[slavik81]

A few years back, I was waiting for the bus at the Calgary airport and saw a guy with what I thought was a big husky. He was waiting for the same bus, and it was going to be a while so we started talking. I lead with, "Nice dog" and he responded, "That's not a dog. That's a wolf."

I was a bit incredulous. He explained that he bred dogs for security. After losing a few of his dogs to coyotes, he wanted tougher animals. He managed to acquire a couple wolf pups, raised them and bred them with with mastiffs to make them bigger and more controllable.

The wolves were impossible to keep entirely under control, and even the wolf dogs were hard. They're big, strong and wild. Under normal circumstances, they weren't too bad but when excited, they could not be stopped. Like, if you took a group of them on a walk down to the river, it would not be possible to keep them from running to the water once it was in sight. The "big husky" he was bringing on the bus was apparently one of those, though he assured me that she was manageable alone.

It was a rather incredible story. Coming from anybody else I wouldn't have believed it, but the man was covered in scars and was missing a bite out of his nose. The bus was the north crosstown, which would have taken him around the edge of the city.