The history of the Coast Salish "woolly dogs"

In many societies, dogs represent more than mere companions-they are highly esteemed working partners and integral community members that are sometimes revered for their spiritual importance (1). Dogs played these multifaceted roles in the Indigenous communities located around the Salish Sea, a region that encompasses tens of thousands of square miles in the Pacific Northwest near present-day Vancouver, Canada, and Seattle, Washington. However, the Coast Salish peoples also developed something rather distinct-a tradition of wool weaving based on the particularly thick and woolly coat of a special lineage of dogs. On page 1303 of this issue, Lin et al. explore the genome sequence of a Coast Salish dog named Mutton who died in 1859. This analysis was combined with traditional knowledge provided by local Indigenous communities to glean information on the breeding practices and genetic modifications that underlie this exceptional hairy dog phenotype (2) .