Minecraft – How to un-tame a wolf through NBT

There is a 1 in 3 chance any particular bone will tame a wolf.

If you have a stack of x bones, the chance you will be able to tame a wolf before running out of bones is

1 - ((chance of not taming with bone) ^ x)
1 - ((2/3)^x)

Fill in for x to get your chances.

For a 99% chance to get a wolf, you will need 12 bones. 17 bones will get you 99.9% chance, and 22 bones will get you up to 99.99% chance.

NOTE: I got the 1/3 figure from http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Wolf -- in the same sentence, it also says "up to 12 bones need to be used to ensure that the wolf is successfully tamed." This sentence cites a tweet from jeb which makes neither of these assertions, although the tweet does confirm that it is a random chance. I'm running with the 1/3 figure and assuming they are just assuming nobody will hit that 1% chance, although it's a virtual certainty that some players have gone into the 20 bone range.

The 1/3 figure matches my anecdotal experience, and it's the only place I've found that attempts to give a solid number on it. Probability is a subject that trips up a lot of people, so a lot of results come back with people giving answers with an authoritative tone that seem unsupported (e.g. saying it's random and then guaranteeing an upper limit to the number of bones needed).

This solution is based on defining the person closest to a wolf when it first sits down as it's tamer.

The reason for this workaround is twofold:

• Players don't have a "wolves tamed" statistic
• Wolves don't have a "tamed" entry in their NBT, and it's not possible to look for an empty "ownerUUID"

Start with the following commands.

/scoreboard objective add isTamed dummy
/scoreboard objective add wolvesTamed dummy Wolves Tamed

This will add an objective that is used to check for tamed wolves, and another for the players.

Now run the following commands on a clock

/scoreboard players add @e[type=Wolf] isTamed 1 {Sitting:1}
/scoreboard players add @e[type=Wolf,score_isTamed_min=3] isTamed -1
/execute @e[type=Wolf,score_isTamed=1,score_isTamed_min=1] scoreboard players add @p[r=3] wolvesTamed 1 

This will continuously increase the isTamed objective by 1 as long as the wolf sits. This is followed by decreasing it by one if it is greater than 2 (this is not technically necessary, but keeps the scores low)

In addition, the player closest to a wolf (and within 3m) with an isTamed score of exactly 1 (which can only happen when it first sits down) will have their wolvesTamed score increased by 1.

There might be an issue with the last command, because wolves might not be able to use "cheats". In this case, you would need to find a way to use the /trigger command instead.