dispel myths and misconceptions about wolves wolf dogs and more stay where you are because positive energy starts right now welcome i have with me today mike and colleen from howling woods in jackson new jersey i also have samson and the touring with us today so i'm really excited to have you guys here thank you so much for coming thank you yes so i was saying i'm a dog lover i'm an animal advocate so i thought it was really important to learn a little bit more about what you're doing at howling woods i was actually there twice i went there once once wasn't good enough so i went back again with my husband my father and my jackson so i had extra room for these guys to have bigger pens to run and play with play in and i started taking one or two rescue animals at a time and eventually  the the farm started getting bigger we had volunteers that wanted to come and help and people wanted to stop by and visit and that kind of gradually grew from just you know my own little private residence at the same time teaching the the truth about will so you are there to raise awareness you're there to educate as well as keep them safe and happy in a home that they might not otherwise exactly exactly and then we also do events offsite as well we we take them to for presentations at libraries scout meeting senior centers and we've brought them to the princeton y m c a a couple of times and we basically have a  presentation about wolves that last thirty minutes or so and then we'll let allow the audience to come and meet a couple of our animals and see firsthand that just because a dog has its part wolf it's not dangerous but so what's the typical response is their typical response to when you walk in yeah there's usually when we do the presentation without them presence of people focus on the the speaker and not the animal and then that and then we walk them and then then there's usually like a lot of gasps and sighs from the audience i didn't know they were so big you know and sometimes a seaman or a little bit a little bit afraid but by the end of the by the end of the presentation once they've come up and interact with them we're not afraid anymore and that's what you want right g s that to change perceptions of them to see that there's nothing nothing fearful there nothing to fear so exactly what is a wolf dog i mean i know that it's a dog with wolf and it's family history be a great companion animal and a house dog and it's going to you know sit there on the sofa with the and watch t v but the truth is they're they don't like to be they don't like to be inside they need a home that has a lot of room so that you can they can be outside when you're not at home a lot of times we get out of those when they're six or seven months old because that's when they're big enough to cause destruction in the house and what happens is somebody will go to work and they'll come home and find their you know the window treatments pulled down or the sofa cushions you know torn apart and that's when they say oh i can't keep this animal and once that that's in there that's when we step in but unfortunately we can't take all the animals that were asked to take because you know we're only so big you know we have so much frenzy had you do actually turn away after several air animals a week and there's only a maybe a dozen rescues like us across the country so let's talk a little bit about the gentle dogs that you put dogs that you brought with you today tell us about sampson first who i know lives permanently with you how long this sampson been  the woods how old is he and what percentage of wall or what percentage of dog so sampson's been with us for pretty much ten years and we rescued him from pennsylvania he was rescued along with his brother noah who has since has passed from all the age he's being kept illegally in pennsylvania so not every where it is legal to own a wolf dog so we got a phone call saying that the people on the property were going to shoot him if we didn't rescue him and unfortunately a lot of wolf dogs have situations like this to just become a nuisance or too large and people want the quickest way to get rid of them so he's been doing tours and he's probably met more people than i have in my lifetime he's been doing tours with us since two thousand and five he's been with us and he is twenty four percent gray wolf he is mostly alaskan malamute with a little bit of german shepherd in there and he's about one hundred ten pounds he's like a big teddy bear he's definitely the most sampson and he's half german shepherd with a little bit of husky and that beautiful white collar a lot of people think he's are to all he actually gets a white collar from the shepherd gene and him and he's been was nice shepherds yeah so he's been with us well years he's been doing tours along with sam center the best of friends a lot of people end up thinking sampson is more wolf because he's bigger but when you look at torrey you see a little bit different features he has a longer so now versus samsung is more of a blocking snout and he came to us from bricktown new jersey he was owned by two police officers now good stories very submissive so he was being bullied by the family house ski so they can no longer keep him and him being a wolf dog they can't just those are some of the similarities what are some of the differences say a little bit more about some of the differences are between dogs and walls well you know from a veterinary point of view it's the exactly the same they get they get all the same veterinary care they're subject to all the same  one fifteen he's a little bit less now and that kotori is about eighty five pounds so when they talk about you know dogs and also wolf dogs being pack animal what does that mean exactly for a clear up any misconceptions around that  you know what does it mean to be a pack animal it's pretty much like a family unit like we have our family that's how a pack is the leaders of the pack are actually the breeding pair they mate for life it's mom and dad the rest of the pack is offspring and packs can consist usually about five to seven walls sometimes it could be more sometimes it could be less the term alpha really isn't accurate for wild wolves because alpha pretty much means one but in the wild it's mom and dad and then when the younger ones get to the age of two they decide whether or not they want to you know move out of the pack and start their own or stay for the next litter of puppies and take care of them so it's pretty much the equivalent of a person turning eighteen deciding whether or not they want to move out of the house or not a start start their own pack and then a lot of the problems that people have with purchasing dog as a pet is they don't like to be alone you know and when you know when the person leaves to go to work they're there alone or then once they get to a certain age they go through separation anxiety and that's when they get that's when they get upset and one of our adoption requirements for the higher continental most that we have is any home they go to they have to have a canine companion so when when you know the families in the home the they have a companion and that that makes the adoption rate much more successful and that's why we want to set them up for  success of course so you know i didn't know them well the way that you do yeah so you get in there or home yeah yeah oh you know we the people have to come to the well they first had to put in that location they have to come to the farm with their dogs to make sure that we animal they're interested is going to get along well walking together and watch how they interact and then if that goes well then we'll go up to their home and inspect it make sure that they have proper you know proper fencing that secured high enough know having you here wanting people to know that that if it even exists so they can reach out to you you know we we have we get several applications a week but most of the time people want to for the wrong reason they they just want to and that they can say oh i have an animal that's application and then interview and talk to them and meet them and see their home and so ultimately are you were sponsible for the success of it or you just obviously you feel a sense of responsibility because you want what's best for them yeah i mean you know we're not legally responsible because you know we the ownership transfers to the new home but you know we don't we want we want them to do we want to work out we don't want them to be returned but if it doesn't work out we always will you know take them back how many so you don't really there's not many people have i got to see like a while back off yeah they're not exactly broadcasting themselves or making themselves known because that's their instinct stealth i would imagine yes and also being being shot at through the years yeah you know one of my theories is that the animals that were most fearful and stayed away from people were the ones that survived and passed on their genes the ones that would get too close with we would be shot questions i still have questions because i find it fascinating but what can people if they're coming to hollywood expect from a tour what's it like for you to be a tour guide there different it's a different vocation then you tell people yes i'm a tour guide ye you about the reality of wolf dogs and wall currently and what's going on with hunting and everything like that we answer questions and people have a lot of questions we try to squeeze in and then our people get selfies with sams and to learn about each animal we tell all of them about their still early there's you know yeah unique story and for me the best thing about being the tour guide is is just seeing people smile at the end of the tour saying they had a great time and it's a memory they'll never forget and photos they'll have forever to show people and then when they tell their friends or bring their friends back it's a great feeling so it's really rewarding for me to talk about someone i love instantly rewarding as well as you've made a difference changing perception and it's a pleasant sound compared to barking plus they never last for more than a few minutes you know they'll go how and then the when they stop where's the dogs and they can just keep working and working to the point where it's annoying  wildlife management area state land so we will never be built upon and that was one of the reasons we chose the property in the to the size so i'm sure it takes a village to care for these beautiful animals in terms of the right you're saying the feeding in the health care and the vet care and exercise so how do you mean how do you manage i mean what's the most challenging part of that  cho well i mean we have a we have a small paid staff and then we have about you know forty to fifty volunteers that come on a regular basis and between the volunteers and the staff they they manage everything that needs to be done  like on mondays we do our health checks during the during the week we take them off for walks we have a special pen in the back we call it a recreational pen which is three acres in size and some of our rescue animals they have relatively smaller pens compared to the or ambassador so we'll let them go back there and spend a couple hours you know running running around so they get their exercise you know that way that in addition to the walks we have to take care of this while and there's a lot of hands to clean and maintenance to one of the most promising is twenty four seven yeah twenty four seven we have visitors they sign releases before they go on their tour and i remember that and we always explain really get puppies because people don't turn in an animal when it's a puppy because it's small and it's q and it doesn't cause any problems but every now and then we do when the the very day we got them we brought one of our females into our store to meet them and the first thing that she did after walking around stepping in was a regurgitate her her dinner and it was just instinctual that that's how wolves like feed feed their pet their babies their their pups they they go out on a h and they then they carry it back to their stomachs and then they they they regurgitated to feed the pups so when you see pups looking at a job of an adult that's that's to stimulate the regurgitation process so it looks like people likes the girl that's disgusting but no that's that's how they think they they feed their pups natural for them yeah i just learned something new moon you and then within that within three days the male dug a den that was about ten feet down with a big if it's necessary so it was very interesting to see it was a learned behavior wasn't taught to them they just knew what to do so it was really heartwarming to see the ones that we originally got as puppies now adults taking care of new copies so it's really cute it reminds us that again animals are not here for us still here with us right they have a separate lies independent of us they know what they're doing you know and they i mean that's why they have instinct right they're wired for survival and then when it goes away and dogs retain that as well where you have dogs that borrow you know my dogs like to sleep under the covers all the way the bottom line same similar instinct yeah well what i mean dogs are up shortly but you know what do you need what would you like to say to people do you need donations do you need more volunteers is there anything about the organization itself that you'd like to share well we certainly always need more volunteers you know because one of yours will stay for a while and then the leave and if you go to our website you can complete a volunteer application in order to you have to be eighteen years or older and you have to commit to coming two times a month for four hours each each time we always can use donations you know you know financial donations if you want to want to you can go into our website and there's a pay pal button where you can you know donate directly we could also tours from from from morning until until it gets dark and then on weekends we do our weekdays and he tours eleven twelve and one and one o'clock well i highly recommend it i give it five stars it's really wonderful place so thank you for the work another enlightening show if you're inspired to help wolf dogs live happy healthy lives reach out to hollywood's farms and while you're at it go vegan thank you monday morning flowers for the beautiful floral arrangement thank you for watching and join me next time on positive energy