two; a letter. ( un: sansastark )

[clothed]

[ so. floods. not a fan. sansa would very much like to never experience that sort of thing again. ]

My heartfelt greetings to all that are reading this letter. My name is Sansa Stark.

I have two requests to ask of those who might be interested.

First, That I may trade in my skills with the needle in exchange for private company, for reasons I will gladly explain at length, if required. Second, that those who are familiar with wolves and hounds may permit me to ask questions in confidence.

It would mean so much to me if I could be indulged in either of these two requests. My gratitude to those who have read this far, and to anyone who chooses to reply.

Comments

text | un: Оцелотовая Хватка

[ocelthot]

I've raised and trained both wolf-dogs and dogs. What sort of questions did you have?

[clothed]

About their nature - accepting them, understanding them in a way that one can put to words.

I've raised one, a direwolf, when I was younger - but I've failed her. I mean to try again.

[ocelthot]

I'm assuming you're looking at raising a wolf or a wolf mix, so there's a few things to consider here:

One of the most important things to understand is that dogs spent millions of years evolving to read human body language, they recognize humans as another species and when interacting with a human they read human faces the same way humans read human faces, allowing them to pick up cues such as pointing or looking at an object as part of their instruction. Dogs also have an extended exposure period in their development where they have longer to get used to things around them, encounter new things, learn what to avoid, and generally figure out the world.

Wolves have none of these advantages when it comes to human interaction, and stronger instincts to perform wolf behaviors. When they interact with you, they're thinking of you as another wolf and expect wolf body language from you. I'd recommend doing the reading just so you have the visuals on hand, and build some upper body strength so when they interact like you're family you won't get knocked down.

It's not that they can't be taught, it's that what they're taught needs to be simplified to what they can understand because they're not primed to understand humans.

Think short, one word instructions or simple hand signals, and immediate positive reinforcement with food. They aren't going to look at your eyes or face for clues, so you need to give more direct guidance to link a behavior and the instruction, but they will get bored and start ignoring you if you try to have them repeat something too often. So building to complex instructions will take longer and absolute consistency is a must.

They'll also need significantly more socialization and exercise than any dog will.

Wolf-dogs get a random grab bag of features from dogs and wolves, and you can't be sure which they got from what. However dogs can learn well from what's used to teach a wolf, where as wolves really can't learn well from what's used to teach a dog.

It will take a lot of patience and hard work, but as long as you can avoid punishment and try to set the animal up for success, you should be able to create a rapport that will keep you both happy.