Utonagan Facts

Utonagan Profile

Wolf-looking dogs are all the rage, but nobody actually wants to deal with the ferocity, lack of subservience and general ability to tear you apart that a real wolf brings with it. So certain breeds become the butt implants of the dog world: Supplied by unscrupulous people to wealthy folks who want all the looks without any of the legwork to maintain them. 

Enter, the Utonagan. Yet another futile and humiliating attempt to feel better about ourselves at the expense of lots of dead puppies.

Utonagan Facts Overview

Dogs come from wolves; in fact, in a taxonomic sense, they are wolves. When you breed all the danger out of a wolf, you get a dog. That’s what a dog is. And trying to breed wolf back into the dog just ends up with a lot of cruelty and genetic mistakes, and a whole mass grave full of undesirable puppies. But that hasn’t stopped people from trying.

The Utonagan is one of the latest failed experiments by people who still think they can contain wild animals, and a great example of the kinds of people involved in dog breeding, like Nadia Carlyle, who really shouldn’t be.

Interesting Utonagan Facts

1. They’re husky mixes

Utonagan dogs come from a mix of Arctic, wolfy-looking breeds, including malamutes, huskies, Eskimo dogs, GSDs and so on.

Their line isn’t clear-cut, and they appear to be a branch of the Tamaskan Dog line, and one which, as we’ll discuss, is a mess of disagreements and failures.

They are related to, or the same as, the Northern Inuit Dogs and British Timber Dogs, and at least some of them were bred in the UK in the ‘80s with this name. There is a lot of inaccurate and plain made-up information out there about the Utonagan, but they could perhaps be summed up as a failed offshoot of the Northern Inuit that was a bit smaller and less successful.

They’re bred to be large, docile, and to look like their wild ancestors.¹

2. They would have been Great in Game of Thrones

The Northern Inuit Dog was used to represent the dire wolves in Game of Thrones. Despite the name, the dire wolf, now extinct, was just about the size of one of our larger grey wolves, though entirely unrelated. But of course, on TV, these were twice the size of a wolf, looked a lot like malamutes, and were also suspiciously subservient to the film crew.

These large and wolf-like looking animals did pretty well in the TV show, but their pleasant and domesticated faces did make the suspension of disbelief a little harder.

And this has actually been the root of the confusion and cruelty around the related Utonagan, as even the breeders couldn’t agree on what they wanted from it. ²

4. Their own breeders couldn’t agree on what they should look like

People wanting a powerful predator as a “pet” is nothing new. In the ’80s, that’s exactly what inspired the production of the Utonagan in the first place, when a bunch of people set up a breeding operation with the goal of selecting a dog that looks exactly like a wolf but comes with none of the responsibilities of a real wolf.

They set up the Northern Inuit Dog Society of Great Britain, which, after arguments about what they actually wanted, was split up, and a branch started working on what they would call the “Spirit of the Wolf”, or Utonagan; and the Northern Inuit Dog Society of Great Britain reduced their name to just Northern Inuit Society.

But among the Utonagan offshoot, they still couldn’t make up their minds, and so the British Inuit Club emerged as an offshoot of that. Meanwhile, the founder of the Utonagan society, Nadia Carlyle, got busted for keeping her dogs in terrible conditions, was banned from breeding, and then changed her name and moved to Scotland to get around the ban and did it all again. ³

It seems there were even more splits from there, and the whole thing was as much of a shambles as it was arbitrary. And all because people want to own a wolf.

5. They were bred to look like wolves

Wolf-looking dogs are all the rage, but nobody actually wants to deal with the ferocity, lack of subservience and general ability to tear you apart that a real wolf brings with it, so like the butt implants of the dog world, breeders are striving to create one that looks the part but takes none of the actual legwork to maintain.

One of the original breeders, Edwina Harrison, even claimed the breed to be a wolf-hybrid at first, which was just a lie, as there was no wolf in it other than what came with the dogs to begin with (incidentally, the grey wolf and domestic dog are the same species, while the dire wolf was not even the same genus).

The main issues at hand are that wolves are wild animals, and so they need an incredible amount of space to thrive and live well, as well as lots of deer to attack and a whole bunch of other wolves to hang around with. Another big issue is that wolves have not been bred to look to humans for advice, which is a huge part of the ego boost that dogs give us when we keep them. So, while the thought of having a wolf for a pet is a fun one, the reality of it requires a lot more work.

And breeding dogs to look like wolves is, therefore, cheating. But more than that, it can be immeasurably cruel.

6. Was it even a real breed?

Breeding dogs is hard. And it gets exponentially harder if you want to do it ethically, which is a large part of why healthy purebred dogs are not only rare but very expensive.

It’s commonly suggested that you need at least 500 individuals to have a sustainable, healthy genetic population of dogs, but regardless of the specific number, this points to an undeniable fact that without enough genetic diversity, you end up struggling with the deleterious effects of inbreeding.

But with too much genetic diversity, you lose your arbitrary markers of “purity” too. This is why dog breeding is a fool’s game at best and the product of a grim and cruel god complex at worst.

With some exceptions, purebred dogs are inherently less healthy than those with a healthy mix of genes. And some, like the Utonagan, appear to have never had quite enough of that diversity to stand on its own four legs, and the breed appears to have been more or less abandoned as a concept.

7. There are so many neglected dogs to choose from

Pure-breed dogs are often stunning caricatures of the canine family, and come in all shapes, sizes and personalities, but the maintenance of these lines comes at the hidden cost of all the puppies that didn’t emerge from their mothers exactly as we humans decided they should. And these are, in fact, the majority.

For every handsome kennel club member, there could be a dozen or more urchins that get discarded. Sometimes shelters can take them, sometimes they’re sold cheaply, but often they’re just euthanised. And for every handsome kennel club member, there’s a mother whose entire life is dedicated only to birthing more, year after year.

It is hard and expensive to breed dogs ethically – perhaps even impossible – and even those done right end up in the homes of people whose only qualification in looking after a high-maintenance animal is the funds to purchase one.  

So, many end up going back to the shelter anyway. And that’s why we can save a lot of money and a lot of pain by accepting that we are not some kind of wolf-taming beast masters and simply rescuing one of those shelter dogs instead. ⁴

Utonagan Fact-File Summary

Scientific Classification

1. , “Utonagan vs Northern Inuit Dog – Breed Comparison”, My Dog Breeds.
2. Animal Watch, “THE NORTHERN INUIT – THE WOLF WITHOUT WOLF – Game of Thrones Direwolf”, Youtube.
3. (2025), “Kennels owner broke dog ban ”, Our Dogs.
4. , “The Hallmarks of Cruel Breeding”, ASPCA.