It’s either a devil dog or a relict dire wolf!
Truth be known, I don’t know what kind of dog this is or where this photograph was taken, but I’m making fun of a show I saw last week called “Mountain Monsters” about “cryptids” that run wild in West Virginia and adjacent states.
One episode was about “the devil dogs of Logan County,” giant three-toed dogs that weigh 300 pounds and eat coyotes. They even set a trap for them and caught a few.
(But none appeared on camera for some reason…)
Wow! I coud ride him!
Meant to writeL I COULD ride him.
Nice dog.
Dog is certainly big but it looks to me like the woman is sat down, thus making it look even bigger. Dog might be a mastiff type mix, his cropped ears make him look more intimidating I expect.
I looked at that devil dog link, didn’t a certain native american tribe have a similar legend about huge wolf/dogs that had overly long hind legs? Could well be that the devil dog stuff grew from that.
Whats interesting is that many cultures have legends about certain beings that are similar to legends in other distant cultures. I guess humans have some sort of natural inbuilt fear about certain things that create legends.
Its certainly not impossible that some very large stray dogs existed at that time that were preying on coyotes and other things. I expect the other aspects of their anatomy and behavior were influenced by superstition though!
Adam
In the picture he isn’t acting like much of a devil, more like “can you hurry this up so I can go snooze in the shade?” Just looks like he is her dog, some kind of large cross, probably very good at keeping coyotes away from the chickens and such though. My Sister and BIL have a couple of hound mixes that do a good job of that also.
Any more info on the photo?
Old school mastiff / bulldog is my guess as varied as that may be.
None.
Looks like a harlequin Great Dane mix, a fat one
The woman sure has dark circles around her eyes.
I wonder if she is actually a corpse they just propped up for the photo.
Hummm~perhaps,they did that in those days..That would explaine what the Devil Dog was doing there..
The woman looks scarier than the dog. The dog looks too fat to chase anything.
If I saw either of them come out on the porch,I’d stay in the car with the windows up!
Me too. It looks disconcertingly like the ye olde forerunner to The Walking Dead. The dog being wall eyed just adds to the whole brain munching vibe.
Since coyotes only colonized West Virginia fairly recently I seriously doubt the veracity of any “ancient” legends of coyote-eating devil dogs there. Besides, I lived and worked in Mingo County, right next door to Logan County, in the early 1990s & knew a lot of garrulous old people, with whom I discussed local legends at great length. I heard uncountable tales of panthers both brown and black, wild men, monsters of several kinds, and ghosts, but nary a mention of devil dogs. I did, however, hear of the Mothman. Everyone thought it was a great joke.
I think the woman in the photo must have had anemia. It was very common back in the day & produces a similar appearance if the anemia is pronounced.
My grandmother used to call this kind of dog a “drover dog”. They were very large dogs that were used to move cattle. I don’t think they were ever considered a specific breed.
Coyotes have been in the northern mountains of WV since at least the 1940’s.
Yes, but few and far between until about 30 or 40 years ago. I don’t think they’ve been numerous in West Virginia long enough to spawn legends of devil dogs that eat them.
Judging from the woman’s clothing, this photo looks older than than 1940s. Do you have any information about the photo’s age?
I have none. It may not even be in America and that could be one of those “Napoleon mastiffs” that everyone talks about from Italy.
I enlarged & manipulated the exposure of the photo & I don’t see any clear evidence one way or the other of the dog’s gender. It kind of looks like it might have been pregnant.
Y’a know,Louis L’Amour had a dog in one of his books that the owner said had a bear for a father…. The other person didn’t dispute it. Maybe he saw this critter!?
The dog looks fine to me — not even particularly big, and likely a pregnant bitch of some mastiff type. What’s scary in this photo is the woman. Is she even alive? I can’t tell. Given the clothing this could date back to the era when people did photograph corpses, which might explain the discolouraton around her eyes and the stare…
Smiling in photos was frowned on back then. People stayed out of the sun as much as possible; a tan was also a mark of “low class”. In many regions, iron deficiencies were the rule rather than the exception, especially in women. Anemia makes your face look very pale except for dark circles around your eyes. Also, ladies often used cornstarch or chalk powder as a cosmetic. Her head is slightly tilted forward, too, and given the state of photography a hundred or more years ago, I don’t think she looks like a corpse at all. She’s looking right at the camera. Corpses were photographed back in the day, but I daresay no one would let a dog near a corpse :-p . Especially not a dog that size.
I agree k. If ya’ll really want to date that photo I can leaf thru my genealogical photo references–they’ve helped me a lot in identifying particular ancestors in old photos.
Back then, people had to sit for hours just to have a photograph taken, women back then were prone to house work, the look of het, she probably has a lot of children. Dark circles under her eyes or beaten by her husband (black eyes).
Whenever I see the word “cryptid” my brain translates it to “chryptorchid” and I’m always wondering why there are men wandering around the woods looking for animals whose testicles haven’t descended…
Looks like a big mutt to me
The dog looks like a cattle dog mix, obviously mixed with a larger dog. The head is all cattle dog, same with the ears. For the woman’s sake, hopefully those eyes are more the result of bad lighting, a black and white photo and shadowing….. Those are some serious circles.. If you think the episode of the Devil dog was amusing, you should see the one of the wampus beast…. The picture they showed from a local was obviously a cougar…. but they insisted it was a 500lb wampus beast… Oh, the beast used to be a woman that some which turned into the beast. Hard to watch that show without laughing.
I’ve seen every episode. This is my part of the world, and I think it’s hilarious.
I had me a run in with one of them durn devil dogs: https://retrieverman.net/2013/07/26/an-encounter-with-a-devil-dog/
[…] Photo of a rare West Virginia “devil dog,” circa 1930 (retrieverman.net) […]
I had a dog like that when I was little (1994), he was nearly bigger then me! Nearly reached my moms waist and his nose reached the kitchen table, 3 1/4 ft tall. He was orange, a reddish nose and his name was Butch. My aunt went a poisened our dogs, he died :/ Never will see another like him.
This photo looks more like a man, and if you look at the house in the back ground,the houses in that time period, didnot have that kind of siding.
That show is a joke. The guys make so much noise yelling, hollaring and crashing around with lights and atv’s while hunting at night that they’d scare off anything within the county. It seems they don’t really want to confront any animals. Rediculous waste of time watching it. And a housecat could have chewed thru the net trap they set.
I find it so hilarious that I can’t stop watching.
That is an old school Ovcharka, Either Caucasian or Central/South Asian
yeah the show on devil dogs is stupid as hell. I live in W.V. and I seen these dogs. The first time I saw it I thought it was coyote. Not knowing what either coyotes or devil dogs look like. Let me clear this up! A devil dogs is large(like a great dane ), dark in color(browns and black) and I never got close enough to count toes but that’s whatever. They have long coats and Ive seen them in packs. As far as eating people seriously maybe just stupid people. Hope this was helpful.
Those of us who are members of the reality-based community and also live in West Virginia (unfortunately there aren’t many of us), cannot believe how many “monsters” people think are roaming the forests that lie just beyond their backdoors. It’s like living in Medieval Europe– the Beast of Gevaudan is on the prowl!
There is no such thing as a “devil dog.” There are errant mastiff-type dogs that do go roaming in the forests on occasion, but they are no more likely to do than any other breed.
A more interesting species is the Eastern coyote, which is part wolf and hunts deer, and is pretty much a new species that is evolving before our very eyes.
But no, let’s play with fantasy creatures: bigfoot, black panthers (LOL), mothman, and the Flatwoods monster.
I was surprised to hear them make a statement that this was similar to a horse and donkey breeding, which offspring would be sterile.. So where did the younger dogs running with the leader come from? Yes coyotes are out crossing with domestic dogs…they said, it was a wolf / dog cross…A friend had a half wolf hybred and she weighed 150 lb. and was very tall and wide..Big bone and feet…I also question being three toes…Why were those caught not shown later if there is a truth to this? The last time I was in P. Rico was told they had no wild animals….
About the aforementioned episode of “Mountain Monsters”, the coyotes were NOT being eaten, they never said the Devil Dog weighed 300 lbs. and the animals in the trap were stray dogs as told by the people in the show. We will always doubt what we do not see, so no there is no such thing as Oxygen or God,
Oxygen exists. We can observe it.
God is a fantasy.
And there are no devil dogs.
This guy did not get his facts right. Tje dogs are abput 180 to 200 pounds and about five where on camera but this dog is real i stay in texas and their are some by my house and by my old house that have attack people also i am not the olny one that have seen thr dogs but it is not a animal to see . The devil dog is like a wolf but some are bigger and there are more than ine type of devil dog
Sure…