Rare woolly dog hair found in blanket

(Burke Museum of Natural History & Culture)

A tear in an ancient blanket has revealed a rare piece of local history.

Researchers with Seattle’s Burke Museum recently discovered a museum blanket containing extinct woolly dog fur.

Woolly dogs were raised by the endemic Coast Salish people for more than a thousand years. The Salish people raised the small, long-haired dogs as a source of hair for textile production. The dogs were raised in pens and kept from breeding with other dogs.

100-YEAR-OLD SHIPWRECK OF FOUND OFF CALIFORNIA COAST

The woolly dog’s hair was thick, and spun into yarn in a sophisticated practice, researchers with the Burke Museum said.

The dogs became extinct less than 150 years after the first European explorers landed on the Northwest Coast due to inbreeding, and the prevalence of easier weaving material.

Most objects containing the rare fur were lost or destroyed, researchers with the museum said. The blanket containing the fur would have remained obscure, researchers said, if not for a tear that revealed some of the hair.

“As soon as I saw the warp yarns exposed by the tear, I knew this was an unusual blanket,” said Liz Hammond-Kaarremaa, a Coast Salish spinning expert.

The blanket is made of multiple different materials, including woolly dog hair. It is the only object known in a Northwest museum confirmed to be made with the hair, researchers said.

This article first appeared in Q13Fox.