Wolfdogs Indoors
Living with wolfdogs indoors will require a lot of dedication and your success is dependent on a few important factors.
The first factor is the usual culprit…wolf content. The more wolf in the wolfdog, the harder it will be. If you would like to learn more about why wolf content is the ultimate confounding factor behind your success with your wolfdog, you will want to read our blog about Why Wolf Content Matters. To sum it up, the more wolf in the wolfdog, the more instinctual, undomesticated behaviours you will be dealing with. The more dog in the wolfdog, the more companion animal behaviours you will see and therefore making it easier to adjust your wolfdog to life indoors. I also want to remind you that the behaviours I am going to explain below will vary from wolfdog to wolfdog and will vary in intensity between a low content, mid content and high content.
Of course, early socialization is of utmost importance as well, and is a second important factor that will dictate your success. If you haven’t read our information on wolfdog socialization, I highly recommend you do! This is crucial to understanding the absolute basics of life with wolfdogs. You can read about Why Socialization is Key here. To get straight to the point, the earlier you can expose your wolfdog to being indoors and all the weird, alien human sounds, smells, tastes, and touches, the easier it will be in the long run.
So now that we got those basics out of the way, what are the typical challenging behaviours we see with wolfdogs living indoors…
Destructiveness - wolfdogs explore the world with their teeth and are extremely curious animals. They are also extremely intelligent and require a lot of mental stimulation in order to satisfy their every whim and desire. It is very common for wolfdogs to chew on whatever is interesting in your house. Whether this comes from a place of curiosity or anxiousness, the result is the same. Your couch is a goner. Some of this destructive tendency will improve as the animals mature and get used to (and frankly somewhat bored with) your belongings. But anything new and interesting to them, expect them to use to their teeth to check it out! Also, if they feel at all stressed or uncomfortable and are motivated to try to leave your house, expect them to use their claws as well!
Restlessness - wolfdogs are naturally pretty active animals, and when they feel at all uncomfortable, stressed, or are pushed even a sliver out of their comfort zone, they tend to become restless. To me, this comes from their instinct to keep moving in order to feel safe. If they are on their feet moving they are better able to flee from anything scary or get themselves out of situations they feel uncomfortable with. Many wolfdogs become either somewhat or very uncomfortable in enclosed spaces as it isn’t natural to them, so this can result in a lot of restlessness or even pacing. It can take a lot of time, patience and consistency to get your wolfdog to feel comfortable being indoors to the point where they will settle down and lay on a dog pillow.
Getting into EVERYTHING, literally - this loops back to their curiosity. When bringing your wolfdog indoors, expect to have to manage them constantly. Anything that piques their interest will be not be safe. Food, TV remotes, couch cushions, anything made out of wood….pretty much anything of value will get grabbed and/or destroyed. Read my story below about Kuna’s typical house antics if you want to get a realistic idea of what it has been like for me with Kuna in the house. The constant management can be exhausting and get old fast. Whether your wolfdog is constantly grabbing things or just doing things they shouldn’t be doing, expect to constantly be needing to supervise them in order to keep your house safe. If your wolfdog is an avid resource guarder, that makes it even harder! If they grab it and don’t want to let it go or let you near it, now you have to manage that!
Housebreaking - for wolves, the world is their toilet. So for many wolfdogs it can be a real challenge to teach them that peeing indoors is a no-no. To most wolfdogs, the world is the world and there isn’t this major distinction that us humans have created for ourselves. For us humans, we have clearly defined conceptions of indoors versus outdoors. They are almost two completely different worlds for us. For wolfdogs, their ability to grasp that concept can be tricky. Not that they aren’t smart enough to grasp it…it’s more so that they really don’t care to. If they are inside and feel like they have to pee or poop, why wouldn’t they just find a corner in the hallway or your bedroom and relieve themselves? Why have to either figure out how to get outdoors, or even worse, have to ask for help from a human!? Sneaking off to a random corner seems like a much better option. So as you can imagine, for some wolfdogs it can be tricky to convince them that not going to the bathroom indoors is something they should do for you. But with time, patience, building trust and respect with your wolfdog, eventually they may do you that favour of choosing to go outside for their potty breaks. On a side note, wolfdogs love to mark territory too, so good luck breaking that habit!
Dogs, cats, and kids - this one I won’t dive too deep into as I am sure I will cover it in depth later on as it’s a pretty crucial topic. But the short version is that wolfdogs can be extremely territorial, same sex aggressive, have intense prey drives, and are often avid resource guarders. All these behaviours essentially can make them completely incompatible to live with your domestics dogs, delicious cats, and your precious small children.
When Kuna comes indoors (see video above), her typical routine is to first go to the ‘kibble closet’ (I keep a big bin of dog kibble in a closet to feed all my indoor dogs from). She has mastered how to open the closet, by swatting at it with her paws until the door bounces open (literally all my doors in the house are covered in claw and scratch marks). She then proceeds to stick her face in the bin, squirrel up a bunch of kibble in her cheeks, then drop the kibble on the floor or on the couch and scent roll on it. Sometimes she eats the kibble, other times she just leaves it laying all over for either myself or the other dogs to clean up. On the topic of scent rolling, she grabs the dish towels, blankets, bathroom towels, whatever she can and scent rolls on them too. If I make the mistake of leaving the bedroom door open, you can bet she spends 10 minutes scent rolling in there, and if I’m really unlucky she pees on the bed to mark it as her own.
Her next task of business would be to see if there’s any special foods she can get access to. When Kuna was young I taught her to ring a bell if she wanted to go outside or if she wanted to eat. It helped curb some the destructiveness as I was able to teach her to ask for help from me, rather than her needing to use her teeth or claws to get into something or through a door all by herself. I quickly regretted teaching her that though as she learnt that she can ring those bells whenever she needs something from me. So with a restless or bored wolfdog in the house, imagine how often I heard that bell ringing… I still keep a bell on the freezer door (where I keep the raw dog food) so she will usually go ring that to see if there’s anything yummy in there for her. If you watch the video above, you will see how when she rings the bell she does it super quickly and kind of backs away from it. Well there was one incident where her claw got stuck on the bell. It got stuck for only a split second but she really didn’t like that, and of course that was enough for her to make an association to that bell. She will never forget that one incident and it changed her relationship to that bell forever. She will still use the bell as the benefits it provides her still outweigh the risk, but she is very mindful of how she rings it.
The rest of her time indoors is usually spent by me managing her exploration of the house. Once she gets bored or I have had enough and need a break, she goes back outside to rejoin her pack. They are always very excited to welcome her back as she brings with her a lot of interesting smells that they can explore second hand through her. Even after 12 years of having Kuna in and out of the house, she very rarely settles enough to lay on a dog bed and relax. She much prefers to be outdoors with her pack for most of her time. Her visits inside the house are just fun little field trips for her.
