If I were to do it again...

If you're planning on purchasing a wolf hybrid... and if I were to do it again... here is my advice:

Make sure to go hog crazy on the photos in the first 6 months. I took insane amounts of photos, cut back (because I was afraid of becoming the crazy "first time mother" that takes 20 pictures of her first child drooling or something equally nutty), and now regret that I don't have more of her from that age. They grow up too fast.  I also regret not buying a larger SD card for videos to be longer than the ones that I got.

If you and your spouse don't already have children this will be a view of some VERY related methods of dealing with this breed. Although, myself, I haven't had children... I can only imagine from being around enough/babysitting my fair share.

The breed is SO smart but the real key is to always have your dog around you when you're home from work (even if she's in her kennel), so that she's your pack member.

Socialize her LOTS when she's 3 months + (not too young because you don't want everyone's dirty hands touching a puppy too young). Jason and I lived 30 mins outside of town, a lot of our friends didn't want to drive that far to come see us so one regret is that we didn't socialize Tundra as much as we would have liked to.

On the other hand, she's a lot more protective of us, a lot more attached to a small handful of people who did come around(which can be viewed as a good thing). But if Jason and I wanted to go on vacation it makes it a lot more difficult to find someone to look after her now that we've moved to ON and she isn't used to anyone around here that came to visit often.


Decide before with your spouse what rules are you going to have for things like the dog sleeping on the bed, jumping up on couches, kennel training/ verses not (I do NOT regret kennel training her!!), walking techniques (is she going to always be on the right/left/ between you two or is she going to be allowed to walk ahead) -- you laugh but Jason and I didn't communicate before we started walking her and we weren't consistent with the same technique (although I like to jog so mine are a bit different).

Wolf-hybrids are smart, they can be trained very easily if done from a young age, its just a matter of figuring out with your spouse how you want to train your wolf-hybrid, what you're going to allow and in what situation. You'd be surprised at how many things we bend on.  I started out at "No, the dog is NOT allowed on our bed, EVER. EVER!" to "The dog is allowed on our bed only just before bed if we're watching movies and she has to be on a special "Dog" blanket so she doesn't get her hair all over our duvet.

As I've been laid off it's bend further to when Jason leaves for work and I crawl back into bed to warm up. I'll turn over and see Tundra pushing her boundaries creeping slowly off her special blanket. She knows better. She's too smart. (: