The health problems in Sarloos are nothing new but CSW still are over average health compared to other breeds.
What people tend to forget is that you have to find homes for several hybrids and coming back to England that Timberwolf definetly has nothing to do with CSW. Just google wolfdogs in USA and you will find several shelters and rescue societies together with reports about accidents. There are very good reasons why not every state does allow hybrids.
For all people I know keeping hybrids health wasn´t the main reason to get one. Very many of them feel save at the moment having animals that are not adult now, not realising that the difficult times haven´t come yet.
We raised and are responsible for 8 European wolfves at the moment and believe me even a half- or quater-wolf is much more than the common owner can handle not to mention the daily stress those poor creatures very often have. On the way to create the working breed CSW there was an very unusual hard selection and a very big amount of killed animals. Every animal not fitting the sheme was killed, do you really think you could do that nowadays, what do you want to do with them then?
Another point is that people think there are no diseases in wolves at all, that is simply not true, they just don´t reproduce on long terms. The same is with the thought that health problems will disapear just with crossing in one wolf, most of the Sarloos-problems seem to be recessiv, they just won´t show up for some years but the problems will come back unless you keep on with crossing in.
The only thing that can prevent and help is a good knowledge of breeders with hard selection and inventing DNA-Tests for inherited diseases, in very special cases going together with a very severely controlled and a very long term planed incrossing of other breeds/wolves. Breeding hybrids in private hands is for me an absolutely irresponsible and egocentric new hype. And irresponsible and egocentric people are horrible breeders.
Ina
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