Week 5 – Congratulations! You’re so special!
** EDITS**
Because I couldn’t make it to class last week, I missed a discussion that involved reading the stories on the author’s terms instead of your own. So I’m going to try and re-write my reaction to the reading in response to that attitude.
Terrill’s narrative tells the story of her experiences owning and raising a wolf-dog. To my eyes she seemed a bit naive at first, expecting it to be somewhat like raising a very large dog. I know she wrote all about how she knew it would be difficult going in, but reading through the stories I think that’s more of a hindsight bias coming in as she was writing. Regardless, her experiences allow us (the readers) to glimpse at just how hard it would be to domesticate a wolf in a single lifetime. Inyo is not even a full wolf, imagine how much harder that would have been!
I think that popular culture has taken wolves and given them a mythical aura, making them out to be essentially prehistoric dogs. Maybe it’s just me, but when I think of domesticated wolves oftentimes I have this image of a caveman running around with his pet wolf, much like a modern man would run around with his pet dog. This book pretty much shatters that illusion, as evident by some of my original rants below. And if that idea about wolves is hopelessly wrong, the long-held ideas of how they became domesticated would definitely change. I know we’ve been reading a few alternative theories regarding the domestication of dogs in class, and for me this book is a personal anecdote that might reinforce those scientific theories. Even though anecdotal evidence is a logical fallacy when trying to support an argument, it does tend to create a vivid picture in our minds.
I think the biggest scientific point this book reinforces for me is that the ancestors of dogs were not wolves, at least not in the sense that we think of them today. It isn’t as if we could take a modern wolf and only breeding within wolves end up with dogs as we know them. Modern wolves and dogs shared a common ancestor, one which most likely we’ll never get a chance to experience in the flesh. Perhaps if Terrill had one of those creatures and tried raising it as she did Inyo, she’d have an easier time of it. An interesting thought experiment would be wondering what might happen if we found remains of that ancient animal in the ice somewhere (similar to mammoths), and then possibly clone it. It certainly would be an exciting venture…
I’ve left the original text below in case someone wanted to read it.
So far (page 70 or so) I’m very disappointed in this book. I was excited to finally read something that addressed the issue of domesticated dogs in a way that the other readings we’ve done simply glossed over. However, instead of examining the issue of domestication and trying to explain exactly where dogs came from and how they got to their present breeds, Catherine Terrill instead simply tells the tale of her and her wolfdog. The story reads like a personal journal, which might be appealing to those who care about the author’s life and experiences, but frankly I don’t. The way I see it, there are several very good reasons that humans have dogs as pets and not wolves, and yet the author spends an enormous amount of time essentially defending the idea of owning a wolf (or an 85% wolf-dog hybrid), even in the face of repeated frustrations and issues that arise with such an animal. I understand that at this point Inyo is still a puppy, and puppies are frustrating sometimes. But even so, it sounds to me like her entire life revolves around this dog, even to the point of having Inyo sleep in between her and her husband on her wedding night. The entire story sounds like Terrill is just begging for attention and wants people to acknowledge that she’s special and managed to overcome the challenges of owning a wolfdog, with a lot of love, patience, and some good old Disney family-friendly magic (think the Beethoven movies with wolves). And talk about anthropomorphizing…
I’m very curious as to what year the author decided to move to Reno. She and her fiancé simply drove up and expected to find a place to live that would allow big dogs in one day? Also, why would owning a northern wolf be a good idea in the cities of Tucson and Reno? Both of which have very hot climates that I’d imagine would be unsuitable for wolves.
Chapter 10 is essentially 12 pages of “my beautiful, genius wolf is better than your ridiculously looking, stupid dog.” Also, Leda sounds like an extremely annoying person.
On page 119, Terrill feels guilty (but still does it) about letting Inyo free to eat vulnerable animals whose populations were declining. Yet a few chapters earlier she had harshly criticized poachers who shot wolves in the Northern and Southeastern US. Is that hypocritical?
Terrill mentions at the end of chapter 14 how money was very tight, with her husband unable to handle the finances. Yet they just adopted two puppies. I find it hard to feel very much sympathy with them when they knowingly add big expenses to their lives even when they can’t pay for things like electricity.
I did like the bit about foxes, but it seemed kind of out of place with the rest of her narrative. I wish her entire book had focused more on the type of questions she explored when examining the domestication of foxes, rather than her wonderful experiences owning a wolfdog.
Terrific image for this post! But I’m sorry you weren’t in class last week when we committed ourselves to taking the readings on their own terms rather than jumping in and venting about all the things the author didn’t do or what you don’t like about what they did. Terril’s book is autobiographical but also an informed, well-researched and serious interrogation of what domestication means in real life for real people, real dogs, real wolf-dogs and real wolves. Her experiences with Inyo suggest just how liminal and fundamental the lines between wild and domestic are. Maybe coming at this text with a fresh perspective will help?
Oh I understand, I added an edited version at the top. Is that more what you meant?
Yes!!!! Thanks so much.
What intrigues me most about this post is your reminder that the debate about dog domestication just recently shifted in light of new findings about the dog-wolf common ancestor. The study is cited in this article. http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2014/0117/Did-dogs-really-evolve-from-wolves-New-evidence-suggests-otherwise
This confounds the long held understanding about “friendly wolves” you allude to in your post. Although it’s clear that dogs and wolves interbred quite a bit after the split, this new research could signal a major shift in how we think about the origins of the dog. Very cool.
It’s odd, because for almost any other evolutionary changes (such as the genus homo), the fact that it’s a common ancestor and not an evolution from a modern day animal is drilled into our heads as biology students from day one. Yet with dogs most people just shrug that thinking off and assume they came directly from wolves. I think the best reason for that is because the split between the two animals occurred fairly recently in evolutionary terms. The modern dog would be vastly different due to the incredible pressures of artificial selection placed upon it, while the modern wolf might not have changed that much as natural selection usually acts at much slower pace. Still, the modern wolf must certainly be different from the common ancestor in some respects, as the article you linked to pointed out.
You’re completely right about how backwards it seems that so many people picture the common ancestor of wolves and dogs as the mirror image of modern day wolves- especially given the amount of variety in domestic dogs! All those variations came from the same basic lines of DNA, with just a few mutations along the way. The common ancestor could look more like a breed domestic dog than a wolf- we may never know (however, it’s unlikely given the amount of artificial selection we’ve used to shape dogs). Here’s another brief article about the recent research regarding the genomics of dogs, wolves, and finding their common ancestor which Dr. Nelson pointed out: http://www.ibtimes.com/dogs-wolves-evolved-common-ancestor-dog-domestication-more-complex-previously-thought-1543518
It’s interesting how each new piece of the puzzle enriches (and complicates) the broader picture. I think it will take a while (and more research) before this new view of the common ancestor displaces the consensus about the ancestral linkages between dogs and wolves. Even the authors of this study were surprised that the wolf lineages from the hypothesized domestication centers did not seem to be the source lineage for the dogs. Much of the talk for the last couple of years has been about the development of starch digestion (in dogs especially, but also in people), and this study offers some new insight there as well – confirming the long-held view that dogs pre-date agriculture.