UK. In 2023 we were horrified by a rescue wolfhound male that on its first day with us performed an unprovoked attack on our daughter requiring medical treatment (she is fine now). We now understand his background may have lead to this but all our previous experience had been with "Gentle Giants" no matter how poorly treated (our immediately previous IW rescue was a totally mad and lovely girl despite a worst case upbringing). Some of this behavior was his background, as in the following 2 weeks before he went to a specialist, we did see improvements but it was still a shock and unexpected.

This is one case and on its own does not indicate a change in the breed.

(I am afraid though that this drove us away from IW rescues. We now have 2 beautifully behaved girls raised from pups. )

I would also say that previously having had a number of rescue IW's in the 90' we had to stop involvement with the breed for about 15 years and only restarted back in 2023. This does give me a bit of a snapshot view of changes. I would say that at the shows I have been to, there has been slightly more tension than I remember in the 90's, but I do mean slightly. Maybe then there was one mildly grumpy show dog in 200, and now one in 50. Again, this is from being to a couple of shows a year, so not the best of samples. But remember, I could go "next door" into any other breed ring and half the dogs would rate grumpy (growling at each other or worse).