Salish Woolly Dog

Salish Woolly Dog

He is not recognized by the F.C.I.

Origin

Translation

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This breed is also known as

Woolly Dog

The Salish Woolly Dog played an important role in the lives of the Salish people of the south coast of Vancouver Island, the Strait of Georgia, and Washington State, as its wool was used to weave clothing and blankets. With the increasing arrival of European settlers and the introduction of machine-spun sheep's wool, the Salish Woolly Dog population declined in the 19th century until its extinction around 1900.

The Salish Woolly Dog was a small, usually white, long-haired dog with erect ears, a curled tail, a fox-like muzzle, and a thick coat.
When Captain George Vancouver observed the Salish Woolly Dog in the Puget Sound area in 1792, he thought it resembled a larger Pomeranian. According to Spanish naval officers Cayetano Valdés y Flores and Dionisio Alacalá Galiano, during their visit to the Pacific Northwest in 1792, these dogs did not bark, but emitted a pitiful howl.
Today, many researchers compare the Salish Woolly Dog to contemporary breeds such as the Japanese Spitz and the American Eskimo Dog.

A little over 14,000 years ago, domestic dogs descended from two distinct wolf populations: one in Asia and the other in Europe. Between 14,000 and 6,400 BCE, humans began bringing Asian domestic dogs westward and crossbreeding them with European domestic dogs.
The Salish Woolly Dog is more closely related to the earliest Asian domestic dog breeds than to European breeds. In the 19th century, naturalist John Keast Lord believed these dogs originated from a Japanese shipwreck that washed up on the Pacific coast, but he had no evidence to support this. Researchers know that the Salish Woolly Dog was a breed that predates European contact; the oldest remains of this dog have been discovered in Puget Sound and the Strait of Georgia, dating back 4,000 years.

Salish Woolly Dogs lived throughout the Coast Salish territories, including the southern tip of Vancouver Island, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Puget Sound, the Olympic Peninsula, the Strait of Georgia, and the lower Fraser River. They often lived in packs of 20 to 30 individuals. Their diet consisted of fish and elk tallow (rendered fat) to strengthen their coats and produce wool. To preserve the breed, the Coast Salish people kept the Salish Woolly Dogs separate from other domestic dogs. As a result, these dogs were often confined to small islands around Vancouver Island and the San Juan Islands. On these isolated islands, they were generally left alone during the spring and summer, with their owners returning in the fall to shear them. Among the Twana people of Puget Sound, Salish Woolly Dogs shared wooden houses with their owners, while hunting dogs lived outdoors. Like other domestic dogs, the Salish Woolly Dog likely bred approximately every six months.

It is believed that these dogs were raised for their wool, which the Coast Salish peoples mixed with mountain goat hair to make clothing and blankets. When the dogs' coats were long enough, weavers washed them with white clay to remove dirt. They then used a sharp stone or mussel-shell knives to shear the dogs like sheep, cutting the hair close to the skin. The sheared hair was then preserved with dried clay to extract the oil and eliminate parasites. The dogs could molt up to three times a year.
Although Indigenous oral tradition and settler writings attest to the use of dog hair for blankets, very few examples of dog-hair blankets have been found. Some believe that, because dog hair was so widespread, it was probably used for less important blankets. As a result, these blankets may have been used more frequently and therefore deteriorated more quickly. It is also thought that dog hair was primarily used in woven textiles before 1862, when sheep's wool became widespread in the Coast Salish territories. Although some examples of blankets made from dog hair mixed with other fibers (such as mountain goat hair) exist, researchers are only aware of one blanket made primarily of dog hair. This blanket is preserved at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in Seattle, Washington.

Salish Woolly Dogs most likely belonged to influential families in Coast Salish communities. Among the Indigenous nations of the Olympic Peninsula, these dogs were female-owned and passed down through the maternal line.
These dogs were highly prized in Coast Salish societies, as blankets made from their fur were a vital source of wealth at potlatches. Salish Woolly Dogs were often buried wrapped in a blanket in their honor.

The Salish Woolly Dog population declined throughout the 19th century. The increased presence of Europeans led to crossbreeding between settlers' dogs and Salish Woolly Dogs, decimating the latter's population. In addition, Indigenous populations also declined due to population displacement and diseases brought by colonization. Finally, in the 1820s, fur trading posts introduced inexpensive, machine-made blankets from England. These European blankets made raising these dogs for their fur unnecessary, especially since feeding a flock of dogs required salmon that could have been used to feed humans. By 1900, the long, woolly coat characteristic of the Salish Woolly Dog had disappeared, although a few rare sightings of woolly dogs were reported on reserves until 1940.
Very little material evidence of the Salish Woolly Dog remains today. The artist Paul Kane painted "A Woman Weaving a Blanket" between 1849 and 1856, depicting a Songhees or Saanich weaver and a clearly visible white woolly dog. This painting, along with other sketches of the dog by Kane, is held at the Royal Ontario Museum. In 1859, the naturalist C.B.R. Kennerly collected the skin of Mutton, the "famous Indian dog" of the American ethnologist George Gibbs, for the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. This skin is considered the only surviving specimen of a Salish woolly dog.