Owner Dumped Wolfdog At Kill Shelter When He Got Too Much To Handle, Luckily This Sanctuary Saved Him

The strength, incredible instincts, sharp intelligence, and social abilities of the wolf is what has made them one of the most respected animals in the world. The stunning animal has been featured in legends, books, movies, paintings and other products of culture for centuries which slowly taught us to appreciate them even more. So it’s understandable that people wanted to take a bit of that wilderness home. With the idea of combining the best of both worlds, people created a wolfdog. Wolfdog is basically a mixture of wolf and domestic dog, both of which are members of same Canis species.

You probably wouldn’t think twice about his descent when meeting Yuki, and no wonder why. Yuki is one of the highest content wolfdogs at the sanctuary where he is currently staying.“His DNA testing came back as 87.5 % Gray Wolf, 8.6 % Siberian Husky, and 3.9 % German Shepherd,” – a staff member of Shy Wolf Sanctuary Brittany Allen told Bored Panda.

In this photo Yuki is appearing so giant it’s intimidating, and it’s taking the internet by storm. The girl in the photo, Brittany Allen, who is 5’4, said 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”.

“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.

Volunteers of Shy Wolf Sanctuary shared pictures of Yuki at his new home from 2012 and their first impressions of his personality: “Yuki loves women, showing off to visitors, and being super goofy”.

After years of giving warmth and a loving home to Yuki, the sanctuary was struck by heartbreaking news that the wolfdog has been diagnosed with blood cancer, though you couldn’t tell just 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 happy ending.”