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King, the German Shepherd-Wolf Dog

While this was more than 50 years ago, I remember this story like it was yesterday

As a logical adult, I am not sure where we, as children, come up with some of the things we believed, but as sure as I sit here today, I believed that King was a German Shepherd-Wolf dog. That’s how we identified him. That’s how we described him. And more than 50 years later, that’s what I still believe today.

But let me first tell you who ‘we’ were. Me, Tony, Ernesto and Juan called ourselves a gang. We did mischievous things like grabbing cars door handles and sliding on the snow and ice in the winter until the driver stopped and chased us away. We would sometimes throw rocks at cars passing beneath us. We had the advantage because we were on an overpass. There was no way they could catch us, even though some did try. Once, while out shining shoes to make money, me and the guys happened upon a giant garbage can that sat near the back door of a bar. A beautiful, shiny Corvette was also parked in the alley near the back of the bar. In our infinite wisdom, after finding a roll of price-stickers in the garbage, we decided to cover the Corvette’s windshield with the stickers. Just as we had finished our work, the bar door opened and this huge white guy came out with a bag of trash. In disbelief, he berated us and gave us an dire warning. “You little mother fuckers,” he yelled, “If the owner comes out and sees his windshield covered, he will kill all of you! Get those fucking stickers off that car right now!” I was more afraid that night than the night when a store owner locked us inside his store and called the cops. He said we were trying to steal. Two plain-clothed detectives came in and tried to scare us. It wasn’t their property. Who cared. But the Corvette owner…that would have been a different story.

Anyway, we had no way to know whether or not King was actually bred with wolves. The only thing we knew was King was a fierce and ferocious fighter. And King was undefeated. He never lost a fight and we fought him a lot. This was in the late 1960s.

My mom, me and my sister left Chicago when I was six years old. That was in 1968. We first moved to Utica, New York, which was upstate. This is where King and I first met. We stayed there until we moved to Quogue, NY. We lived with cousins there until we moved to Speonk, NY. That’s where I attended Remsenburg Elementary School. From there, I attended Westhampton Beach Junior High School and Westhampton Beach High School until the 9th grade. In 1978, we moved to Jackson, MS, where I graduated from Provine High School in 1980. Then, I enlisted in the U.S. Navy and really started moving around.

So, as I pondered this story, I wanted to know if there was even such a breed. Turns out there is. According to multiple Internet searches, there are two main wolf species that are bred with the German Shepherd dog: the Eurasian Wolf and the Carpathian Wolf — bred with the Husky to give the Czechoslovakian wolfdog:

https://www.allthingsdogs.com/german-shepherd-wolf-mix/.

Now, was King a Czechoslovakian German Shepherd Wolf dog? Beats me. But I know that everyday after school, our mission was to find dogs to sic King on. We were good in hunting them down. But all the little ‘gangs’ were represented by a dog and we fought them daily — on a rotational basis. The more often your dog won, the more prestige your gang had. But our best fights weren’t with the other gangs’ dogs. The ones we liked most were the random rights.

One particularly bloody fight was in an alley with a lot of broken glass. King was victorious, but no dog is a match for broken glass. We shared ownership duties of the dog and whoever had the dog for the night had to feed and house him. I didn’t have King that night, but once we had a very terrifying fight with a local police dog. When we ran away, King ran with us, but he had the other dog by the neck, dragging it with us as well. It was about a block later that King let go.

Now, how in the hell King got to Utica, NY is beyond me. But I know that Utica exists because my sister went to Utica Free Academy (UFA). As a kid, we only remember certain things. Why I remember UFA? Your guess is as good as mine. I also remember Genesee Street and 104 Leah Street. That’s where, at the age of 9, I became a man. Or, I was raped. However you want to call it. But that’s where it happened. I don’t remember that the event even phased me. Good, bad or indifferent. It was like an old couch. In my memory, it was just there. https://readmedium.com/wolves-dont-lose-sleep-over-the-opinion-of-sheep-81d625252767?sk=174f394283cd88e906e358f94f58f336

There were two entrances to our house. One in the back of the house and a long porch to the front door. One night, King was settled on the porch when my mother came home from work. This was not a small dog. This was my night to feed and house King. Believe it or not, King was a gentle beast. But imaging returning to your house and seeing a giant wolf dog on your porch, there to greet you. There was a bit of commotion and I dashed out the house to calm mom and the dog because in all actuality, King was a killer. I grabbed the dog and let mom pass. I remember feeding King bare hotdogs that night.

This isn’t my first time writing about King. I don’t remember what grade I was in, but I had a writing assignment to write about something that interested me. I wrote about my adventures with King. There were three dogs that were formable opponents for King. One was a Doberman, but it turned out to not be as good of a match as we thought it would be. The most thrilling was when King went up against a Pitbull. The sheer aggression between these two animals was horrifying. We didn’t know that King would actually win. But that was the night that we became believers that our dog was half wolf. No other dog had ever beaten that Pitbull and this event was like an Ali-Frasier fight. Everyone knew we fought dogs and there was always a buzz centered around the event. The third highly anticipated fight was with the police dog. The cop had thrown a tire around King’s neck to break his dogs free, but that did nothing. When he got his weapon, we all feared for our lives and ran. King ran too, but as I mentioned, he brought the other dog along with him for about a block or so. I imagine that’s the only reason there were no gunshots that day. His dog was able to limp back home to his master and probably saved our lives. Most assuredly by returning home, it saved King’s life. My grade was the highest of the class.

If you notice my profile picture, you’ll see that I am in Atlanta Falcon’s gear. When the Mike Vick dog fighting case made the news, I knew exactly what it was like being in the dog fighting world. But we weren’t organized. We didn’t have a kennel or doggie treadmills. Our fights were raw, pure-dee street fights. That was the world we were brought up in. But we were children.

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About the author

Julius Evans has a Master of Arts degree in National Security and Strategic Studies from the U.S. Naval War College, Newport, RI; a Master of Arts degree in Strategic Communication and Leadership from Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ; a Bachelor of Science degree in Mass Communication and Journalism from City University, Bellevue, WA and an Associate of Arts degree in Liberal Studies from Central Texas College, Killeen, Texas.

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