WolfDog Rescued By Sanctuary After Its Former Owner Dumped Him For Having ‘Too Much To Handle’

The wolf is one of the most respected animals in the world, thanks to their sharp intelligence, incredible instincts, and social abilities.

 For centuries, humans have been fascinated by this stunning animal; featuring in legends, books, movies, paintings and finally in the 21st-century people decided to take a leap of faith and try to take a bit of that wilderness home.

This gave birth to the idea of combining the best of two worlds, creating a wolfdog. This is basically a mixture of wolf and a domestic dog both of which are in the same family- Canis.

Meet Yuki, one of the most unmistaken Wolfdog in the ShyWolf sanctuary where he calls home.

Brittany Allen, a staff member at the sanctuary revealed that; “His DNA testing came back as 87.5 % Gray Wolf, 8.6 % Siberian Husky, and 3.9 % German Shepherd”

Yuki first became famous when his photo went viral on the internet. In the image, Yuki appeared so huge that he towered over the girl in the photo with him.

Brittany Allen, who is 5’4.  Was quick to clarify that Yuki is not actually as large as he appears in the pic and weighs around 120 lbs. She recently hilariously responded to accusations of photoshopping the image with an Instagram post along with a caption: “The face we make when people say Yuki’s picture is Photoshopped… It’s just his fat angle guys. We all have one”.

The photo has attracted a lot of much-needed attention, helping raise awareness on the sweet and tragic story of majestic wolfdog that got a second chance at life when he was rescued by the sanctuary

“We rescued him from a failed house pet situation. Someone purchased him from a breeder and realized he was too much to handle. They dumped him at a kill shelter at 8 months old. We stepped in and provided a home for him and he has been with us ever since,“ – said Brittany Allen.

“Yuki came to us in 2008.  He was in reasonably good health compared to a lot of the animals that come to us and had a very outgoing personality initially. We even considered him for ambassadorship at one point. Shortly after arriving at Shy Wolf Sanctuary Yuki managed to catch a leg on a palmetto and opened up a wound on his right rear knee. The wound ended up taking a total of 5 surgeries to finally repair and in that time Yuki became cage aggressive.” – one of the directors at Shy Wolf Sanctuary added.

After years of caregiving at the sanctuary, the staff and volunteers received shocking sad news. Yuki has had been diagnosed with blood cancer, although you wouldn’t notice by looking at him.

“He was diagnosed with cancer last year and unfortunately it is terminal. We have dealt with this particular cancer before and ultimately you don’t really know how fast you caught it and how much time they have.  Yuki has been fighting it for quite a while now and is persevering so it is business as usual while we enjoy our time with Yuki.  When the day comes that he starts showing symptoms we will, as we always do, make the right decisions for Yuki’s quality of life,” – Jeremy Albrecht said.

“Saying goodbye to one of our animals is always difficult for our staff and volunteers, and Yuki will be no different.  But it’s important to remember that while many of these animals have rough beginnings, their stories always have happy endings once they get to Shy Wolf Sanctuary. When their time with us is over the last thing they do is make room for our next rescue and a happy ending,” he added.