Why keep the animals in pens? Wouldn they be happier roaming free?
We pen them for their own safety. Allowed to roam freely, the animals would fight with each other. Like their full-blooded wolf ancestors, wolf-dogs are pack animals and strive for the pack hierarchy. In each pack there can be only one Alpha male and only one Alpha female. They achieve this status by fighting for it. Unfortunately, unlike pure-blooded wolves, wolf-dogs will fight to injure and kill. The normal pack size is 8-10 wolves. With 80 to 100 (the normal population at the sanctuary), the numbers just do not work. With too many Alphas, the natural instinct of the animals would be to fight it out. Remember there is NO NATURAL HABITAT for wolf-dogs. They are a product of man. There is no way to safely release them “into the wild”; they don’t belong there. The sanctuary strives to provide a middle ground, a place where the animals can live out their lives in safety and comfort. Pens are not the ideal solution. The ideal solution would be a world where the dogs are not abandoned and
