This sounds like an attempt to recreate mollosoi dogs, just with extra steps.

I’m fairly confident that the examples given would result in a large (but not giant), smart, and people friendly dog that could still operate successfully without a handler. Not in the first generation, but eventually.

Tbh, don’t even need wolves in the mix; they don’t really bring much to the table, and you aren’t going to maintain that look past three or four generations to begin with. Wolf-dogs that breed with each other don’t hold on to a wolfish look for very many generations as it is, even when they’re all mixed with the same dog breed. Hiding mixing in that many dog breeds, you’re looking at what? 1/32 wolf by the time you have a breed that’s no longer being crosses outside of established individuals from the project. Maybe it’s 1/64th, I can’t remember what it came out to when someone did the math on reddit about how many generations it would take to no longer be breeding half breeds at all, with a stable population for the project.

If you leave wolves out, you already have a more stable pool that you can select traits from for each succeeding generation. You just can’t keep a wolf appearance without breeding wolves only, and even then you’d have to select each generation for that look to the exclusion of other traits.

Part of the reason dog breeds exist is those repeating chains of DNA that most (but not all, supposedly) canids have. Can’t remember the right term for it, but the Russian foxes also rely on that quirk. When that’s in play, you can breed for specific traits, but the more focused you get on one, or one small set, the more the others express themselves, hence the curly tails and floppy ears of the Russian “domesticated” foxes. You select for friendliness, you get “softer” looks. You select for looks, you get some combination of other traits (like the skittishness some smaller breeds are known for).

We already have a good idea of what traits breeding for size gets, and we have an idea of what breeding to visual standards gets when that standard is wolfish.

Edit: the Wiki summary for mollosoi dogs

Jurassic Bark

Sounds great. Just make sure it also gets the genes for strong hip ligaments. And the dopey friend genes that all labradors tend to have.

And then breed it to look like a polar bear sized grey wolf.

It’s going to cost a fortune to feed that beast.

And he’s going to hog the bed.

So, the thing is, the genes for size don’t add up or multiply, they overlap and the dominant ones win. If your goal is bigger then it’s better to just pick the biggest ones from many litters and breed them, as is the origin of many of the large breeds listed.

Pictured here is Irish Wolfhound.

Breed every type of dog in a huge bracket and end up with the ultimate mutt. It will probably live 20 years.

I’d love a worg for a pet

But am I still allowed to pet?

There is an experiment in Russia that has been breeding foxes for over 50 years now. The goal is to understand how domestication changes an the physiology of an animal. They breed the foxes that show the most tame and docile behaviors towards humans in an effort to recreate the process of changing wolves to dogs.

On the flip side, they also breed the foxes that are most aggressive and hostile towards people. One day they will get too powerful and get loose…

We need to revive other mega fauna first, otherwise they’ll just eat us as the next best choice. Big predators require big prey.

Add a dash of beagle for pure mayhem.