Black and White Onyx

We got the opportunity to visit a wonderful wolfdog rescue this weekend, and they house Bast's half-sister, a high content named Onyx. She takes a great picture, doesn't she?

Black and White Midna

Mole People

Most any canine owner can commiserate with the problems of the relentless digging instinct in man's best friend. Thousands of ruined flower beds and backyards terraformed to resemble the surface of the moon are ample evidence for the pervasive jokes about and common knowledge of the fact that dogs just like digging.

Head bent over. Raise that posterior.

Wolfdogs sometimes get the added fun of a desire to dig amplified by the biological, genetic drive to design an actual, structurally sound, subterranean living space where they can retreat and possibly raise young. Their digging can range from funsies time tossing dirt clods everywhere....

We're just helping you plant more awesome citrus trees, Mum... (Source: Jennifer Reitman)

To the wolfdog version of a 5-star hotel, complete with authentic, naturally sourced construction materials that wouldn't be out of place in a Pottery Barn magazine:

Somewhere, an interior designer is weeping over not being able to turn that stump into a $15,000 chandelier.

More floor space than my first apartment, and probably fewer bugs,

A while back, I talked about Bast's ill-conceived, failed den projects.  He wasn't a great architect and so his den designs routinely collapsed into weird little trenches that I had to spend hours filling in. It looked like I had moles the size of schnauzers or something.

Bast won't be giving Frank Lloyd Wright a run for his money anytime soon.

Bast's Achilles' Heel was always his roofs. The loose, dry soil of our region just isn't great for subterranean lairs and his efforts always caved in. However, this summer, Bast must have hit the books. He and Zelda got to work and used a pile of discarded concrete in the back yard as a roof and together, scratched out a pretty nice Hobbit hole:

Since I worry about the concrete caving in, at least a couple times a week, I go out and jump up and down on top on the concrete to test its stability, figuring I would rather crush my ankle than one of my dogs. They've done a good job, however; the sides are neatly shored up and support the concrete pads, and all the chunks are balanced and secure.

At first, the den was Bast's domain. Anyone with four legs that approached got a stern growl, and two-legged invaders got disgruntled glares and ears that said, "Go away, I'm in my hidey hole." It took me a while to sneak up on him to catch him in there, and most times I just spotted two little black triangles peeking over the top:

Attempts to photograph him in the den made him uncomfortable, so I eventually just left him alone. Also, I suck at closeups and my camera focuses on weird crap, so I gave up.

Stawp, Mom, I don't want to be in your dumb blog.

Eventually, however, Bast let Zelda come in the den, and it has since become her favorite hideout. Zelda has always loved hiding in small spaces - one time, she hid behind the dryer so well that I panicked, thinking she had magically escaped the yard somehow. I ran around the block yelling her name like a dumbass before collapsing back into my house to find a pointy little face sticking out from around the silvery dryer hose. I've since learned to check all Zelda-sized nook and crannies before entering panic mode when she disappears, as she's usually wedged herself in some impossibly narrow gap.

Zelda is now 4 times as big as when we got her, but she still likes to be safe and surrounded by walls, so the den is her new hangout. She snoozes away her afternoons, often preferring to stay outside in the Hobbit hole rather than come inside to be in the air conditioning.

If I'm very sneaky, sometimes I can catch her in there and get the most adorable pictures ever.

Although I do miss having a neat, orderly yard, looking out to see Where My Wild Things Are is even better than a pretty lawn.

Black and White Zelda

Mama Mia Mysteries

It's been a while; I have no excuse to offer except that I'm a bad blogger.

Since the spring, things have been quiet here. The girls continued to grow and mature, and Bast came down off his hormonal, seasonal jackass syndrome. I think the girls are finally done getting huge - their growth plates closed, at least - and they've settled in at a whopping 80 pounds. This was unexpected, since they were 19 pound bags of bones when I got them, and already close to 7 months old. I expected them to max out at 50 pounds, but they're now bigger than Bast.

Simply too big to be allowed

Although we initially believed the girls to be low to mid content wolfdogs, despite their size we now think that they may be something else - the general consensus is that they look and act more like coyote-dogs than wolfdogs.  When I first got them, I was told repeatedly that they resembled coydogs, but real coydogs are stupid rare; I know of only one legitimate breeder of them and she lives in British Colombia. I thus spent a lot of time talking with various rescues, sanctuaries, and private coyote and coydog owners across the country, convinced I didn't have coydogs, before finally accepting my fate; I probably do have coybeasts.

Coydogs are hard to produce for a number of reasons: firstly, it's hard to get coyotes and dogs to do the humpty hump to begin with, as coyotes tend not to see dogs as conspecifics, or something they can breed with. Dogs are for eats.

Well, okay, sometimes they're for snuggles...

In addition, you have issues of timing; coyotes are only fertile during late winter, males and females both. Since coyotes are monogamous and both parents raise the pups, coyote-dog pups in the wild rarely survive, especially if they are sired by a male dog onto a female coyote. Without a dedicated father to help feed Mama and the Horde, all of the offspring will die and Mama may as well. This means that accidental breedings between wild coyotes and stray dogs are much less frequent than urban legend would have you believe.

In captivity, if you can get a coyote and a dog to get it on at the right time, pups are much more likely to survive, however. There have long been rumors of various wolfdog breeders putting coyote in their lines, but it was all talk with no evidence to back it up. Unfortunately, in the past couple of years, that's changed and it's no longer a rumor. During our research about the girls, we met a lady with an animal that was the result of a roadside zoo throwing together various canine species to try to make something cool. The result was a mating between a coydog and a wolfdog, producing pups that were a mix of coyote, wolf, and German Shepherd. The pups were given out to whoever wanted one, and through various mishaps - mostly containment issues - all but one of the pups were eventually killed. 

After a bit of sleuthing, we tracked down a person that we believe may be responsible for having mixed all 3 canine species again, and who is likely the breeder of the Twins. As it turns out, a breeder who lives a bare 20 minute drive from where the girls were initially dumped on a ranch - by a woman who said they were too difficult to sell - previously bred coydogs and then moved on to breeding wolfdogs. She had been suspected of crossing the 3 previously, as an animal turned up in rescue near her kennels that looked suspiciously like a large coyote-shepherd mix - however there was never any evidence.

I can't imagine why these things are hard to sell...

We also do not have any evidence besides circumstantial, but it seems like a little too much to be coincidence - a breeder with coyotes and wolfdogs, who previously mixed the two, living 30 miles from where the girls were dumped on a ranch, and who would not answer any of my emails or attempts to contact her even just to ask about availability of any litters...

HMMMM.

Gee, gang. I wonder whodunnit?

It doesn't really matter who did it, I guess, although I would love to know the Twins' history so I can know about health issues... But I doubt we'll ever know. From the story I was told, the mom and the rest of the pups dumped on the ranch were eventually killed, as well, so the girls are the only ones left.

Later, I'm sure I'll write ad nauseum about their behavior - the girls are super weird and their personalities have really developed over the past few months. They keep all of us on our toes...

And off them, as well...