But while I do not understand the negative attitude towards developing new dog breeds, I have to note, that as it comes to wolfdogs as working dogs, my opinion still stands as I have wrote it here before in another topic:
When creating a new working breed, I do not think that it's necessary or wise to add fresh wolf blood. I think that there is a big enough population of dogs with different characteristics to make a suitable mix for different working purposes. The wolf has many unsuitable characteristics that makes it a poor working companion for any human purposes compared to an average dog. -Shyness is one of the biggest issues, but there are many more.
The dogs we have today were selectively bred and domesticated a long time ago. Why to start over?
Of course wolfdogs have their own place under the sun, and of course they should also always be bred selectively! -But for what purpose they should be bred, and more importantly, for what purpose it is reasonable to try selectively breed wolfdogs these days?
There is enough work in trying to selectively breed wolfdogs that can successfully live a quality "pet life" in human society.
In my opinion, with the large variety of different dogs in the world with all their different features, it is a waste of time and recourses to try breeding hard core working canines out of wolfdogs.
-It would be much more effective, and alot faster project with fewer unsuitable individuals as side products, to mix dogs with suitable traits to create working dogs.
Why waste decades to produce a homogeneous stock of suitable wolfdogs for some military/police work, when we allready have superior dogs for the job?
The authorities will most likely continue using the type of dogs they have allready found to be perfect for the jobs, and the people who compete in different dog sports will most likely continue buying dogs that excell in those sports.
Most wolfdogs end up as pets (though a little more high maintenace than average dogs) for active people who love outdoor living and who are fascinated by the wolfiness in their dogs. -The "wild" and natural looks, the intependent character and the intense body language, to mention a few features often heard listed as reasons for owning a wolfdog.
The most important thing for the majority of wolfdog owners is that the animal is capable of living a healthy, stress free life with people. And I would say that it is allready a big enough challenge for all wolfdog breeding to be able to respond to those criteria.
To try to jump into the boots of an average German Shepherd, Border Collie or Labrador, would be such a challenge that I really can't see the point at the moment. -Maybe then if we would find ourselves in a situation where we have completely (genetically) ruined/destroyed all dogs in the world. Then we might need to take that step back for getting strong genes from wild populations. But concidering the extinction rates of most large carnivores, I'm pretty sure that if we'll find ourselves in the situation mentioned above, there will no longer be wild wolf populations to thrive the fresh genes from...
