The Wolfalike Type Dog
A Wolfalike (the noun being taken from the adjective ‘wolf-like‘) describes a dog (Canis lupus familiaris) intentionally created to be as close to the wolf (Canis lupus) in appearance and characteristics as possible while mainly retaining dog-like behaviours but no or negligible actual wolf content.
What is a Wolfalike Dog?
For years people have been trying to create a wolf-look-alike dog to this specification. More familiar wolfalike breeds in the UK might be the Northern Inuit Dog, the Utonagan and the Tamaskan, just to mention a few - all of these were originally bred using the same founding dogs. (see "how it started")
The most popular breeds used in the foundation of many wolfalike breeds are the Siberian Husky, the Alaskan Malamute and the German Shepherd; traces of other breeds such as the the Samoyed and Norwegian Elkhound and Collie have also been found in the genetic makeup of some wolfalike dogs.
You will find that some wolfalike dogs do have a minimal amount of grey wolf content in them, but this is negligible. Some breeders have used The Saarloos Wolfdog, the Czechoslovakian Vlciak (Czechoslovakian Wolfdog) or even various wolf dogs in their breeding programs to achieve a wolflike look quicker.
Because of people’s differences of opinions on how the wolfalike breeds should move forward, many breeders have opted to move away from the closed gene pool clubs and become independent breeders to better develop the breed and widen the gene pool by introducing other wolfalike dogs.
Wolfalike breeds at Valkyrie
The Northern Inuit Dog
The Northern Inuit was one of the earlierst wolf-look-alike breeds created in the UK. The breed had their foundation dogs imported to the UK in the early-mid 80's.
It has since early 90's been bred pure, but due to a narrow genepool some breeders has introduced other wolfalike lines to widen the genepool but still strive to keep the Northern Inuit tempermanet and characteristics.
We here at Valkyrie is one of them.
The Tamaskan Dog
The Tamaskan stem from the Northern Inuit and Utonagan.
A split in the Utonagan saw a breeder moving to Finland where she crossed her Utonagan dogs with working line Siberian Huskies, Czechoslovakian Vlcaks and American Wolfdogs.
There are today several Tamaskan breeders in Europe, North America and Australia
Tesla is the result of a Northern Inuit x Tamaskan outcrossing.
