To understand pain in your heart you must first have love in your heart!!! Now I'm not talking about love of people or love for people I'm talking about dogs!! In particular wolfdogs or wolf hybrid dogs!! After spending over 30 years of my life with this breed I can tell you that there is no other animal that will give you more of themselves. From there intelligence to their fun loving nature a wolfdog is underestimated in many ways!! I won't get into negativity towards their breed there is much written out there and as with any breed of dog most often it is the negligence of the humans that cause any negativity towards that breed!!
Why do we get another pet after being hurt so bad when we lose one? Because we love our animals. Love from  our pets especially a wolfdog is unconditional, what you give out you will get back 10 fold, there is nothing like your fury buddy coming up to you and giving you a big lick at the end of a hard day!!!!
I have been fortunate enough to have 4 Hybrid  lower content wolfdogs. All have been amazing very smart and well traveled. For most of my life I have been fortunate to do allot of traveling with my dogs and when not traveling they have come to work with me!! Wolfdogs are meant to be with their pack which means their people not left in the back yard!! If they are to be left in the yard they need a decent sized enclosure or yard with plenty of stimulation to keep them happy!!!
There is nothing like seeing these animals in there environment running down a beach or down a mountain trail!!!

Rocky

My opening of my wolfdog story unfortunately begins with the sad loss of my best friend in the world ("Rocky")
She made it to 13 years and this picture is actually 8 months before she died!! She looked exactly the same as this shot. She died suddenly we believe she had a heart attack so it was quick!! The last year of her life was awesome!! 4 months in Baja, hikes in the mountains and this shot was on a trip north to Oregon to go do some steel head fishing!!! She lived it up until the end!! We miss her so much and the pain in our hearts had not lifted until recently!!!

The passing of "Rocky" left a huge hole in our hearts!!!
But we were not without furry friends Ta-Tay the spirit wolfamute is still with us!! She is such a sweet good natured animal and is carrying on what Rocky taught her!! Yes these animals pick up from each other and the newest member of the pack will usually absorb traits that you have taught!!! Again they are very smart and if you have a good animal and can bring another in to learn from it you are that much further ahead when it comes to training!!

These two went every where with us and never came inside on our Camping trips they would sleep right outside our camper on their beds and stay there all night until morning!!!
Ta-Tay is now 13 and doing great she really is amazing she actually seems to have more spirit and stamina than she already had being the only pack animal left in the family!!!
But that is soon to change!!!
We have decided to get a new member for our pack!!
My wife and I started looking at higher content wolfdogs recently and love the black phase animals "soooo Beautiful" This is a big decision as the higher content animals are so close to being wolf that training and everything involved is stepping it up to another level!!
We started looking around and checking websites and found out unlike in the past there are so many breeders out there and people selling and claiming to have high content animals!!! So many beautiful pictures of animals but who to trust!! Also they are very expensive!!!!!

Our decision to get a new wolfdog ended up taking us to a small wolfdog facility!! The animals at this particular facility were hand picked by its owner for animals that he considered to be more adoptable!!! This saved us possibly $3000 that we would have spent by going through a breeder!!! This also allowed us money that could go into our enclosure and another smaller enclosure at our remote cabin in the mountains!!!
Before you get a new wolfdog, there is allot to consider!! This can be a life changing event for someone new to this breed!! Wolfdogs are pack animals and you will now be the alpha leader of your pack!!! It is a life commitment and should not be taken lightly!!! And that's just the start of it! You're will have to build an enclosure and look into food for your new addition, We like feeding a raw food diet for our animals!!! This will cost you some $ maybe more than you were willing to spend!!!
By chance, our wolfdog connection had a black phase animal and she is so beautiful!! Her name is Duchess.

Duchess

We made several trips to visit her before we decided to commit to bringing a new kid into our family!!!
Duchess is about 5 to 6 years old 90lbs very long and is more wolf than dog which is what you get with a high content animal!!
Our first visits with her we were able to walk her with Ta-tay and she was an amazingly good walker!! She also was very shy as to be expected but very calm which we liked the most!!! We saw in her immediately the potential for training!!!
I still had some reservations before making a final commitment to Duchess!!
My worries were bringing her to a suburban area.  It's noisier than where she is coming from and more people and animals i.e., encountering other dogs while on walks, fire engines , police sirens, etc.  How would she react!! How big of an enclosure should I build, and would she get along with Ta-tay when they got in close quarters? Bringing together two females wolfdogs is not a good idea, but fortunately, we have dealt with this before as Rocky was female!!!!
We took our time to make our final decision on Duchess!! She was waiting for us as we went on our annual trip south to Baja!!! With 5 months to really let everything set in we enjoyed our time and knew when we got back we could visit her again and go from there!!

Duchess and us with her friends in background!!!

As soon as we returned home we could not wait to go see her again!!
We went to where she lived and that was it, we were ready to take her then but first we had allot of work to do back home!!!!
We have a pretty decent sized back yard nothing huge but just enough to do what we needed to create a nice environment for out new arrival!!!
Actually our backyard needed some work and this got me to do allot of clearing out of junk and over growth in order to build our new wolfdog enclosure!!!
Luckily my background makes this kind of thing fairly easy as I was once a concrete contractor and I like to just create stuff as I go no plans everything from my head!! But thinking about logistics of two enclosures was a little overwhelming!!!

Rocky Ta-tay our spot of adventure!!!

We really want to spend more time at our mountain retreat so this would be big on our list!! Taking hikes with our new buddy is a priority and getting her to the point where we could get her there is still a big question mark as we don't know how long it will take to get her car trained where she will get in the truck in her crate and off to have some adventure!!!
We will cross this bridge when we get to it but first the cleaning of a backyard slate for a fresh canvas to build our new wolfdog enclosure!!!!
Our yard has had many transformations! it once had such a nice lush green grass and nice palm trees, a horseshoe pit really nice for entertaining very people friendly!!!!
Because we wanted to travel more we started a pet business that was something we did on the side!
We quit our jobs and set up an all inclusive pet care business!! We took off every season for Baja that was just the way we were going to run it and it worked great!! We started slowly taking more time until we had at least a couple months off!! This was not just for ourselves but for our animals!! A life choice that we were committed to.
Back to the yard! It also changed we started doing a doggie day care so this ment fences and containment areas. Our yard is not big but we could do 10 to 12 dogs and it was really fun but really changed our yard!!
In recent years we have slowed down the pet business and are more on the semi retired plan and this kind of let the back yard get a bit neglected!!!  No more doggie day care!!So preparing for a new pet sparked my imagination again for another yard transformation this time as a wolfdog kind of zoo look! I know some people must think we are crazy for doing this but we have the time and the passion for our animals and it really was'nt that much to consider going through with everything!!!

So time to begin with the new backyard look!!!!!!

We decided on an enclosure that would be 20X20!! This is a little small but we take into account that we will be spending 24/7 with our new wolfdog Duchess and this includes lots of walks and training time!!!
We really wanted our enclosure to blend into our backyard!! I hate chain link and metal posts, So decided to go with treated lumber! The Homedepot near us had the red colored treated lumber so much better looking than the green, It blends in so much better!! We decided to go 8' high with our posts! Most enclosures for wolfdogs are between 6' and 10' Duchess actually came from an enclosure that had a 5' high fence!! But she had a buddy that also was'nt a jumper and they were fine in that not that she did'nt have the capability to go over it!!!The reason we went 8' is because we were very concerned that environment change would possibly get here very nervous!! Like I said before would she freak out on more noise in the city!!!! For fencing we chose cattle panels they are 4 guage wire 52" high X 16' long pretty ridged and really nice to work with!!! No stretching chain link which is a pain in the ass!!! Also they can hold a lion if you wanted!!! The only problem with cattle panels is the animal can get it's head through which is not good if you have children or other dogs so if anyone goes this route take this into consideration!!!!!
I aquired my cattle panels through Blain's Farm and Fleet http://www.farmandfleet.com/ !! They are all the way in Wisconsin I'm in California. I paid about $20 per panel with shipping they came out to about $33 something like that, for 17 panels!!! I could'nt find any out here for less not close and they arrived in one week after I ordered them!! Great company!! Why did I order 17? because I needed more to make my smaller enclosure for our mountain cabin!! More on that later!!
Like I said before I don't like chainlink but if I did go that route I would have paid as much or more to build my enclosure plus I believe this is way beter looking and stronger!!!

Next step is putting up the panels!!

One person can do this it is easier with 2 I did it by myself!! The above picture I'm just figuring out how I want them to go!! I had 20 ' so needed 16 plus 4' piece then I would stagger the next one on top!!

Top rails on and door framed in!!!
I dug a little trench and set the panels about 6" into the ground and later would add chain link to dig proof the bottom this is where I like to use chainlink!!
At this point I was very happy with the way the enclosure was blending into the yard!!!!I used u nails about 2" to attatch the panels to the treated 4X4's and then hog ringed the panels together where they met!! All in All this made for very strong bonding of all materials used!!!!

I dug a trench and used 4' chain link and ran it a bit up the panels!!!
Covered it up and compacted dirt luckily I had mostly DG in the yard from having a dog park back there so it really compacts well!!!!
Now that all the panels were up and nailed and hog tied it was time to complete it with the gate!!!
With the gate completed now it was time to build Duchess house!!
I wanted enough room for her to move around also we would add cedar and wood shavings for her bed inside we hoped she would like the smell of the shavings and that would make her happy and comfortable!! Also I built a pedestal for her to jump up on!!! With everything built and set into the enclosure Time to finish up the exterior landscape to make it all come together!!!

Overall came out pretty nice added some fresh bark and because we live near the beach picked up some cobble stone for the front entry and some flagstones!!!!! Now we are ready for the arrival of Duchess!!!!!!!!!

2/25/2015  Well so much has happened since I last wrote on here so I am going to dig up photos and continue my blog!!!
Life throws a lot at you and you sometimes have to go down different paths to finally get to the end of your journey! This is the start of our journey with Duchess!!!