The Dog Family 



Colonel Theodore Roosevelt gives an interesting account of wolf-coursing in Russia, in an 

 article contributed to " The Encyclopaedia of Sport " (Lawrence & Bullen). " In Russia the sport 

 is a science," he writes. "The princes and great landowners who take part in it have their 

 hunting-equipages equipped perfectly to the smallest detail. Not only do they follow wolves 

 in the open, but they capture them and let them out before dogs, like hares in a closed 

 coursing-meeting. The huntsman follows his hounds on horseback. (These hounds are the 

 Borzoi, white giant greyhounds, now often seen in England.) Those in Russia show signs oi 

 reversion to the type of the Irish wolf-hound, dogs weighing something like 100 Ibs., of 

 remarkable power, and of reckless and savage temper. Now three or four dogs are run together. 

 They are not expected to kill the wolf, but merely to hold him. . . . The Borzois can readily 



Photo by Ottomar Anschutz] [Sa-l<.i. 



"THE WOLF WITH PRIVY PAW." 



The photograph shows admirably the slinking gait and long stride of the wolf. 



overtake and master partly grown wolves, but a full-grown dog-wolf, in good trim, will usually 

 gallop away from them." 



A number of these Borzoi dogs have been imported into America, and are used to course 

 wolves in the Western States. But there professional wolf-hunters are employed to kill off the 

 creatures near the ranches. One such hunter lives near Colonel Roosevelt's ranche on the 

 Little Missouri. His pack of large dogs will tear in pieces the biggest wolf without aid from 

 the hunter. Of his own efforts in wolf-coursing he writes : " We generally started for the 

 hunting-ground very early, riding across the open country in a widely spread line of dogs 

 and men. If we put up a wolf, we simply went at him as hard as we knew how. Young 

 wolves, or those which had not attained their full strength, were readily overtaken, and the 

 pack would handle a she-wolf quite readily. A big dog-wolf, or even a full-grown and powerful 

 she-wolf, offered an altogether different problem. Frequently we came upon one after it had 



