I have a dog that spent a good portion of her life feral. She was picked up on a ranchers property in a town near San Antonio. She had somehow succesfully raised a bunch of puppies by herself, surviing on whatever she could catch. This guys land was in the middle of no where, no trash cans or other houses for several miles and he’d seen her both pregnant and with the puppies. He has his own dogs and supports the local shelter she was brought to, so I doubt she belonged to him.
She has this feral “vibe” to her, she slinks around and even if she’s just sitting still a lot of dogs give her side long glances. Some even give her a sort of WTF!? look. She has an eerie howl and has a very strong prey drive. At first we thought she was a Husky mix, but something is “off” with her. Several other people have commented on it. She weighs a consistent 40lbs and comes up to my knee (I’m 6"0).
If she is, it’s not likely she’s high content. Whatever she is, she freaked enough people out that she sat at the shelter for over 5 months and had only one person interested in her besides me when I volunteered there. Pit Bulls, Huskies and other “sometimes scary” breeds went quicker and got more looks then she did.
Hard to tell. The body looks a bit coyote-ish but it could be any number of other medium breeds. The fertility of coydogs is uncertain; hybrids have been demonstrated to be fertile, but with limited viability of offspring, and the differences in pack behavior and mating cycles makes it more difficult than wolf-dog offspring. The odd howl and slinking around sounds like coyote behavior, but could also just be a result of growing up in a feral state and away from other dogs. Coydogs can make suitable pets for some people, but because of the prey instinct should be carefully controlled around other small pets and should be very well socialized and supervised if it is going to be near children, as wild ‘dogs’ and dog-wolf/dog-coyote hybrids do not have the neotenic instinct of a soft mouth or innate restraint against fighting to kill once they feel threatened.
The head is very dog-like and very un-coyote like. The body, also, is more dog-like. She’s probably just had a bad upbringing. You might look around and see if anyone can do some inexpensive DNA testing.
She looks very dog-like to me. I’m guessing someone dumped her on the rancher’s land at some point. People have this odd idea that dumping animals “in the country” means they’ll survive. She’s very lucky that she did.
There are inexpensive DNA tests but I’m not sure of their reliability (having used some with some interesting results) and I don’t know if they include coyote.
She doesn’t look even remotely coyote. If she was very poorly socialized and/or starved during puppyhood her behavior may be totally “off”, thus causing the strange reactions by both dogs and people. Many dogs howl. I believe that genetic tests have found little evidence for coydogs being a real thing. Coyotes generally prefer to eat dogs.
Aside from the coyote thing I get that sometimes people will kinda-sorta make pets of feral cats with varying success and these cats are often very skittish and unpredictable even as housepets, but wouldn’t a feral dog be downright dangerous? I’m surprised shelter would adopt out a feral dog vs simply putting it down.
I’m not seeing coyote. Lab, definitely, and probably some German Shepherd. The skulking and the predatory behavior are probably due to her feral early days.
A few months ago I was driving down a main road near my house around 8AM. This road technically goes through a residential area, but it’s mostly two-lanes (both ways) with a median and the speed limit is 45 MPH. It’s very busy during commute times.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw an animal dart across the road. I immediately thought “coyote”, but then said… nah, probably just a dog. When I got up to the point where I could see the animal, there was no doubt it was a coyote. Looking at it walking across the side road, there was nothing very dog-like about this animal. Everything about it screamed “coyote”.
Although coyotes and dogs are closely related, it’s quite easy to tell them apart, and I’m not seeing anything the looks like a coyote in your dog.
Dutch shepherds are always brindle and if properly socialized have no problems with other dogs. Most dutch shepherds are people-focused hard-core working dogs. The OP’s dog is not brindle and looks like a husky lab mix to me, but visual identification of dog mixes is rarely correct. It’s probably just a dog that had a very bad life up to now. Kudos to the OP for taking the poor beast on.
