Nice Doggie : Neighborhood’s ‘Big White Dog’ Turns Out to Be a Big Bad Wolf

Homeowners around Encino Reservoir probably won’t be comforted to learn that the “big white dog” they complained about to the Department of Animal Regulation, saying it was running wild in the neighborhood and ate a pet rabbit, wasn’t there at all.

That’s right, no dog.

Just a wolf.

When Animal Regulation Officer Dennis Krouplin checked the bring-em-back-alive trap that officers had set for the “dog” in a brushy area of the Santa Monica Mountains, he found a white wolf, Animal Regulation Lt. Fred Michael said.

“He was a little bit surprised,” Michael added. “That’s the first wolf we’ve ever found in the Valley that I know of.”

The wolf, a full-grown female, weighs “about 90 to 100 pounds,” said Thomas R. Walsh, the department’s district supervisor.

Because the nearest wild wolves live far away in Alaska or Minnesota, the department presumes that the wolf was somebody’s pet and escaped or was turned loose, Walsh said. And the officers hope to find out who the owner was, he said, partly because they want to discuss the wolf’s future and partly because it is illegal to keep wolves in the city of Los Angeles.

“You need a special permit to keep a wild animal like that, and in the city of Los Angeles, we won’t issue a permit for a wolf,” Michael said.

There are no such permits outstanding, he said, and possession of the wolf in the city limits without one “is a misdemeanor, carrying a fine up to $500 and up to six months in jail.”

If no one claims her, the wolf will be offered to the Los Angeles Zoo, which will probably reject her because “the zoo worries about disease from animals that come from the outside,” Walsh said. The department will try to find a legal home for her, he said, but would have to destroy her if none can be found.

“We can’t turn her loose,” he said.

The wolf was taken to the West Valley Animal Shelter. She is “very shy and withdrawn,” Walsh said, “but she isn’t hysterical, the way a truly wild animal would be if it were caged. So I’m presuming she is accustomed to people and has been under control in the past.”

She has, however, been loose in the neighborhood around the southern end of Calneva Drive on the east side of the reservoir for almost two months, Walsh said. “The residents up there have been reporting her, and our officers have seen her a few times, but they could never get close to her.”

She apparently lived by hunting wild rabbits, ground squirrels, opossums and quail in the uninhabited brush around the reservoir, Walsh said. But after a family reported that the “dog” ate their pet rabbit, officers put out a large cage, baited with food, with a door that snaps closed on the animal, trapping it without hurting it.

Actually, Walsh said, some officers who sighted the animal thought that it looked like a wolf, but the possibility was dismissed.

“Everybody just said, “Naaah, it’s probably some kind of mixed breed German shepherd.” The animal is not a crossbreed, not even a mixture of dog and wolf, he said. “This is obviously a purebred wolf.”

He added that it is a good thing that dogs, coyotes and wolves usually prefer to stick to their own kind for romance.

“If she interbred with all the coyotes we have out there, we might have a hell of a new kind of coyote around here.”