Keeping Wolves as Pets in the United States: Background information when reading Wolf Season

Keeping Wolves as Pets in the United States

This article relates to Wolf Season

In Helen Benedict's novel Wolf Season, a character illegally keeps pet wolves behind a fence on her upstate New York property. At first her neighbors don't believe she actually has wolves – they think it's just a rumor passed around by children – but when they realize the wolves are real they become alarmed and look for legal means to address the situation.

Throughout history, attempts have been made to domesticate wolves to help with certain human activities, such as pulling sleds, serving as hunting dogs, or working as police dogs. Wolves and wolf–dog hybrids may seem like appealing pets for animal-lovers, but there are some serious reasons why owning a wolf should not be considered a valid alternative to owning a dog. Dogs are the result of 10,000 years of intensive domestication, whereas wolves are still very much wild animals; even if taken from their mother as pups within the first two weeks of life, wolves do not respond to socialization after the age of 19 days. They are much more difficult to train than dogs, which will imprint on humans, or look to us for cues, as late as 16 weeks of age.

Even after significant human contact, wolves remain territorial and display instinctual behaviors that can be frightening to their owners, like greeting them with a nip to the face or acting in a predatory way towards other household pets. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service thus warns that children and small animals may face particular danger from these unpredictable creatures. Many pet wolves or hybrids are later abandoned at already overcrowded animal sanctuaries or released into the wild, where they may starve to death because they have underdeveloped hunting instincts after living in captivity.

There is no federal law about keeping wolves as pets; instead, the decision is left to the individual states. Wolves generally fall under "exotic pet" laws, while wolf–dog crosses are considered domestic animals. To explore individual state laws, you can consult this map and this list. Regulations on wolves vary widely. For instance, in Florida wolves are allowed as pets with a permit, whereas in Illinois they are labeled "dangerous animals" and can only be possessed by zoos or circuses. Alaska and Michigan specifically prohibit wolf hybrids as well. The distinction may depend on how many generations a hybrid is removed from a full-blooded wolf. In some states five generations is the minimal distance for a wolf cross to be deemed an acceptable pet. (In the UK, three generations was set as the limit.)

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service offers a good summation of why people adopt wolves as pets – and why, ultimately, doing so may be a mistake: "They want to share their lives and homes with a wild spirit. Perhaps they even believe that by perpetuating the genes of wild wolves, they are doing the species a favor. The reality of owning one of these animals is often very different. While wolf puppies might be every bit as cute as dog puppies, they will grow up to be wolves, not dogs, no matter how much they are treated like dogs."

Picture of European grey wolf by Katerina Hlavata

Filed under Nature and the Environment

This article relates to Wolf Season. It first ran in the January 3, 2018 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.