Spinestalker of the Ebon Blade

“Hawthorn”

Hawthorn was born on September 20, 2022 and was bred by us under our registered Tamaskan Dog kennel, Tamaskans of the Ebon Blade, here in Texas, USA. He is from our first ever Tamaskan Dog litter, The Frostbrood of the Ebon Blade, which had 9 total puppies (5 females and 4 males). The litter theme was based on several of the undead Frost Wyrms in the lore from World of Warcraft. Hawthorn’s sire is Booker at Team Warren, who is a mid-distance bred Alaskan Husky who has been a member of a working sledding kennel his whole life. Booker was approved by the Tamaskan Dog Register to be an Outcross Dog for the Tamaskan Dog breed, to bring in fresh genetics to our breed’s small gene pool. Hawthorn’s dam is our girl Sylvaen Tarth “Reckless,” who is a 1st generation Tamaskan Dog and is also an F4 34% low content wolfdog.

Hawthorn is co-owned by us, but lives with his co-owners in the beautiful state of Utah! His co-owners sent us a write-up of his personality and temperament for us to share:

Hawthorn loves the outdoors and his family. If it were up to him, he would be in our lap constantly! He is so curious and loves to explore new places and experience everything life has to offer. He also adores “his” (our) kids, and always wants to play with them and be near them. It has been a joy to watch him blossom into a fantastic family dog and to see how much our kids love him.

Hawthorn was initially wary of strange people entering our home when he first joined our family, but with time and some training, he’s now less anxious about strangers coming to visit and will try to sneak up to sniff them when they’re not paying attention to him. Most of the time, he’ll even allow them to pet him on top of the head, which is a big deal, because he likes his bubble of personal space. The only time he will show his displeasure with a stranger is when he’s kenneled and they approach him. He knows that his kennel is his safe space and that he won’t get bothered by the kids or anyone else when he’s relaxing in there, so he doesn’t like it when a stranger invades his safe space and makes him feel “trapped” to where he can’t remove himself. We explain to pet sitters that he may give a bark or growl when they initially approach his kennel, but that once they open the crate door and allow him to come out, he will want to say hello and get excited to go play in the yard. When our kids have their friends over to play, Hawthorn will usually take the opportunity to get some zoomies out in the yard with them and then go off to sniff his favorite spots in the yard.

Hawthorn is much more open to strangers approaching him in public as he’s gotten older. It’s been fantastic to see him realize that most people just want to say hello and that he can score some pets if he feels like it. We’ve been able to take him to pet-friendly amusement parks, campgrounds, pet stores, and many other public areas and he is always respectful of people. He will watch random kids who approach more carefully, but as long as they’re calm, he’s happy to have more attention.

Public areas are one of Hawthorn’s favorite places! He’s really happy to visit a pet store, especially if there are chicks, rabbits, ferrets, or other animals to see… minus tortoises. That animal was too weird and obviously was plotting Hawthorn’s demise, so he remains very wary of tortoises and won’t approach. In spring 2025, we finished up a four-day road trip around the state of Utah and Hawthorn was the perfect gentleman in all the RV places we stayed. He is really good when visiting parks and has become the best cheerleader for our kids when we attend their flag football games every weekend in spring and fall. Whenever we cheer, he howls right along with us! It has become a defining thing for our kids’ teams, and everyone who hears him comments about how well trained he is (joke’s on them, we did no training, he just LOVES to be included in the noise making!).

For the most part, Hawthorn does well with strange dogs that don’t have boisterous or pushy energy. There have been two situations where he acted rudely to two specific unfamiliar larger breed dogs and had to be corrected by us. Both times, he responded to a correction from us and the situations didn’t escalate. For peace of mind, we have muzzle trained him and he wears it whenever we are out and about where there may be other dogs off leash. With the muzzle on, he seems more confident and loves to meet new dog friends of all ages and sizes at the dog park, campgrounds, or just out on walks.

Hawthorn has a high prey drive. One of his favorite things while we’re out horseback riding is to chase the jack rabbits and birds that are scared up. He does get a fairly intense focus when he spots prey animals. Thankfully, he’s such a smart boy that he can be recalled from them pretty easily. However, he won’t blindly chase any prey animal that’s around him, as we have exposed him a great deal to multiple species. We own horses, a cat, a small dog, and are around cows, sheep, goats, and other livestock where we live. He knows that those are not his prey and is usually very content to just sit back and watch them. We even visited an arena with my horse recently where there were sheep and a llama in the field next to us, and he just stayed in place by the truck and watched them without even going up to the adjoining fence. His absolute best friend in the whole world is our cat. They play in the yard together every day and she’s just as excited to see him as he is to see her!

During a normal day at home, Hawthorn is quiet and usually lazy, as long as he’s had some kind of exercise or brain stimulation during the day. He’s happy to lie near my feet or in his bed. The only time he’ll be a little noisy is if I go out for a walk or to work the horses without him; then you can hear his sad howl. Hawthorn has medium to high energy in general. He’s happy to just cuddle and lay around the house, but if he doesn’t get at least a mile walk or some other stimulation during the day he gets antsy towards the evening and a little whiny. He easily will run for three miles accompanying me when I go riding. He has endless energy when hiking in the mountains and he probably does twice as many miles as I do, because he doubles back to check in every so often. If we can’t go on a nice walk for some reason, usually a 15-minute training session is enough to allow him to calm down and enjoy a relaxing evening.

Hawthorn is a rockstar with his off-leash training! We worked first on a long leash to allow him to explore but still be able to recall him if he didn’t initially listen to our voice. Once he got that down, we moved on to e-collar training with positive reinforcement. I will say that he had to have HIGH value treats at first to make it worth his time to come back when we called, but now he is happy to recall for just a pet and praise. I think his recall is very reliable. He comes at the tone on his e-collar or to calling his name, and I’ve been able to call him back from going to meet other dogs or animals. He’s really been a dream to work with in recall.

Training overall has been very positive. Hawthorn is just so smart! He has done very well with boundary training, which really came in handy when our daughter let him out into the backyard without realizing the gate was open. He was still there in the yard almost an hour later when we realized what had happened. Hawthorn is also really good at recall, leave it, sit, stay, place, shake, jump, and other tricks. The best training tool for him was to use high value treats, like shredded chicken, deli meat, or string cheese. As he’s gotten older, he’s more open to regular dog treats as a reward and is very responsive to praise. We still do a lot of repetition to help reinforce listening to us, plus the repetition helps to wear out his brain and lets him relax more after the training session is over. Overall, I’d say he truly doesn’t need a lot of upkeep to remember his training, though. The repetition is more for my own peace of mind.

Potty training was easy. It helped to already have another dog that knew the drill, that Hawthorn could follow as an example. Hawthorn is even trained to only go the bathroom in our gravel area instead of on the grass, as his dad really loves his lawn! Crate training was a little more difficult at the very beginning. Hawthorn would howl for hours and just wanted to be where the action was. After about a week, he settled down and realized that the crate is his safe space and the only place where the kids wouldn’t come and bother him. Now, he happily goes into his crate whenever we ask. He has both a hard sided kennel, which we use for camping, and a wire kennel that is in our front room. He does best with time to relax and reset, so our goal is to allow him to be crated in 3-to-6-hour increments about twice a day, per our trainer’s suggestion. When he’s crated, he just lies on his side or back and naps. There haven’t been any instances of separation anxiety that we’ve noticed. Yes, he does howl sometimes when we go out on a walk and leave him behind, but it seems to be more a fear of missing out than actual separation anxiety. It doesn’t occur all the time, and if he was already exercised, then he’s happy to just sleep when we leave.

Hawthorn does not resource guard food or toys from us or from other dogs. If he has left food in his bowl and our other dog heads towards it, Hawthorn will run up to see if our other dog is trying to eat it, but he has never growled or reacted in a way that would make us think he’s actually guarding it. Hawthorn did recently try to resource guard me at the dog park as I was giving attention to another dog, but it was a small growl, and he responded to my correction. No other instances of this have occurred since then.

I worked at a vet clinic for most of Hawthorn’s life so far, so he is VERY used to the hustle and bustle that comes with trips to the vet. He’s really good for general check-ups. When Hawthorn had his first CAER eye exam done in late 2024, he did mouth the vet after they had continually been all over his face and eyes, but we gave a mild verbal correction, after which he allowed the vet and tech to do everything they needed for the exam. Currently, he doesn’t need any medication or other interventions for vet appointments. Grooming is a delightful experience with him. He loves being brushed, is very used to getting bathed, and is fine with both towel drying and blow drying. Nail trims are easiest if he’s lying on his back or side, but he will allow us or other people to trim them. Having his ears cleaned, touched, or messed with doesn’t bother him, and we’ve also worked a lot from the beginning on putting our fingers all over his muzzle and inside his mouth. He will allow us or the vet or other people to pull back his lips and view/touch his teeth and open his mouth.

I have so many good things to say about Hawthorn, but tried to be concise! He truly is a part of our family and we are so happy to share a life together!