A Woman Said Her Nine Wolfdogs Gave Her “Unqualified Love” — Then They Mauled Her To Death
TwitterSandra Piovesan and her wolf dogs.
In May 2012, a woman in Salem Township, Pennsylvania, named Sandra Piovesan was found dead after bleeding to death inside an electrified pen that she used to contain eight of her nine hybrid wolfdogs.
Her autopsy confirmed the unthinkable to be true: Piovesan had not died of natural causes; her pets attacked and mauled her until she bled out, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette reported.
This breed of hybrid wolves, or hybrid dogs, or hybrid wolfdogs, depending on who is talking, got its start by breeding wolves with dogs like Alaskan malamutes, German shepherds, and Siberian huskies. Typically, they are not prone to sudden violent attacks — but they do require strict, specific training.
At the time, John Davis, vice president of the United States American Wolfdog Association, said that the organization tried to keep an ongoing registry of bred wolfdogs as well as working to improve the breed overall, but expressed that he had never heard Piovesan’s name before her death.
In fact, Davis himself had owned wolfdogs since the late ’80s, and told the Post Gazette that attacks were rare, “even less so than for many breeds.”
“We don’t need the headlines,” he said.
Adobe StockHybrid wolf dogs don’t fear humans like wild wolves do — which makes attacks from them more likely.
However, a Humane Agent from Westmoreland County, Elaine Gower, told TribLIVE that hybrid wolves pose a greater threat to humans than wild wolves. Wild wolves fear humans, but hybrid wolves don’t, which means they are more likely to attack.
And two years prior to the attack on Piovesan, one of her hybrid wolfdogs attacked a friend of hers — but that friend never filed an official complaint.
“We were all scared that someday, somehow, those wolves would escape that pen and hurt some child or someone,” Gower said.
The eight dogs who lived in the pen were euthanized after, as it was unclear which of them had attacked Piovesan. The ninth, Spirit, lived inside the house along with two Rottweilers and was taken to a nearby animal shelter.
Ultimately, no one was ever able to determine what may have caused the hybrid wolves to attack.
Perhaps Piovesan tried to break up a fight or one of the wolfdogs tried to establish dominance in the back, but without anyone else there to witness the attack, the truth will likely remain a mystery.
