Chimpanzees share between 95-98% of their DNA with us humans, but that doesn't make me a chimpanzee.

Dogs may have evolved from wolves, but the key word there is evolved. Over that 10,000 years they have been domesticated and consequently changed their physiology and most relevantly, their behaviour, as a result. Do domestic dogs still retain many of the same instincts as wolves? yes. Do domestic dogs behave in a way that is so similar to wolves (bearing in mind that they have been separated from them for 10,000 years), that we should base all behavioural knowledge/training techniques on this fact? NO! how a WILD CANID behaves is of ZERO relevance to how a DOMESTIC dog should behave.

People seriously need to move on from this old-school way of thinking. We need to focus on how dogs behave, not wolves, when we train our pets. These silly wolf misconceptions really are not doing our dogs any favors.

Of course it doesn't make you a chimpanzee but we do share the same triats as them and as Gnasher said it is the same for dogs and wolfs. It is not a silly old-school misconception but fact.

Some traits. Sorry, but it is old school to apply behaviorual studies of WILD ANIMALS and apply them to domestic animals. Of course SOME traits will be shared, but animals that have been domesticated for thousands of years will not share all the behavioural traits of a wild animal. Evolution and selective breeding are marvelous things.

If a dog was left to its own devices with no human interaction it would revert back to it's natural instincts and have traits of a wolf in the way it behaved. It would hunt, fend for itself against food, boundries (of it's terratory) etc. I am not saying that they share all behavioural traits but some.

There was a dog recently stranded on an island after being washed overboard from a boat. It managed to swim to an island and live and survive for 3 months (forgive me if the time length is wrong) on killing and eating the island's goats. If that's not reverting back to it's natural instincts then........ This was a domesticated, family pet........

In no way is it old-school to understand and apply positive training methods based on their factual simularities.

My OH is the scientist in our household, not me, but I will ask him. Or you could try googling "mitochondrial RNA dogs" or something like that, and it should come up.

I can't ask him at the moment as he is knee deep in putting together a huge Bundle for Counsel in a legal case, but I will when I can.

Well, all I can say is your eyes were closed ! You've got to be kidding C & D !! Admittedly, my chosen breed is wolfey guys, so obviously my dogs are going to display far more wolfey characteristics than 100% wolves, but even so, there is so much that is so similar if you really, really LOOK and empty your mind completely of everything you have ever learned about wolves, both fact and fiction. You should be able to see the dog in the wolf, and the wolf in the dog.

So are yours judging by your close-minded replies.

Based on what? while dogs maintain many instincts, through selective breeding they have lost just as many. Many, many breeds wouldn't last 5 minutes if left to fend for themselves. Can you see an English Bulldog or a Chihuahua tackling a deer/other large prey? or most breeds at all for that matter (I have watched my Lab chase a deer that sprung out on us once, and it was pretty funny watching him lollop for 50 yards before giving up!).

Labradork : wild wolves and domestic dogs share virtually 100% DNA - to be precise, 99.8%. The fraction of a percentage difference is behavioural, which accounts of course for the slight behavioural differences between wolves and dogs. There are behavioural differences, of course there are, even between domesticated wolves and dogs. I lived for 10 years with a high % wolf cross, and believe me his behaviour was like nothing I had even seen in a dog before, and I have over 40 years experience of living with dogs. So that tiny percentage difference does indeed do just that ... make a difference.

However, "behavioural" is just the icing on the cake. The deep down physiological and psychological makeup of both wolf and dog is exactly the same ... except of course those traits that have been bred into dogs by man. Such as labradors being brilliant swimmers because of their webbed feet, and a desire to retrieve, GSDs to guard, GSPs to point etc. etc. All this is "icing on the cake". You could train a wolf to do all these things just the same. I trained my tame wolf to do many things - I have to say though, certainly not to retreive game !

I know of a puppy owned by a friend of mine who was a little wild girl. She was a mongrel, and she and her litter mates were raised in an outdoor kennel inside a run. The dam and sire lived with the pups, exactly as in a wild wolf pack. The pups were not handled, they lived as little wild wolf cubs, digging a den under the kennel so that whenever humans approached, they were able to escape underground. My friend's puppy was initially completely wild, but after a few days became hugely attached to her close family, and the other family pets, but was absolutely terrified of strangers and strange places. She loved going for walks with the other dogs, but would freak every time she saw a human in the distance. My friend in the end had to return the little girl from whence she came, to be reunited with her father and mother and as far as I know is happy and settled. She was totally unable to desensitise her to the fear of humans - exactly as if she had been a wolf. Wolves living in the wild and in semi-domestication, all possess a "trigger" which kicks in at around 3 weeks. If a wolf cub has not seen a human face, and been handled by a human, before this age or whenever their eyes first open, the natural instinctive fear of wolves for man kicks in, and you will, never ever ever be able to remove that fear. In other words, in wolves and domesticated dogs, the first thing they must see after their eyes have opened is a human, and a human doing nice things such as cuddling, caressing etc, otherwise they will for ever have a fear of humans. It would seem that domesticated dogs can still carry this "fear gene" as well, judging from my friend's little girl.

This is what will happen to a dog if it is deprived of human handling from birth - basically, they can Go Bush - and sadly, this little girl did.

To be honest Labradork, I don't think a Chi would even bother. Far too much hard work for them, to chase a deer A couple of my Chis will play "fetch" but the rest just look at me when I throw a ball for them, it's like "what you throwing that for then. You don't think I'm gonna chase it after you've deliberately thrown it?" I imagine some other breeds would be very different though