equal parts adorable and obnoxious. He steals everything - shoes, pens, pants, bras, apples, potatoes, silverware, books, paper bags, mops, leashes...

Klepto Canine

If I bury it, no one will know I took it...

Even when he steals food, he doesn't really want to eat it. He just wants to take it and hide it. For the first year we had him, Bast stole from the pantry on a daily basis. He would get into the pantry, take things, and then cache them around my place, so it became a daily occurrence to be sifting through laundry and have to get up and take a pair of potatoes back to the kitchen.

If he caught you taking anything back, often he would wait until your attention turned and then steal it back.

He got really upset with me one time because I kept putting a bell pepper back in the kitchen, whereas he insisted it needed to stay in my bedroom.

Gettin' real sick of my shit here...

For a while, he had a thing for putting his purloined treasure in my bed. I would  crawl into bed at night only to discover something he hid under one of my pillows during the day.

The drain plug for the tub, for instance...

Another time, he was exceptionally industrious and stored a jar of raw honey, a rib bone, and the dust pan in my blankets while I was at work...

Not all of it was bad, though. This one was pretty rad. Thanks, dude

Some of it was just beyond foul, though. The food hoarding could occasionally get out of hand, such as this time he stored several WHOLE TROUT under my THROW PILLOWS KJHKADHFKDD:

I'd like to say his thieving has stopped as he's gotten more comfortable and secure with me, but now it's just changed tactics. Whereas previously, he stole seemingly out of a need to hide treasure for later, now he steals to get my attention, because he knows running outside with my favorite Gianni Bini heels in his mouth will get a reaction every time...

So if you ask me if wolfdogs are good pets, that answer from me is unequivocally, emphatically, resoundingly: no.