by Janet Hurley
photos by Brent Fleury

The fire just wouldn’t catch, though it was a blazing hot July day. Nancy Brown, then 44, and her teenage son, Joel, had just gathered fallen apple tree branches into a pile on her 17 acres, now known as Full Moon Farm, outside Black Mountain. They just wanted to be done with the chore so they could move on to others, like caring for the 12 neglected wolfdogs Brown had recently taken in. Brown fetched a can of kerosene and soaked the branches. It seemed like a good idea. But the humidity hung in the air like a rug, trapping the kerosene fumes. Just the hint of a spark caused an explosion that left Brown with second- and third-degree burns all over her body. While her son biked to the end of the drive to get help, Brown says, “I was trying to keep from going into shock. I got in the shower, I had skin and hair falling off me and I heard my mother’s voice: Nancy, you’re stronger than the pain and you don’t have time for bullshit.” 

The sound of her mother’s voice continued to help her hold things together. “I was able to come out of that incident physically, emotionally and spiritually intact. I felt like I had been given another opportunity.” So she took it. That year, in 2000, Brown changed the course of her life. As her burns healed, she became involved with the Universal Brotherhood Movement, a world-wide affiliation of interfaith ministries based in Boca Raton, Florida, which advocates active service to demonstrate non-judgmental and unconditional love.  Brown told a Brotherhood acquaintance she wanted to help wolfdogs—animals she’d been passionate about since she gave one to her second husband as a wedding present in the mid-‘90s.

She drove north to Loki Clan Wolfe Refuge in Maine to pick up one dog from a large rescue effort. She came back with 18. “I never intended it to be this big,” Brown says. “But I felt like, if not me, who?” She worked with United Van/Smith Grey Lines as a salesperson and estimator and figured her annual earnings of $50,000 a year would be plenty to help build large enclosures and fund the dogs’ care. Besides, growing up in Ohio, Brown’s mother taught her to listen to her intuition and trust her gut feelings. So, in 2002, she incorporated Full Moon Farm as a nonprofit, with a mission of wolfdog rescue, education and sanctuary.
Contrary to what many people think, wolfdogs aren’t a 50/50 mix of wild wolf and dog. They have one parent descended from a verifiable lineage of captive-bred wolves within the last five generations. Brown bought a second female wolfdog for her husband, bred her pair and sold the puppies. “I was one of those stupid people I try to educate now,” Brown says. Her relationship with the dogs outlasted the marriage.

Brown says it’s hard to determine the exact wolf content of a dog because wolf and dog DNA is so closely related. Physical wolf-like characteristics can show up in a variety of dog mixes, so determining by sight is difficult. (Brown says she can now see when a dog has only “six hairs of wolf in it.” The problem is, most buyers can’t.) Many wolfdogs are sold to people who want a wolf as a status symbol, but when they discover the dogs don’t really have wolf lineage, they no longer care about them. And if the dog does have a high percentage of wolf, owners are unprepared to provide large, dig-proof enclosures with hogwire at least eight feet tall or the kind of time and interaction that wolfdogs, as pack animals, require. According to an article about high-percentage wolfdogs, Can You Turn a Wolf into a Dog? co-authored by wildlife biologist Pat Tucker, many people are unprepared for natural wolfdog behavior, such as “territoriality, scent markings, destructiveness, possessiveness, excessive shyness, pacing, digging, and howling.” 

Henry Bullock, a biologist and animal curator at the Western North Carolina Nature Center, says people who buy wolfdogs don’t understand that wolves live by rigid rules—there is no room for error in the pack. A dog, domesticated over 7,000 years, has a different rulebook that’s more fluid and well-adapted to humans. A wolfdog generations away from its wolf ancestor may act just like a dog. “The problem is, people want a wolfdog to look like a wolf, and that’s more likely in wolfdogs with high-percentage wolf. They then have two rulebooks to live by and you never know which one they might go by.” Bullock says there’s a certain point for wolves to challenge the alpha dog for dominance. At the Nature Center, he and his staff handle two 15-month-old grey wolves (captive-bred and hand-raised), and they are lead-trained. But the staff never permits dominance behavior—they don’t even let the wolves lean against their legs. An unknowing wolfdog owner might encourage such behavior early on, which turns into a problem when the animal grows. Bullock says there are responsible, educated wolfdog owners who understand what they have, but not well enough. “Hundreds of wolfdog rescues have popped up around the country because people just don’t know what they’re doing…There are a few rescues that are doing this well. One of them is Full Moon Farm. They deserve a lot of credit, and a lot of help, for what they are doing. I hold Nancy Brown and her work in high esteem.”

Just driving into the Full Moon Farm sanctuary is sobering. Set amidst the usual Blue Ridge jungle of poplar, pine, rhododendron and mountain laurel, huge enclosures are everywhere, containing from one to three wolfdogs, 71 in all. They stare intently and turn their heads to follow a car’s progress in mostly silent assessment. Indeed, some look to be pure wolf. It’s easy to see how a buyer could be fooled and impossible to imagine how anyone could abuse these animals in the ways that Brown describes: left on the end of short chains in a backyard, malnourished, abandoned. For some, the abuse was far worse than starvation or beatings, and they can’t be handled.  Brown’s mission is to care for the animals and keep them safe even if she can’t responsibly adopt them out. Still, some require euthanizing. Brown has euthanized 35-40 dogs for illness over the years and six for behavior issues, five of which came from one rescue where the animals were abused. “I cry. My volunteers cry,” Brown says. “It’s never an easy decision.”

There’s nothing easy about this life, which Brown calls L.A.W. or, life after wolfdogs. “The truth is,” she says with a smile that is equal parts humor and sadness, “In life after wolfdogs, there is no life.” Through six years of rigorous, vigilant animal care, Brown has continued to survive fires of another sort. Smith/Grey Lines let her go in 2004, because, she says, they felt her heart was no longer in the moving business. After 12 years with the company, she cashed in a sizeable 401(k) and lived on it for a year. She hasn’t had health insurance since. Then there are fundraising shortfalls, managerial headaches and the controversial nature of wolfdog rescue. Some of the small fires she can extinguish with a good splash of education—like when people ask her why the wolfdogs can’t just be set free. “That dog will be on my front porch knocking on the door asking, mom where’s my dinner?” Brown says. Most of her dogs have never lived in the wild or been a part of a pack, and never learned how to hunt. Because wild wolves are so territorial, she says, they would probably kill a newcomer, if the wolfdog didn’t starve to death or get shot first.

Other controversies continue to smolder. The hottest is whether wolfdogs are too aggressive to be kept as pets. “So many rescue people are against private ownership or against breeding, but that’s wrong,” Brown says. Her stringent criteria for wolfdog adoption includes large, escape-proof enclosures and education on the physical and emotional needs of the animal—the same guidelines other rescue organizations advise. But Wolf Park, a nonprofit near Lafayette, Indiana, states on its website that high-content wolf hybrids “should never be regarded as pets. While low percentage wolf-dog hybrids are kept like pure dogs, they all retain, as do many dogs, the motivation for predatory behavior.” Small children are especially at risk for triggering that response. Full Moon Farm Board Treasurer, Sandie Rector, emphasizes the caveat: Many dogs without any wolf heritage will follow their prey response. Rector, who owns Bone-A-Fide Bakery in Black Mountain, often hosts events where families can meet socialized wolfdogs from Full Moon Farm and says she knows a family with two wolfdog pets and a new baby. Brown says she has never been bitten out of aggression, though she has been nipped when she wasn’t paying attention to a dog’s body language.

Public perception of wolfdogs is that they are not just bigger, but are also fiercer and more aggressive. Many states have introduced legislation that makes it illegal to import, possess, purchase, breed, or sell an “inherently dangerous animal,” including wolfdogs. The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), citing several incidents in which people were killed by alleged wolfdogs, issued a press statement in 2006: “In light of these incidents, (we) continue to urge the states to ban private possession, breeding and sales of wild animals as pets… Crossbreeding wolves with domesticated dogs produces animals with the same wild instincts of the wolf. They are extremely unpredictable as pets, especially around children.” The Center for Disease Control and American Veterinary Medical Association websites say “wolf hybrids” are a mix of wild and domestic animals and are therefore unpredictable.

Controversy can also spark inside the Full Moon Farm nonprofit structure. Brown says she had no clue how to develop a board, a fundraising plan or a volunteer base. “I have a personality that attracts people but also repels them,” she says. “I’m like the dogs, I might nip or bark a little.” Rector agrees. “You have to be a little thick-skinned to work with Nancy. She’s very exact about what needs to be done—I just keep in mind that when she gets on me about making sure gates are closed and locked in the particular way that she wants…it’s all about safety.”

Today Brown works part-time as a realtor and doesn’t draw a salary from Full Moon. The farm has roughly a dozen or so dependable volunteers to provide full-time care for 71 dogs, which includes daily feeding, watering and cleaning of all the enclosures—not to mention doing repairs, filling in holes that wolfdogs naturally dig and spending time with the animals. Brown gave up her house to the cause and has allowed volunteers to live in her sitting room. “In all honesty, I’m crispy. I have nothing left that’s mine,” she says. Until April, Full Moon was able to pay its $1,200 a month feed bill and sometimes exorbitant vet bills, but fundraising has recently dropped off. In past years, funds came from private donations. Grants to help specific breeds of dogs or wildlife don’t apply to a wolfdog, which is regarded as neither. (“They are the bastards of the canine world,” Brown says often.) In a perfect world, Brown would hire someone to be the animal caretaker and have a board to do the fundraising, so that she could travel and work as an advocate and educator. “I want to get on Oprah. I want wolf dogs to be nationwide.”

Brown says she’s angry about cleaning up “other people’s messes,” though some might say Brown created a few herself. One mess divided her board members, half of whom she lost in April 2006 after she decided to take in 24 severely abused dogs from a supposed wolfdog rescue operation in McDowell County—adding to an already large population of approximately 52 at Full Moon Farm. The operation was closed by McDowell county officials who asked Full Moon Farm to help, a request that was publicized in local television news. “My board members said, you have no right to take those dogs. And I said, I had no right not to,” Brown says.

When asked about the board schism, Rector was quick to defend Brown’s actions, saying time was short for decisions and the television report brought even more pressure. “And they were right in the next county. We rescue dogs from all over the country and Nancy was afraid it would look like we won’t help those in our own back yard.” Besides, Brown didn’t receive accurate information—the dogs were in far worse shape than anyone imagined, and five had to be euthanized.
Brown doesn’t second-guess herself, but the move did cost her dearly. Her ex-board members still don’t speak with her, and Brown, with tears in her eyes, says she lost another relationship. “I had a wonderful man in my life for six months, but he feels I’m committed and married to this.” She felt she didn’t have the time and energy to commit to the relationship, especially since day-to-day care of the wolfdogs increased exponentially with some 20 more.

Brown says she has successfully adopted out about 35 wolfdogs, roughly ten percent of the total rescues, and it’s the adoptions and success stories that keep her focused on the good in her work. She has always tended to help people and care for other creatures, but her feelings on the matter are complex: “I’m like the wolfdogs. I’m opportunistic. So many end up in rescue because they’re smarter than their people. They can problem solve, figure out how to open gates. But they have to be stuck to be motivated to do that.” 

Her history bears that out. During L.B.W., life before wolfdogs, she was always able to figure her way out of a bad situation. Like in 1980, as a young twenty-something, when she was replaced as office manager for a Toledo warehousing company while on maternity leave. She filed a civil rights suit against her former employers and eventually won a hefty judgment. Or when she needed a job and landed one, selling steel, knowing only that “it rusts and sinks in water.”
Since moving to Asheville, Brown has redirected her life again and again: re-married, then divorced, for profit-work to nonprofit work, pet owner to wolfdog champion. She seems quite the alpha female, leading her volunteer pack and keeping her dogs safe with a fierce compassion. But she’s ready for even more change. “I want a life. I’ve been somebody’s daughter, somebody’s wife, somebody’s mother, and the somebody that I am now is the wolf-mommy.”
It’s hard to know how that next life will manifest. Rector admits the four-member board is too busy to address the overwhelming work of the wolfdog rescue or even to recruit new members. Rector, like Brown, never mentions the possibility that Full Moon Farm might close its operations. Maybe that’s because, as Full Moon’s foster agreement states, wolfdogs are a lifetime commitment.

Brown recently flew to Chicago to see Because They Have No Words, an award-winning play co-written by Tim Maddock and featuring a character based on Brown herself. It’s based on Maddock’s experience of volunteering to rescue animals in post-Katrina New Orleans, including a wolfdog named Pete. Brown took Pete in at Full Moon Farm in 2005, where he stayed until he died, at 14, of cancer. Maddock, after frustrating efforts to reunite Katrina-stranded animals with their people, drove to Full Moon Farm to visit Pete twice, and then wrote the dog and Brown into the script. Brown says it was a bit anti-climatic to watch an actress portray her on stage. “She played me too old and subdued, a wise older woman, a little more Southern than I am,” Brown says. After meeting Brown backstage, the actress changed her approach, focusing more on Brown’s energy and passion. Brown says with a laugh, “Tim said to me, no actor could possibly meet you and not be affected.”

To be sure, Brown tells her stories and those of the wolfdogs with a passion and energy that belies the exhaustion she says has her “stuck.” Though her role with Full Moon Farm may change, it’s hard to imagine her living far away from her wolfdog friends like Aries or Banjo or Mari or Marion. Being “wolf-mommy” comes from a gut instinct. As Brown’s mother taught her, instinct and intuition are everything.    

Visit www.fullmoonfarm.org to learn more  about Full Moon Farm