By Hania Witerek

I’ve always been passionate about wolves, and I love dogs. Both wolves and dogs accompanied me all my life. Wolves in forests, where I tracked them and encountered them taking part in wolf projects and workshops and dogs at home where I shared my life with them.

I knew there were creatures in between, wolfdogs, but I never was really interested in them because I always thought it wrong to breed, buy or keep them. My heart tells me that wolves should be left alone in their natural habitats to live their lives there, they should be respected for who they are. They are wild animals. And dogs as domesticated animals should live with us, because human world has become their natural world and we are responsible for what we have tamed. We are not to mix these two worlds, wild one and human one, and create an entity that doesn’t belong to either of them.

This is what I’ve always felt, both as a biologist and as a dog and wolf lover.

And now I share my life with a wolfdog. Not because of a well thought out decision, but rather a sudden movement of my heart and some difficult to explain events that preceded the adoption of a howling in despair and left alone in an isolated cage, puppy.

So she is with us, Czechoslovakian Vlcak. Her name is Atka. She is 1,2 years old, and she’s been with us for 1 year now. My husband and I live in a remote place at the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. Our home is surrounded by meadows, fields and forests. We don’t have children and we both work from home. I am a freelancer.

Still, even in such good external conditions, meeting all needs of this small creature wasn’t and isn’t an easy task. She needed to get to know the human world and to adjust to it. She needed to mellow; she was too wild.

After 1 year of constant working with her we can say that we’ve made it. She is well socialised (as for a wolfdog, which means we cannot allow each person/dog approach her carelessly); she doesn’t guard food as fiercely as she did; she doesn’t hurt us any longer playing too rough; she doesn’t growl at us; she doesn’t bite us (yes, she bit me once, but now I am aware that it was due to my lack of understanding); she gets on with our cats; she doesn’t chase blindly all deer, hares, pheasants, dogs, cats, motorbikes, and all other moving objects when we take her for walks.

Now we are in the process of working out her separation anxiety, which means leaving her once, twice every day for about 5 minutes. At the beginning she was panicking to the point that we were afraid she would hurt herself trying to force her way through the closed gate. But now she is more and more relaxed each day, we don’t know though how long it will take us, we’ve been working with this 5 minutes for over a week now.

If we knew all of that….we probably wouldn’t dare to bring her home.

The CSV breed was created through a very strict selection towards behavioural traits as it was to serve in Czechoslovakian army. On average, in each litter of 8 or so cubs, only 1 was left, all the other puppies were removed as the ones who were too shy or too aggressive towards people. CSV breed was created in this cruel way, only to find out that they weren’t good dogs to serve in the army. Firstly they got very attached to the soldiers, which took care of them and didn’t want to co-operate with the next carers, who changed every two years. Secondly CSV were not easy to train.

So the whole project failed and the CSV have become more and more popular among adventurous private owners. But they are not easy companions, not for everyone, not for people working full time, not for people who want to have busy social life or who don’t want to resign from summer holidays abroad. They need lots of physical activity, mental stimulation and they need to feel they are equally important members of their pack. They cannot be left alone for a prolonged time each day.

When I look at my dear Atka, I see an animal, which is caught between two worlds, which is fearful and fearless, tough and extremely delicate, independent and totally dependent on me, which wants to roam freely and is afraid of being left alone, which could growl at me in one second and in the next moment put her head in my arms in the act of a total submission. I can see an animal, which is torn inside and thrown into the world that she doesn’t understand. A lonely animal. When I look into her right eye, which has many red spots, I see longing for the wild. When I look into her left spotless eye, I see her attachment to us.

We’ll always be her guides in this strange human world, feeling somehow guilty for her existence and, yes, privileged to share life with such an amazing, beautiful animal, who’s changed everything in our life and made each day extraordinary.