Nice Wolf

All dog breeds are descendants of wolves. A wolf is just a dog; a wild one. A few wolves were domesticated 10,000 years ago and through careful, and sometimes not so careful breeding, we got the family dog.

As a little kid I'd seen cartoons, movies and even fairly tales where the wolf was a vicious, cunning, slavering killer, with fiery, bloodshot eyes, the kind you see in Disney films-- 'the big, bad wolf', and don't forget Little Red Riding Hood. Are they really that bad, I wondered?

I looked for some statistics that would tell me how dangerous these big, bad wolves are or aren't and was surprised to learn that since 1900 there has only been ONE human killed by wolves in North America and that was in Canada. After all with a reputation like wolves have you'd expect wholesale slaughter of humans, not just one in 109 years.

Unfortunately, man's best friend, the domestic dog, has a much poorer record. Between 1979 and 1998 there were 332 humans killed by the family dog in the United States.

I've decided Walt Disney owes the wolves an apology.