[besidethewildside-blog]

When I realised that I have a part wild animal living with me that is not only a feral dog but a half wild canid - an Australian native canid, falsely known as Australia’s Native Dog - I started to get that I have to think and act differently. Now I don’t try to treat her like a pet dog, I try to understand her unique needs and respect her nature. And since I do, we are happy together. It isn’t easy, yet the decision to live with a dingo is a big step and if you really want it, all you have to forfeit should be worth it.

What you give, you get back. With a wild canid it might take very long, but what you get is amazing.

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Ggrrr~! Says Shiloh.

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Dingoes howling (by Number 17 Photography)

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Dingo mix in the water

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Cleo the Dingo just chilling in her water bowl. Cleo thats what you have a pool for! Silly.

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Dingoes

Dingoes are Australia’s wild dog. They arrived in Australia about 5,000 years ago - brought to Australian shores by Indonesian Seafarers. Dingoes do not bark, but howl like wolves.

The Dingo is a medium sized dog weighing between 13-24kg, with males usually heavier than the females. An average male stands at 52-63cms. Colours vary from sandy yellow to red ginger, and there are a small percentage of dogs who are black, black-tan or white. Usually Dingoes will also have white markings on their feet, tail tip and chest. Their overall body shape is very lean. They have pricked ears for good hearing and a bushy tail.

Dingoes have unique wrists in the canine world, capable of rotatation. This enables dingoes to use their paws like hands and turn door knobs. Their ability to go where other dogs can’t means dingoes can cause more problems for humans than other wild members of the dog family can.

A dingo can turn its head through almost 180 degrees in each direction.

Domestication of dingoes has been difficult. Dingoes are intelligent animals. They are more independent and harder to train than other dogs.

Dingoes have larger canine teeth than domestic dogs.

The days of the pure dingo may be numbered.  Dingoes are increasingly mating with feral domestic dogs.  Some of the genetically purest dingoes live on Fraser Island in Queensland

[forthedingoes]

Dingo declared a separate species

The dingo has been given its own species status, recognising that it is not descended from dogs or wolves.

THIS IS BRILLIANT. Please, please read this, and understand what this means for the entire species, for the entire ecosystem, and for the thousands of animals being slaughtered. This could be the thing that changes everything. I literally danced when this news started spreading. 

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Dingo in water - wet, wet girl.

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Dingo dog mix interacting with domesticated dogs

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Dingoes interacting with each other

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Dingo traits

Being about half wild, she has lots of instinctive behaviour which is very hardly to integrate in daily life. As dingoes can be very different from feral domesticated dogs or strays, her actions sometimes apprear diametrically. Dingoes are not comparable to wolves nor to dogs when it comes to their unique behaviour. They often appear to be both wild animal and cute dog whilist they just are an own species.

Her typical dingo traits are very good body control, high prey drive, very fast movement, ability to climb trees and fences, obstinacy, independence, aggressiveness, strong will, expressive mimic and amazing intelligence.

If she wants, she can jump about 3 meters high, run faster than every sighthound, open windows, doors, drawers. She tried to climb a tree two times, once catching a squirrel, the other time hunting a cat. Because of her prey drive, she would definitely kill every animal she could catch unlike lots of other dogs that would just try to play. 

Although she is very intelligent and knows a lot of very complicated commands (just as “take me home”), she is basically untrainable because she wouldn’t do anything that doesn’t make sense to her or that she doesn’t want. If we go out, she mostly decides which way we are taking and if not, it is only because she has learned that my decisions are also good. It was a hard way showing her that I can make good choices and it still requires lots of training.

Outside and inside, she acts instinctive. If someone strange tries to get in, she would try to hurt him or chase him away. She is very territorial to human and dogs. If she gets frightend, she flees or attacks the trigger what makes it very hard to control her outside. You can’t go out for a walk like with a normal dog, it is all a huge compromise and demanding a lot of attention.

[besidethewildside-blog]

Dog traits

Although she shows many behaviors of a wild animal, there are also several typical traits of dog-like behavior. Although she acts “unusual” in many situations, it is not without a reason that many people can hardly tell whether she is more likely dog or wild animal because her behavior often resembles a domesticated dog.

Aside from her appearance, typical dog-like features are barking in emergencies, alertness, tail wagging as means of expression, protective instinct, body contact with people and play instinct . If I come back home, she waits at the door, wagging her tail and being totally in exuberant spirits. We would cuddle about half an hour before she would let me do anything else. She also barks if something strange happens like every normal dog does - even if I get in trouble, she intervenes. Normally, a wild animal would rather flee than fight.

Sometimes she plays with dogs and really enjoys it - but since she is so young, I am not sure whether this is an persistant feature.

[besidethewildside-blog]

The interbreeding of dingoes with other domestic dogs is an ongoing process affecting the population of free ranging domestic dogs in Australia. The current population of free ranging domestic dogs in Australia is now probably higher than in the past. However, the proportion of the so-called "pure" dingoes (dogs with exclusively dingo-ancestry) has been in the decrease over the last few decades and is regarded as further decreasing.

Because of this ongoing interbreeding of dingoes and other domestic dogs and the resulting hybrids, there is a much wider range of colours and body shapes today among the Australian wild dog population than in the time before the human introduction of domestic dogs. The full extent of the impacts of this process is currently unknown and the possibility of potential problems, as well as the wish to preserve the "pure" dingo, often leads to a strong rejection of the interbreeding. Dingo-like domestic dogs and dingo-hybrids can be generally distinguished from “pure” dingoes because of coat colour, since they have a wider range of colours and patterns than dingoes. However, even among “pure” dingoes, there is a wide variation of colours. According to the Australian Museum, a dingo's coat colour is largely determined by the area it inhabits. Generally, the coat colour is ginger with white feet. In the desert, dingoes are more golden yellow while in forested and bush areas they are a darker tan to black. Also reports by early settlers in the Blue Mountains region of NSW described dingoes which had wide variations in coat colours. Additionally the dog-typical form of barking appears among dingo-hybrids. 

[besidethewildside-blog]

Dingoes are not 'wild dogs'

Once thought to be feral dogs, a new study suggests that dingoes are actually a separate species from their domesticated relatives.

Based on a new study, dingoes are thought to have descended from domesticated dogs in East Asia. They were introduced to Australia several thousand years ago and bred in isolation for thousands of years.To draw their conclusion that dingoes are not 'wild dogs', a research team examined 69 dingo skulls from museum specimens dating back to at least 1900, along with a handful of skin specimens. Back then, it was unlikely the animals would have bred with domesticated dogs. The researchers established a benchmark for dingo features that differ from those of the typical dog: a wider head, longer snout, and shorter skull height.

[besidethewildside-blog]

The first months with her seemed great. She was lovely, kind, faithful and always by my side. She got easily involved in training with amazings results because she is very, very intelligent. I loved that she was so silent, that she did rarely bark (but she did bc of dog genes) and that she was so bound with me. But she was also an escape artist and had huge problems staying alone. Being left alone she would try to open doors, to shift chairs to another place for a better escape chance, try to destroy windows, masticate doors and howl.

There also was a big problem with strangers since she didn’t even think of letting them in. They were held up and expelled by hook or crook. It was a hard time training that she would let contacts or workers in.

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This was her as a young dog, the first weeks after we got her. You can tell her past by her shredded, scruffy coat and the insecurity in her look.

She was about 12 months old and didn’t know living with people around her, going out on a leash, being regulary feeded or sleeping indoors. She was afraid of mostly everything but also pretty aggressive. We had a strong bond within minutes, but with other people she was reserved and offish, she still is. She had a string tendency to flee and didn’t come out when my parents or grandparents visited. She would stay in her room all day, hidden and silently snarl if someone comes near.

[besidethewildside-blog]

This blog is dedicated to my dingo dog cross. It should give further information on wild living and capitivated dingoes and portray an idea of living with a wild animal.

My dingo-mix, a mix between an unknown dog breed and a dingo, was found in the wilderness and then brought to a shelter when she was a subadult. I got her as a normal feral dog, but it rapidly showed that she was anything but not a dog. She showed many traits of a wild animal, more than any dog traids. Because of her very dingo-like look, I etablished contact to a few dingo rescues and researchers who finally got her tested as a dingo-mix.

So now she live with me an everyday dog’s live - in her very own way. I’m gonna show you pictures of her, tell you stories and make an comparison of her, dingoes and domestic dogs.