Book about wolves raised by a man, his wife and a German Shepherd: familiar to anyone? Is basic premise plausible?
Several decades ago, I read a book written by a man who rescued and raised two wolf cubs whose mother had been killed. He was sure his wife would welcome the cubs, but he was apprehensive about the reaction of his large, male German Shepherd.
The dog took one sniff of the cubs, and adopted them, starting by licking them clean (they were filthy). I don't remember how the man and his wife fed them; I think they had not been weaned.
The book focused on the pack that developed. The man was the alpha male, his wife the alpha female. The German Shepherd was initially the beta male. As a juvenile or young adult, the male wolf challenged the man, who instantly and forcefully responded, and thus maintained his position as alpha male. The male wolf and the German Shepherd worked out an arrangement where the GS was beta in the home territory, but when the pack (led by the man) went far afield, the male wolf was the beta.
The man trained the wolves to live on their own -- Born Free with wolves instead of lions -- and eventually the wolves, who had started to roam on their own, left and did not come back.
I don't know the title, I don't know the author (it wasn't Farley Mowatt or Barry Lopez or Jack London)), and I don't know where this happened, but my impression is the northwest US or Canada. The book was presented as the true experiences of the author. Does this go click with anyone? Does the premise of the book - the artificial pack -- jibe with what has been observed about wolf and dog behavior and their relationship to humans?
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/q/16999. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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