"There is no doubt wool dogs underpinned a robust weaving industry"

March 29, 2021 11:07 AM

The Dogs That Grew Wool and the People Who Love Them: Indigenous communities in the Pacific Northwest bred little, fluffy white dogs that provided for them, both materially and spiritually (Hakai Magazine) - The first Europeans to visit the region seemed intrigued by the numerous little white dogs. In May 1792, Captain George Vancouver noticed the dogs and weavings—he’d not encountered such an industry elsewhere in North America. He wrote about the animals, struck by these dogs that resembled large Pomeranians. “They were all shorn as close to the skin as sheep are in England; and so compact were their fleeces, that large portions could be lifted up by a corner without causing any separation.” Indeed, he noted the dogs’ “very fine long hair [was] capable of being spun into yarn.” And the captain quickly put two and two together. “This gave me reason to believe their woolen clothing might in part be composed of this [dog] material mixed with a finer kind of wool from some other animal …”

Dog wool previously: Un chiengora andalou

posted by not_the_water (17 comments total)

They were good floofs George
posted by scruss at 11:24 AM on March 29, 2021 [9 favorites]

Love this, thanks for sharing.
posted by redsparkler at 11:25 AM on March 29, 2021

Knowing what I do about the general Pacific NW climate, my first and abiding thought is "wet dog smell everywhere, 24/7"....
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:58 AM on March 29, 2021 [7 favorites]

I am a hobbyist spinner who lives in the PNW and have long thought that, if I had a time machine, one of the first things I'd want to do is travel back in time and negotiate the purchase of a breeding population of wool dogs.
posted by darchildre at 12:04 PM on March 29, 2021 [8 favorites]

A great read, and I appreciated the various doggo pictures. My favorite blanket was made by people from the same regions, they really take this stuff seriously. Very cool to learn about the combination of different fibers to get just the right blend - spinning is so intimidating but I once sat in on a spinning group griping about ratios and imagine it must have been much the same for the women combining dog and goat fibers.
posted by Mizu at 12:06 PM on March 29, 2021 [4 favorites]

I enjoyed this article but it does contain an error that I think is worth noting. It's not true that dogs and turkeys were the only domesticated animals in North America before the arrival of Europeans. Native peoples in North America in the general area of what is now Mexico also domesticated bees for honey (a native stingless species, distinct from European honeybees) and cochineal insects for red dye. And in South America, llamas, alpacas, ducks, and guinea pigs were domesticated and selectively bred for economically useful traits prior to the arrival of Europeans, and, given known levels of trade between the continents, it would certainly be odd if NONE of those domesticated animals from South America ever made their way to any part of North America before Europeans arrived.

The myth that Native peoples did not understand or intentionally employ agricultural technologies like plant and animal domestication is an invention of colonizers that has been promoted for centuries for obvious nefarious purposes, and unfortunately this work of white supremacist fiction continues to make its way into textbooks and articles today and is too often unchallenged. Ancient Native American agricultural technology helps feed the 21st century world thanks to Native American inventors' very intentional selective breeding of plants like corn, potatoes, tomatoes, cacao, etc. As this article points out, Native American cultures were both interested in and skilled at selectively breeding animals, too.
posted by BlueJae at 12:26 PM on March 29, 2021 [54 favorites]

This is lovely.

I've actually spun dog fur -- from a modern breed; not actually sure which one since I got it in a bit of a roundabout way, but it was...interesting. Fur that was rather soft and fluffy unspun turned out to be not very nice once I spun it up (and that's aside from the ~3" staple, when I vastly prefer working with longer fibers). I would love to be able to actually experiement with wool dogs and copy this process mixing it with the wool of mountain goats and adding plant fibers and goose down, and see what came of it!
posted by kalimac at 12:26 PM on March 29, 2021 [3 favorites]

This was neat, thanks for posting. Breeding the dogs to extend the use of the hard-to-obtain goat fiber is really clever, especially when the dog fiber itself wasn’t suitable for spinning or felting on its own. Oh, I would so like to see how these folks prepped the fibers and spun them!
posted by janell at 1:14 PM on March 29, 2021 [5 favorites]

Mr. Burns knows where it's at..

See this sweater?
There's no better
Than authentic Irish Setter..

More seriously, though, someday in the future (*) if you're touring the Olympic Peninsula, the Makah Cultural and Research Center is well worth a visit if you're passing through Neah Bay (which, because of its location, unless you were local you probably only would be visiting if you were making an effort to get to the spectacular beach hikes in the coastal part of Olympic National Park.) You can learn about these dogs and the Makah's history with them while you're there.

(*) - Don't go now, though -- you wouldn't be allowed in any case, as the Olympic National Park trail info for Shi Shi and other beach trails reports that the Makah reservation is currently closed to visitors, but especially because geographically isolated indigenous communities are at significant risk from the pandemic.
posted by Nerd of the North at 1:15 PM on March 29, 2021 [10 favorites]

Does breeding the dogs for usefully spinnable fur breed out any potential herding instinct, though, or do you end up with essentially self-herding sheep-equivalents?
posted by eviemath at 3:15 PM on March 29, 2021 [8 favorites]

What a great article. Every time I read about the wool dogs, I wish someone would find a remnant population of them in some out of the way place. The photograph and the painting in the article are great.

And poor Mutton, turned into a specimen!
posted by Dip Flash at 5:52 PM on March 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

i was about to go to sleep when this was posted, and pressed favourite right away. Can't wait to read it at lunch, especially as this was the magazine that also exposed me to the way the Vikings spun yarn for their sails. Incredible stuff for my little textile nerd heart.
posted by cendawanita at 9:02 PM on March 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

I thought I had read somewhere that dog fuzz is a lot more insulating than sheep fuzz and therefore would make for an unbearably hot, say, sweater. Maybe an old Straight Dope question.
posted by maxwelton at 11:16 PM on March 29, 2021

Here are a couple of favorite blankets that include wool dog hair (though photos don't do them justice of course): example 1; example 2; example 3 (fragmentary but beautiful design and natural dyes).

I have actually been up pretty close to the pelt of Mutton! There are wool dog bones known, but Mutton is the only pelt to survive, which has enabled a lot of this recent research and identification. Mutton was in the Smithsonian, but there had been a slight mixup in identification and so it was thought Mutton was a village dog, till people starting researching and figured out he was a Wool dog. Having seen his hair, it makes sense they mixed it with other hair for weaving blankets.
posted by gudrun at 6:12 AM on March 30, 2021 [5 favorites]

Guemes Island here was known as Dog Island by the first white settlers. It's where the local Samish raised those dogs for their wool.
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 9:39 AM on March 30, 2021 [1 favorite]

As a spinner, I can attest that we will try to spin anything.
posted by fiercecupcake at 2:56 PM on March 30, 2021 [3 favorites]

I enjoyed this article but it does contain an error that I think is worth noting. It's not true that dogs and turkeys were the only domesticated animals in North America before the arrival of Europeans.

Coming back to this way late, but this stood out to me in the article as well. I wanted to mention that I just ran across this study, Animal Management at the Ancient Metropolis of Teotihuacan, Mexico: Stable Isotope Analysis of Leporid (Cottontail and Jackrabbit) Bone Mineral that supports "the notion that residents provisioned, managed, or bred leporids during the height of the city." There are probably many more examples of domestication by Native North American peoples that haven't really been studied or even looked for simply because of our colonial notions of what their civilizations were like.
posted by Mister Cheese at 11:06 PM on April 4, 2021 [3 favorites]