Q & A

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Q. I came across a website for the Saarloos wolfdog. Are they in your area? Have you seen one; If so , how do they compare to the ATS?
Vince

A. Hi vince,

Yes the saarloos is in our area, they are in whole holland(but it is very small). I have seen more than one saarloos, here in Holland the saarloos is a fully recognised breed and there are no restrictions on keeping a saarloos.

I do like the looks of the saarloos wolfdog, but i don't like their temperament. The breed is a very shy breed, most of the dogs have the tail under their belly the whole time. This is I think due to the breed standard, in the standard there is a line that the dog should be reserved(don't know if that's the good word) to strangers. so if your saarloos isn't like that it would fit to the breed standard, although I have seen a couple of nice open saarloos dogs on a dogshow, but that breeder was really doing her best on the temperament of the dogs she bred and she was socialicing a lot.

The ATSD's I have met didn't have their tail under the belly. The one that where open to stranger layed on our laps very soon and if you might have seen on the picture on the intenet page we where also loaded with kisses. Most of the ATSD's that weren't socialiced properly and where second handies, behaved very well when we were around, we couldn't pet them but they didn't growl at us. Maybe that's cause we knew how to handle them and didn't step forward to the dogs?

I like the ATSD's better than the saarloos, I think the saarloos has more wolf genetics in it, cause the breedings was just the other way round, they used a female wolfdog , and the female F1 where bred with a german shepherd male. Al the first ATSD's had a german shepherd as a mother so the maternale influence of the dog where given to the pups.

Judith (from the Netherlands)