Olderhill Wolfdogs

 

OLDERHILL WOLFDOGS
(Olderhill German Shepherd cross Canadian Wolf)

German Shepherd cross Canadian Wolf, wolfdog

If you'd asked us what we thought of wolf cross german shepherds a couple of years ago we would have told you the following. From speaking to people involved with the military's wolfdog project here in South Africa and several private breeders, we understood that the hip problems found in their german shepherds were totally cancelled out by the wolf blood, and the longevity of the offspring was greatly increased. The drawback was that the temperament of the offspring was unsuitable for work until the percentage of wolf blood was reduced to 12.5 %. Higher percentages were skittish and unpredictable.Shakira, German Shepherd cross Canadian Wolf, wolfdog
Then we met Shakira. (Photo above and right.)
She's 75% Canadian Wolf, 25% German Shepherd and has the looks and wild spirit of the wolf and body (40kg) and heart of a big shepherd. (At her previous home she pinned a burglar down by his throat for 3 hours until her owners came home!) She's very dominant and totally self-confident anywhere and seems fearless.  Like a wolf she can't bark but answers our dogs by making short howls.
From the moment we saw Shakira we were bewitched and decided to let her have puppies with our Olderhill dogs. It took almost two years for her to accept a suitable mate, but finally, to our great excitement, she had a litter. Take a look!
 

We kept a sable girl, Luna, from her litter. (Photo on right.)

Luna in turn had a litter of puppies from our black Olderhill Zac (his photos are in the gallery of past dogs). Above are a few of Luna and Zac's 13 puppies born January 2005. Their second litter was born 26th January 2006. We kept a brother and sister from this litter, Romulus and Crow, and still have these magnificant dogs today (Feb 2015). Their photos will appear soon in the gallery of present dogs. We did track and attack once with the pair when they were 7 mths old and they performed like trained dogs that first time. For many years afterwards we did nothing else with them and then needed to track transformer thieves. They took the track and showed us the thieves' movements up to where they had got into a vehicle. This was their 2nd 'training' session ever! (They also were keen for the attack bit after the track but were disappointed!)

Draco who lived with a lion

One of Luna and Zac's bi-coloured son, Draco, went to live with owners of Lorry Park Zoo in Johannesburg when he was 11 weeks old. He was introduced to Chaos, a lion cub, almost the same age (Chaos just pips Draco). These photos were taken the evening that they were introduced to each other and as you can see they hit it off straight away.
Here they are again at 7 months. If Chaos tried to pounce on people, Draco would stop him and punish him!
But they loved each other very much!
When Chaos got older the owners were too worried that he would hurt Draco while playing, and so he got a girlfriend to replace his friend. Today he is a magnificant lion with children of his own. Draco,however, was not worried about kitties at all. He once nipped into the two adult bengal tigers cage and successfully dominated them!