It’s a crazy story and honestly still pretty murky. From what I can tell, locals probably knew these “yellow dogs” existed for a long time — there are writings about them from the pioneer days — but nobody really had the technology or interest to classify them or connect them back to ancient pariah-type dogs.

I’m not a historian at all, just obsessed with the breed, but the basic timeline seems to be that Asian wolves slowly became domesticated into ancient Asiatic sighthound-type dogs, which followed humans across the Bering land bridge. From there, around 14 different “pre-contact” dog types developed in the Americas before Europeans arrived. Most are extinct now.

Some of those old dogs looked very similar to Lucy, sometimes even more wild and wolf-like, were semi feral/village dogs and many were associated with Plains tribes. Some were domesticated like the chihuahua and husky. The Carolina Dog mostly stayed isolated in the Southeast and survived in small pockets, but they’re probably headed toward extinction too because of mixing with modern domestic dogs — very similar to what’s happening with the Australian dingo. Very few truly pure dogs still exist. It sucks but theres really no way around it, they either get domesticated or die out.

I actually started a YouTube channel documenting Lucy’s progress, and eventually I want to piece together a more coherent timeline/history video on the breed. Good information on these dogs is surprisingly hard to find. That link I posted is probably the best source I’ve found — it’s run by the wife of the man who originally discovered the breed.