Hi there i have a Malamute X Rottie with the father being the malamute and he is beautiful i agree the temperament is purely determined by the way they are brought up and would love another like him .. i must admit he is a little stubborn but a gentle giant..
Feel sorry for those who really care for this breed, a few years ago they were rare and carefully bred. Now they are being badly bred and x bred and I wonder if the breed supporters’ wish they could return to the Import Register. Always feel, there but for the grace of God go my breed, we have in recent years had several group wins at Crufts and every time I hold my breath and hope 'we' do not become 'popular'. Think the Elkhound breeders should be proud of themselves as it must be there careful choice of homes for their pups that has helped keep my breed 'unpopular' despite the efforts of a certain north eastern puppy warehouse and the Irish puppy farm that supply them. Edit to say I am talking UK
THankyou. It's annoying, angering, saddening and infuriating that people in my breed think it clever to cross them in order to line ther own greedy, selfish pockets To name but a few, but Mals are currently being crossed with Sibes, Akitas, GSDs, BUllmastiffs, Labradords, English Bull Terriers and now this week Irish/American Staffs !!!! I pray daily that KARMA will prevail and justice will be served on them !!!
Same with Sibes people think its ok to mix breed with other dogs and sell them on for outrageous amounts of money I dont understand it myself its such a shame.I was at the market the other day and met a man with a beautiful Mal I went over and he informed me she was not a mal but half mal half wolf
Temperament is not purely detemined by the way they are brought up. There are genetic traits to temperament. Becky
Lou I don't know their names but were going by the kennel name Hebridean something or other at one point. I've met a few of their pups !! Owners were convinced they were wolves as they were so big (the size of sibes)
I've seen their site - it's http://www.hebrideanwolfdogs.com/ Having just spent a month trying to sort out a friend's Malamute/Siberian cross puppy with extremely serious aggression/dominance issues, I would just agree with everyone who has criticised such crosses. With a well-established breed, you more or less know what you are going to get and can be prepared for it. With cross-breeds, you have no guarantee of what sort of balance of physical and mental traits you are going to get. On top of that, no-one breeding designer crosses is what I would regard as a responsible breeder, so the likelihood of them having carried out the appropriate health checks before mating is minimal. The pup we have been dealing with, for example, was sold at 5 weeks, missing out a crucial phase of "training" from its mum and siblings. This has just exacerbated its behavioural and dominance issues.
just had a look on the wolfdog site there are some beautiful dogs on there, dont know what it has to do with mal crosses though, they dont mention mal crosses anywhere on there and your friends mal x sibe the temperament issues could have come from either breed, or because it was taken from the litter too young, or cos they werent suitable to train this sort of dog the original working sled dogs wouldnt have been pure bred kc dogs, they would have been bred for health and working ability over looks. whether they were staked out to be bred with wolves is debatable but all do have a wolfy look about them
no i dont have expreience of owning a sibe or mal or wolfdog, just couldnt understand why there was a link to a wolfdog site on a thread about a sibe x mal with temperament problems. seems like the wolfdog site was being blamed for problems with a sib x mal no where on the wolfdog site did it mention sibe x mal, but there was a picture of a malamute on there
I agree with what Louise has said. As for being staked out, no dogs that are KC recognised in this Country were ever staked out with wolves in their ancestry, although there are breeds that claim this as their history through some kind of mythical fantasy. All dogs descend from wolves, and the ones that were not bred excessively with other types of different looking dogs, and then kept true, were bound to keep the wolfy look. The original working sled dogs were around a lot longer before any KC even existed, so of course they weren't KC dogs and they were bred for working, no health issues were addressed as they did't have the facilities to do this back then. It was only when certain sledding breeds gained KC recognition through breeding true to type for a long time, that they started to consider the health of the dogs.
The reason that most northern dogs have a "wolfy" look about them is geographical rather than genetic. Any dog which can survive in Arctic/sub arctic conditions is likely to develop particular characteristics which enable them better to survive in such conditions. The arctic wolf/timber wolf etc lives in the same conditions and is likely to develop similar characteristics - almond eyes, double coat, well-furred ears and tail etc etc. Genetically, none of the sled dog breeds are closer to the wolf than are poodles or Shi Tzus. Myths that the Inuit people would stake in-season bitches out to be bred by wolves are just that - myths. The wolves would have been much more likely to eat them than mate with them. Whenever such wolf crosses have been done for research purposes, they have resulted, not in hybrid vigour, but in much less effective sled dogs as wolves are not hard-wired to pull like sled dogs are and the cross-breeding inevitably dilutes this sled dog trait.