The Importance of Trust and Respect
The third and final pillar that will ultimately affect the life you have with your wolfdog (see Wolf Content and Socialization for the other two) is the relationship you build with that animal. One thing that I cannot stress enough is building your relationship based on trust and respect. Unlike dogs, wolfdogs have a much lesser affinity to please us humans. They are extremely independent, intellectual, and frankly much more self aware than domestic dogs. Combining that with their instinctual behaviours make them extremely transactional animals. Think of them as being almost cat like in a sense. They generally only do what they want to do, when they want to do it, and that’s that.
The single most important thing that you can do as a long term caregiver to a wolfdog is build a relationship based on trust and respect. Think of them as small humans that, like us, have very specific boundaries, likes, dislikes, and things that motivate them or don’t. Take the time to learn these things through trial and error, and use this information to build a relationship that has some give and some take. They are such intellectual and observant animals that they will quickly learn all those things about you and use that to their advantage! So if you treat them as smart, sentient, self aware, and independent animals, you will end up with a wolfdog that is willing to cooperate with you, rather than work for you.
Let’s talk about cooperation for a bit. Wolves in the wild cooperate with their family members in order to survive. In other words, they are motivated to work WITH one another, not FOR one another. Remember that. If you need your wolfdog to do something for you (like learn to ask to go outside to pee, or be clipped to a leash if you ask), you will need their cooperation.
My Belgian Malinois Rip loves me and will automatically do whatever I ask him to. If I need to put him on leash I can command him to come to me and sit and I snap a leash on. It’s essentially automatic. But he will also automatically come to YOU to be put on leash if you ask him to. As a domestic dog (and a working dog at that), he has a natural drive to work for humans. Kuna (a well socialized high content wolfdog) has no desire to work for people. She will most likely do what I ask her to because she trusts me and therefore has a willingness to cooperate with me. So if I ask her to come to me to be put on leash, she will likely do that. Not because she wants to please me, but because I have spent years teaching her that she can trust me to put her on leash and likely a leash means a walk. Although sometimes it means going in the truck to go to the vet. But because we have compounded years of trust and respect, she will take that risk and allow me to put a leash on her. If you were to ask her to come to you and put a leash on her, never in a million years would she allow that. She would never be interested in putting herself in such a vulnerable position (to be physically tied to a human essentially!). That is the ultimate difference between a domesticated dog and a wild wolf. A desire to work FOR versus a desire to cooperate WITH. One requires trust, while the other does not. And trust me, when things go wrong and you need to get your wolfdog through something really difficult, you want to be able to rely on that cooperation, because you will need it! Below you will see a few photos of Kuna at the vet getting a bilateral TPLO surgery. I don’t know how I would have ever gotten her through all the vet visits and the recovery process if she didn’t explicitly trust me.
Besides cooperation, for some smaller things, bribery can go a long way too! It’s basically like dealing with a difficult small child. If you want a child to eat their broccoli you bribe them with dessert afterwards. For wolfdogs, you can use similar tactics. If you walk through this gate for me, you will get this strip of bacon in return. Sometimes being transactional is the easiest way to go about something! Please note, using bribery or rewards can only help you with the simple things. Things wolfdogs are already okay to do, but just need a little bit of extra motivation. If you ever need your wolfdog to do the hard stuff, you need their cooperation, their trust and their respect.
Kuna had a ridiculous love of the Rainbow coloured Twizzlers. This was one of my go to bribery pieces if I really needed to sway her into a decision.
