Why Socialization is Key
Wolf content is the absolute number 1 determinant of what type of behaviours you will be dealing with when it comes to wolfdogs. However, the degree of socialization and at what age is arguably just as important. Wolfdog socialization essentially aims at reprogramming their thought processes and teaching them the things they NEED to know to live amongst us humans. With my experience at Yamnuska Wolfdog Sanctuary, I have been able to experience this first hand time and time again. We have well socialized high content wolfdogs that are more comfortable with people and easier to handle than some of our unsocialized low content wolfdogs. Personally, I find this absolutely fascinating! It goes to show that it certainly isn’t Nature vs Nurture. It’s really about Nature AND Nurture. The nurture part being how well we socialize our wolfdogs and teach them about our human world. Now if you read my Why Wolf Content Matters article, you know all about why wolf content trumps everything else. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend you do before continuing. I do want to make clear that socialization is a big part of the puzzle on what type of behaviour your wolfdog will display and how “easy” they will be to handle and therefore is the second most important thing to actual wolf content. So let’s get into it!
To get straight to the point, the earlier you can expose your wolfdog to our human world, the better. This means all the human sounds, smells, tastes, touches and overall experiences that are part of our daily life. It’s crucial for regular dog puppies, but even more so for wolfdogs. If you are looking for specific resources on how to socialize your wolfdog you can pick up Ian Dunbar’s book, After you get your Puppy. There’s a lot of really good information that applies to regular dog puppies that you can use for a wolfdog puppy as well. There will likely be an article available at some point detailing all the things that you should do to socialize your wolfdog puppy so perhaps try searching for it on this site, and by the time you read this, that article will exist.
I’m going to talk specifically about high content wolfdogs for a moment, but some of this information can easily apply to the mid contents and even perhaps some low contents as well. As you’ve heard mentioned before, high content wolfdogs are born with instinctual wolf behaviours that allow wolves to survive in the wild. These are innate behaviours they are born with and are deeply ingrained. Now just because they are instinctual and deeply ingrained, this doesn’t mean we can’t influence them. Brains have a high degree of plasticity and therefore if we put in the time and effort, we can change some of their thinking. Don’t get me wrong though, it is an uphill battle. Essentially, you are trying to convince them that their instinctual reactions to things are “wrong”, or better yet, that there is a different expected response to situations. Let me use confined spaces for example. Wolves naturally do not like confined or enclosed spaces as it limits their ability to take a flight response (among other reasons). So if you want to try to teach your wolfdog to be comfortable in a crate you will have to work very hard to convince them that their innate discomfort to a small space is “wrong”. Some wolfdogs can get over this, but others, no matter how hard you try, you will not successfully be able to convince them that being in a crate is a comfortable thing. Let me use coming indoors as another example. Wolves don’t go in houses. Obviously. Therefore all the things that happen in our house are totally foreign. I had a wolfdog named Kaya (Rest In Peace sweet girl, mummy loves you so much) that was raised (and therefore extensively socialized to being) indoors. By the time she was 1.5 years old, she was perfectly comfortable being in the house. When I moved to where the Sanctuary currently resides, the house was different! She naturally was quite wary and it took her a lot of time to even want to walk through the front door of this new house. Anyway, the point of this story is that even once she got accustomed to the new house I made the “mistake” of turning on the ceiling fan one day. Well, guess what? My old house never had a ceiling fan. So this scary thing up high that spun around super fast above her and made a weird humming noise was absolutely terrifying to Kaya. If the ceiling fan was on she absolutely REFUSED to come in the house. If it was off, she would constantly glance up at it in the event that it could potentially turn on and she was just kind of always on edge. That goes to show how sensitive they can be and how a lack of socialization to a ceiling fan affected her entire future ability to be indoors. Now had I been given more time with Kaya (she became very ill and passed shortly after I moved) I likely would have been able to make some progress, but it would have taken a lot of time, effort and consistency. It would have been far easier to get her to accept ceiling fans when she was 12 weeks old in her prime socialization window.
My sweetest girl, Kaya, who taught me about wolfdogs and ceiling fans…
Long story short, you MUST socialize your wolfdog to as many things as humanly possible in order to set them up for success. You are constantly trying to change their nature through nurture. This is why having a relationship based on trust and respect is one of your big keys to success (Building Trust & Respect). How can you ever convince a wolfdog to do something against its instincts if they don’t explicitly trust and respect you? So by using your built up trust and hours upon hours of socialization, you might be able to program a different response to a situation that their instincts would usually tell them to avoid or be afraid of. And remember, certain behaviours and responses are so ingrained into their personalities that no amount of trust or socialization will ever change that. All we can do is try…
