1. Did you ever imagine when you were in high school that you would be in the kind of work your in now? What did you think you were going to do?
No not at all, absolutely not, I did not start this until I was past 40 and so even when I went to college which I didn’t do until I was 30, It was not in my realm of thinking at all. I always thought, well first of all I met my first husband when I was 16. So I graduated high school, turned 18, and got married all within 6 months. So pretty much I was going to be a mom but I went to school for early childhood education and then after I got divorced I went on to school to be a teacher. I pretty much knew I was going to be in the teaching field somehow.
2. What kind of challenges have you encountered pursuing what you love to do and how have you overcome them?
Oh lord that is a really, really, long story but If you want to you can go back and research old Herald articles but when we moved here I researched really hard about this piece of land to make sure we can have the wolves here. So I read all the ordinances and I did all the research and we probably looked at a hundred pieces of property. So when we moved the refuge here we thought everything was going to be just fine. Well it wasn’t because the neighbors, well there a mile away but they have sheep, well they made a big deal and we had to go to the county and we had to really fight through the county process and we had to get a special land permit because they decided that we fell into other. So we had to have all kinds of sounds studies done and it took us about a year and a half of hard fighting within the county system to get our land use permit. Then they decided once they exhausted that option, that they were going to take us to civil court. So then we had to go through that process, which we also won. Then they decided that they were going to try to shut off our food supply. So Purina, who donates food, they also make a lot of ranch food. So all the ranchers said they were not going to buy Purina food if you donate to the wolves. Then there were big things in the paper because the people were like, “well if they got out wouldn’t you want them to be well fed?” So anyways this huge deal and that was the hardest thing actually because we kind of set the refuge up based on getting donated food. We couldn’t buy food for, at the time we had seventy animals, seventy five animals, so it was really difficult. People would drive by on four wheelers with rifles and it was very intimidating and at that point we were already pretty exhausted because moving the refuge from Pagosa took everything I had, everything Financially, emotionally, mentally, physically. I mean I was done, so you finally get here, you think you’re going to be safe and you put all that effort into the move and then in fact you realize you have a huge battle on your hands. So it took about 2 yrs. and close to twenty thousand dollars to finally have everything legally set and so now the land use permit stays with the property. So now the wolves can be here forever but it was hard, we were going to restaurants and people would make bad comments and (ah) the whole thing was just a mess but now we are good and of course we had our supporters don’t get me wrong but it was pretty heated, there were some pretty heated county commissioner battles and they would write terrible things in the paper about us and it was awful but anyway it’s all good now.
3. What do you love most about working with animals?
Part of it is just being outdoors and in nature, you know I’m one of those people where nature is sort of my spirituality and if I’m indoors to long or around artificial stuff too long I feel sick and so part of it is just living my passion of being outdoors and you know of course there is the sense of your really making a difference and there is the challenge of rehabilitating them and of course the personal relationships I have with them, which are my heart and soul.
4. If you could relive 5-10 yrs. of your life, what might you do differently professionally?
You know I don’t have a whole lot of regrets, you know…I’m going to be sixty this year so I have had a couple different lifetimes, you know in high school don’t think that you’re on your path and that it’s going to be your life path because things change you will have several lives you know. So I got married young, had my kids really young, didn’t marry the best person for me but I was very much in love so I don’t regret getting married and I don’t regret getting divorced. So that was kind of my life until I turned thirty and then I waitressed for a lot of years, raised my kids alone, went back to school, and again between 30 and 45 or so that was that life and then I met my second husband and did this. So there has been a lot of change and growth and I’m not sure I would change anything if you want to know the honest truth. I got my degree in teaching which was really good for me. So I don’t know, I loved waitressing, I think that all your experiences kind of make you who you are and I am not sure I could have done this without some of the background I had. So I am not sure I would change anything professionally if you want to know the honest to god truth. I would write more but that’s me, that’s on me, I just need to take the time but I am pretty satisfied with what I do and what I’ve done.
5. In the future what do you hope Wolfwood Refuge will become?
That is a tricky question you know because I’m turning sixty, as a responsible animal steward, I don’t want to be too old to take good care of them or I don’t want to die and leave these animals with nobody. So either Wolfwood is going to have to find a committed person that will take on the challenge of running it at some point or we need to start slowing down and continue to care for the animals that we have and take in less animals and I have not really made that decision yet, I haven’t really decided which way that’s going to go and that may change, I may decide to take in less animals and then we may find the perfect person. People all the time say, “Well don’t you want your life’s work to live on?” and the answer is no. I mean this is my life’s work, I don’t imagine anybody else will do it the way I do it or nor should they. If someone else says hey this is also my passion and I would like to step in to an organization that is already well on its way then that’s great but I don’t in vision, I don’t have a vision of Wolfwood living on past me, if that makes sense. We will do a lot more educational things like in a different way as time goes on. I have a visitor’s center that is going to be done this year, which is going to be super awesome. So I’m really excited in that. I kind of have an idea that we may do wolf camps at some point, for kids, summer camp. So there is other directions that I’d go but most of the changes have to do with outreach, as opposed to anything else.
6. When you were just getting into your professional career field, was there a time where you were uncertain you actually wanted to pursue it?
Well Wolfwood happened by accident, I didn’t plan it, I moved to Colorado with my one wolf dog and his best friend was a little corgi and I left him in California because it was my son’s dog so my wolf dog got very depressed and very sad. So I rescued one to be his friend and another one and another one. So it kind of just grew and then I went through all the steps, we got our 501 C3, we were incorporated, we got state licensed, all of those things happened as a progression and a necessity based on how quick we were growing. The only time that I was concerned about it was when we made the move and it wasn’t a question of whether I wanted to do it as to whether it was a question of whether we could but in the beginning it was pretty rough. We had sacrificed a whole lot to do this. We didn’t even have running water for ten years and we don’t take trips to the Bahamas. We give up a lot to do it but again not everybody gets to live their passion and I do. The only question I have now is again, the question of finding a good care taker that can be here. My parents are getting a lot older, grand kids are growing up, so I would like a little bit more freedom to travel more and be gone more. It is very hard for me to leave them for more than a week. So that’s the only challenge I see personally as far as what I have done, I have locked myself down pretty well and of course there is no pension fund or retirement so there is that problem.
7. To you, what is most rewarding about being in your type of career field?
Again besides rehabilitating all the animals, seeing the effect the animal has on people, especially kids. Lots of times the animals have life altering and life changing effects on people and so people have chosen different career paths, people have healed illnesses, people have gotten over emotional trauma, all because they have had interaction with wolves and so I find that amazing. I really like to see and enjoy seeing the variety and depth of impact they have on people. For example there was a man that came up with macular degeneration and they told him that he would be completely blind in a month. So he came up and it was a little difficult to get him in some of the pins but we did. So he went in with Oakley and Oakley just kind of went nose to nose with him and looked him right in the eyes and the man came out of the pin and said, “If that’s the last thing I ever see, I am okay with that.” And so Oakley helped him come to terms with what was happening to him and helped him store up some memories of beauty that helped him feel good. So those kind of things are really rewarding.
8. What advice would you give someone who is looking to find passion or fulfillment in their career field/job?
First of all you have to work at it, people think that because it’s your passion, that it should come easy and that’s not true. There is a lot of struggle in doing what you love, especially if it’s outside the box. So you have to be able to invest yourself to it and you have to enjoy it. If it ever comes to a point where I quit loving what I do, I’m not going to do it anymore. So I think just not getting bogged down, remember why you do it. You have to keep that passion alive otherwise you’re going to burn out. Not many people have done this as long as I have because they burn out and so I think that keeping yourself connected and doing things for yourself and remembering why you love it. So you don’t burn out and you have to surround yourself with good people. There is now way to do anything that you’re passionate about and that you love by yourself. You’ve got to have people around you that have a similar vision or that at least people who are willing to follow you into your vision and so I think keeping your passion alive and realizing that it’s a hell a lot of hard work and surrounding yourself with other like-minded people and having a support network, all that is very crucial and don’t listen to other people. I can’t tell you how many people have told me you can’t do it that way, really? Watch me. I mean seriously you have to be true to yourself because if you’re not true to yourself than you’re not following your passion. You’re doing what other people want you to do and so don’t listen to people that say you can’t do that because you can.
9. What do you think is the most important lesson we can learn from wolves, either spiritually, ideologically, or mentally?
Oh god there is so much and I am actually going to teach a class at ghost ranch this year and I am going to be asking some of those questions because sort of the gist of the class is what lessons can we learn from the animals, wolves in particular and so It’s a very complicated question and it deserves more thought than I am giving it at this exact moment but one of the things that I know the wolves demand is that you be fully present when your with them, you cannot be listening to your music, you can’t be daydreaming about your grocery list. They demand that you’re there with them and they demand your focus and they demand that you pay attention to them and they demand you are paying attention to what you’re doing and I think that is really important because I think we are disconnected as people right now and the wolves demand connection and interaction and I think that is good for us so that’s one thing because if you’re not paying attention to them, then they will let you know and that’s not a good thing. I also, at least from our animals, think that one of the biggest lessons they have to teach us is in survival. Some of these animals have gone through so much abuse and so much emotional trauma and yet they recover and they don’t just recover they thrive and I think there is some really big lessons there, on being able to recover from trauma and from sometimes things that we think is devastating and you can recover from that, with grace and dignity and you can be whole again. I think that is a big lesson that these guys have to teach us and I am hoping that they can teach us tolerance. If either historically and or personally, I think if most of us went through what wolves go through, we would again just give up and just be done and of course never want to be involved with a person ever again and so I think they have a lot to teach us about tolerance and we need to listen.
No not at all, absolutely not, I did not start this until I was past 40 and so even when I went to college which I didn’t do until I was 30, It was not in my realm of thinking at all. I always thought, well first of all I met my first husband when I was 16. So I graduated high school, turned 18, and got married all within 6 months. So pretty much I was going to be a mom but I went to school for early childhood education and then after I got divorced I went on to school to be a teacher. I pretty much knew I was going to be in the teaching field somehow.
2. What kind of challenges have you encountered pursuing what you love to do and how have you overcome them?
Oh lord that is a really, really, long story but If you want to you can go back and research old Herald articles but when we moved here I researched really hard about this piece of land to make sure we can have the wolves here. So I read all the ordinances and I did all the research and we probably looked at a hundred pieces of property. So when we moved the refuge here we thought everything was going to be just fine. Well it wasn’t because the neighbors, well there a mile away but they have sheep, well they made a big deal and we had to go to the county and we had to really fight through the county process and we had to get a special land permit because they decided that we fell into other. So we had to have all kinds of sounds studies done and it took us about a year and a half of hard fighting within the county system to get our land use permit. Then they decided once they exhausted that option, that they were going to take us to civil court. So then we had to go through that process, which we also won. Then they decided that they were going to try to shut off our food supply. So Purina, who donates food, they also make a lot of ranch food. So all the ranchers said they were not going to buy Purina food if you donate to the wolves. Then there were big things in the paper because the people were like, “well if they got out wouldn’t you want them to be well fed?” So anyways this huge deal and that was the hardest thing actually because we kind of set the refuge up based on getting donated food. We couldn’t buy food for, at the time we had seventy animals, seventy five animals, so it was really difficult. People would drive by on four wheelers with rifles and it was very intimidating and at that point we were already pretty exhausted because moving the refuge from Pagosa took everything I had, everything Financially, emotionally, mentally, physically. I mean I was done, so you finally get here, you think you’re going to be safe and you put all that effort into the move and then in fact you realize you have a huge battle on your hands. So it took about 2 yrs. and close to twenty thousand dollars to finally have everything legally set and so now the land use permit stays with the property. So now the wolves can be here forever but it was hard, we were going to restaurants and people would make bad comments and (ah) the whole thing was just a mess but now we are good and of course we had our supporters don’t get me wrong but it was pretty heated, there were some pretty heated county commissioner battles and they would write terrible things in the paper about us and it was awful but anyway it’s all good now.
3. What do you love most about working with animals?
Part of it is just being outdoors and in nature, you know I’m one of those people where nature is sort of my spirituality and if I’m indoors to long or around artificial stuff too long I feel sick and so part of it is just living my passion of being outdoors and you know of course there is the sense of your really making a difference and there is the challenge of rehabilitating them and of course the personal relationships I have with them, which are my heart and soul.
4. If you could relive 5-10 yrs. of your life, what might you do differently professionally?
You know I don’t have a whole lot of regrets, you know…I’m going to be sixty this year so I have had a couple different lifetimes, you know in high school don’t think that you’re on your path and that it’s going to be your life path because things change you will have several lives you know. So I got married young, had my kids really young, didn’t marry the best person for me but I was very much in love so I don’t regret getting married and I don’t regret getting divorced. So that was kind of my life until I turned thirty and then I waitressed for a lot of years, raised my kids alone, went back to school, and again between 30 and 45 or so that was that life and then I met my second husband and did this. So there has been a lot of change and growth and I’m not sure I would change anything if you want to know the honest truth. I got my degree in teaching which was really good for me. So I don’t know, I loved waitressing, I think that all your experiences kind of make you who you are and I am not sure I could have done this without some of the background I had. So I am not sure I would change anything professionally if you want to know the honest to god truth. I would write more but that’s me, that’s on me, I just need to take the time but I am pretty satisfied with what I do and what I’ve done.
5. In the future what do you hope Wolfwood Refuge will become?
That is a tricky question you know because I’m turning sixty, as a responsible animal steward, I don’t want to be too old to take good care of them or I don’t want to die and leave these animals with nobody. So either Wolfwood is going to have to find a committed person that will take on the challenge of running it at some point or we need to start slowing down and continue to care for the animals that we have and take in less animals and I have not really made that decision yet, I haven’t really decided which way that’s going to go and that may change, I may decide to take in less animals and then we may find the perfect person. People all the time say, “Well don’t you want your life’s work to live on?” and the answer is no. I mean this is my life’s work, I don’t imagine anybody else will do it the way I do it or nor should they. If someone else says hey this is also my passion and I would like to step in to an organization that is already well on its way then that’s great but I don’t in vision, I don’t have a vision of Wolfwood living on past me, if that makes sense. We will do a lot more educational things like in a different way as time goes on. I have a visitor’s center that is going to be done this year, which is going to be super awesome. So I’m really excited in that. I kind of have an idea that we may do wolf camps at some point, for kids, summer camp. So there is other directions that I’d go but most of the changes have to do with outreach, as opposed to anything else.
6. When you were just getting into your professional career field, was there a time where you were uncertain you actually wanted to pursue it?
Well Wolfwood happened by accident, I didn’t plan it, I moved to Colorado with my one wolf dog and his best friend was a little corgi and I left him in California because it was my son’s dog so my wolf dog got very depressed and very sad. So I rescued one to be his friend and another one and another one. So it kind of just grew and then I went through all the steps, we got our 501 C3, we were incorporated, we got state licensed, all of those things happened as a progression and a necessity based on how quick we were growing. The only time that I was concerned about it was when we made the move and it wasn’t a question of whether I wanted to do it as to whether it was a question of whether we could but in the beginning it was pretty rough. We had sacrificed a whole lot to do this. We didn’t even have running water for ten years and we don’t take trips to the Bahamas. We give up a lot to do it but again not everybody gets to live their passion and I do. The only question I have now is again, the question of finding a good care taker that can be here. My parents are getting a lot older, grand kids are growing up, so I would like a little bit more freedom to travel more and be gone more. It is very hard for me to leave them for more than a week. So that’s the only challenge I see personally as far as what I have done, I have locked myself down pretty well and of course there is no pension fund or retirement so there is that problem.
7. To you, what is most rewarding about being in your type of career field?
Again besides rehabilitating all the animals, seeing the effect the animal has on people, especially kids. Lots of times the animals have life altering and life changing effects on people and so people have chosen different career paths, people have healed illnesses, people have gotten over emotional trauma, all because they have had interaction with wolves and so I find that amazing. I really like to see and enjoy seeing the variety and depth of impact they have on people. For example there was a man that came up with macular degeneration and they told him that he would be completely blind in a month. So he came up and it was a little difficult to get him in some of the pins but we did. So he went in with Oakley and Oakley just kind of went nose to nose with him and looked him right in the eyes and the man came out of the pin and said, “If that’s the last thing I ever see, I am okay with that.” And so Oakley helped him come to terms with what was happening to him and helped him store up some memories of beauty that helped him feel good. So those kind of things are really rewarding.
8. What advice would you give someone who is looking to find passion or fulfillment in their career field/job?
First of all you have to work at it, people think that because it’s your passion, that it should come easy and that’s not true. There is a lot of struggle in doing what you love, especially if it’s outside the box. So you have to be able to invest yourself to it and you have to enjoy it. If it ever comes to a point where I quit loving what I do, I’m not going to do it anymore. So I think just not getting bogged down, remember why you do it. You have to keep that passion alive otherwise you’re going to burn out. Not many people have done this as long as I have because they burn out and so I think that keeping yourself connected and doing things for yourself and remembering why you love it. So you don’t burn out and you have to surround yourself with good people. There is now way to do anything that you’re passionate about and that you love by yourself. You’ve got to have people around you that have a similar vision or that at least people who are willing to follow you into your vision and so I think keeping your passion alive and realizing that it’s a hell a lot of hard work and surrounding yourself with other like-minded people and having a support network, all that is very crucial and don’t listen to other people. I can’t tell you how many people have told me you can’t do it that way, really? Watch me. I mean seriously you have to be true to yourself because if you’re not true to yourself than you’re not following your passion. You’re doing what other people want you to do and so don’t listen to people that say you can’t do that because you can.
9. What do you think is the most important lesson we can learn from wolves, either spiritually, ideologically, or mentally?
Oh god there is so much and I am actually going to teach a class at ghost ranch this year and I am going to be asking some of those questions because sort of the gist of the class is what lessons can we learn from the animals, wolves in particular and so It’s a very complicated question and it deserves more thought than I am giving it at this exact moment but one of the things that I know the wolves demand is that you be fully present when your with them, you cannot be listening to your music, you can’t be daydreaming about your grocery list. They demand that you’re there with them and they demand your focus and they demand that you pay attention to them and they demand you are paying attention to what you’re doing and I think that is really important because I think we are disconnected as people right now and the wolves demand connection and interaction and I think that is good for us so that’s one thing because if you’re not paying attention to them, then they will let you know and that’s not a good thing. I also, at least from our animals, think that one of the biggest lessons they have to teach us is in survival. Some of these animals have gone through so much abuse and so much emotional trauma and yet they recover and they don’t just recover they thrive and I think there is some really big lessons there, on being able to recover from trauma and from sometimes things that we think is devastating and you can recover from that, with grace and dignity and you can be whole again. I think that is a big lesson that these guys have to teach us and I am hoping that they can teach us tolerance. If either historically and or personally, I think if most of us went through what wolves go through, we would again just give up and just be done and of course never want to be involved with a person ever again and so I think they have a lot to teach us about tolerance and we need to listen.