into New Mexico - Wolf Sanctuary

In Flagstaff, we had a certified Onan technician trouble-shoot our generator which was not running. He found that we had 3 more gas leaks and literally laughed at how bad the installation was (he called over other technicians and they all had a good laugh). Certainly, it is not so funny. The installers had used piping which was much smaller than called for by Onan, and they had not flaired the copper gas piping well; no amount of tightening would have prevented the leaks. The pipes were severely kinked by their attempts to tighten the connection and the technician was amazed that the generator ever ran! After another $400 in repairs, we're in business. Hopefully the installer will reimburse us once again for the problems.

After leaving Flagstaff, we visited the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary in New Mexico and stayed in their RV area. The wolves howled all night (it was fantastic) and strangely, Rex did not howl back. We had a visit in the morning from a tarantula, then took the tour of the sanctuary


We felt sorry for this 12 yr old partially blind wolf who seemed so very lonely in his enclosure. They had tried housing him with others but the others were too rambunctious for this old guy.

This wolf dog is a sad but typical example of a wolf dog - too much to handle for her family, she is now caught in between two worlds, not happy as the high content wolves may be in these enclosures, missing the family connection she once had with humans. Her sadness was clear in her eyes, and makes me cry. We enjoyed our visit but this was not a happy place for us - a holding place for wolves and wolf dogs who have nowhere else to go. The high content animals seem to be happy in their family groups, but low content animals are hurting to be members of a family. Though we have met many folks along the way who had wolf dogs and successfully merged them into their families, it is not something that should be left to amateurs - and many of these animals have to be destroyed.