Prarie of the Dog

Hilldawgs

Tracking America’s First Dogs

Carolina dogs, discovered in the Southeast woods, may provide clues to the primitive dogs that arrived with the first humans in America

Scott Weidensaul

March 1999

I. Lehr Brisbin, a senior ecologist at the Savannah River Ecology Lab in Aiken, South Carolina, breeds and studies what he calls the Carolina dog: a scrawny, medium-sized animal with a reddish-yellow coat, upright ears and a whiplash tail curling up over its back — what rural Southerners have long called a "yaller" dog. Through his work with Carolina dogs, Brisbin hopes to gain a better understanding of their origins and possible relationship to other so-called primitive dogs throughout the world, such as dingoes in Australia, New Guinea singing dogs and the so-called pariah dogs of the Old World. His research on a group of Carolinas has revealed that they share traits and behaviors with the other primitive groups, and preliminary DNA studies reveal a possible linkage.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/tracking-americas-first-dogs-65892856/