Kunming Wolf-dog

The Kunming Wolf-dog, also called the Kunming Dog, is a working breed developed in the city of Kunming in southwest China from the 1950s. It is described as coming from German Shepherds crossed with local dogs, including wolf-dog hybrids. It is used widely by the police and the military in China and has been exported to other countries.

History

In the 1950s the police of Yunnan province chose 20 local wolfdogs from Kunming, a city on a high plateau, for breeding and training. These dogs became the origin of the three main strains of the breed. Over the following decades the Kunming Police Dog Base ran a planned breeding program, selecting generation after generation for a steady, reliable working dog.

In 1988 the breed passed a ministry-level review and was formally named the Kunming Dog. In 2007 it was added to the World Watch List for Domestic Animal Diversity of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. It is the only Chinese police dog breed with this kind of international recognition.

A 2021 study of behavior looked again at where the breed came from. It found the Kunming Dog’s behavior fit best with a cross between the village dogs of Kunming and German Shepherds.

In December 2018 a female named Kunxun was born in Beijing, cloned from Huahuangma, a seven-year-old police dog that had helped in dozens of murder investigations. Kunxun entered service as a police dog in August 2019. Training a top Kunming police dog can take four to five years and cost about 500,000 yuan, and many candidates fail along the way.

Appearance

Males usually stand 60 to 75 cm (24 to 30 in) tall and females 60 to 65 cm (24 to 26 in). Males weigh 28 to 42 kg (62 to 93 lb) and females 26 to 36 kg (57 to 79 lb). The coat is double.

Two color groups are recognised. Wolf Black dogs have black and yellow spread over the whole body. Back Black dogs have a black back with yellow on the belly and legs.

Temperament

The Kunming Dog is known by its work. In China it serves with the public security authorities, customs, the fire services and the army, where it tracks, guards, takes part in rescues, and finds narcotics, explosives and human remains by scent. China’s security authorities have encouraged police forces across the country to use it in preference to foreign breeds such as the German Shepherd, Rottweiler, Malinois and Springer Spaniel.

Facts on this page were checked against Wikipedia and may have changed since.