The Snuneymuxw people once raised small white dogs. Although these dogs are now extinct, it is thought that they were specially bred for their hair, which was spun into wool. The idea that a flock of dogs would be raised much like sheep in order to shear their coat is intriguing, and the early European visitors to Snuneymuxw and other Coast Salish village sites recorded seeing these special dogs. Joseph Whidbey, an officer aboard Captain George Vancouver's British expedition to the Pacific Northwest in the 1790s, wrote that the crew was greeted in Puget Sound by "upwards of 200" people, "attended by about forty dogs in a drove, shorn close to the skin like sheep."

Women carry on the tradition of spinning, and it is thought that women were in charge of raising the dogs, and of the commercial aspects of trading their hair to mainland weavers. The dogs were valuable, and were prevented from breeding with other dogs to maintain the whiteness of their coats. The white dogs may have been kept on small islands for this purpose. Elders say that the beach at Cameron Island, no longer a separate island off Nanaimo, was called "Little Dog" because that is where the animals were kept.

The creamy-white colour of thick Snuneymuxw woollen blankets may come, in part, from these little white dogs. People who are knowledgeable about spinning and working with wool point out that dog hair has a special texture, which makes it difficult to make into wool - you will notice, if you take some fur shed by your dog and twist it, that it will soon unravel. For this reason, the dog hair was spun with other, softer fibres from plants and animals. To learn the secrets of the wool dogs, experts want to examine the blankets with special magnifying equipment so they can confirm what they believe is dog hair- it appears different from other hair, such as that of goats, at the microscopic level.