Today is an exciting day at Wild Spirit, for both our guests and our rescues! Today we finally unveil our new Educational Encounter program! For our long term supporters, I am sure you remember the days when Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary had an active Ambassador Program. Animals like Raven, Flurry, Forest, Storm, and many others once roamed the country to educate the public, and were even available to meet at the sanctuary for a fee.

However, as our Ambassadors grew old, tired and grumpy (as we all eventually do), they were no longer interested in adventuring like they once did. Furthermore, we as an organization are always learning, growing and striving to improve. The program of old, while excellent for educating our wonderful supporters, was not always in our rescues’ best interest, and unfortunately strayed into the territory of exploitation. Due to these factors we retired our Ambassadors and postponed outreach until we could devise a more suitable program.

Well, the day has finally arrived! We are proud to announce that our Educational Encounter Program is now up and running! This program comes with a number of changes to our old system to resolve our past concerns, while still allowing our guests to interact with our rescues:

1. We are implementing consent-based interactions, where guests either enter an enclosure and wait for the rescue to greet them on their own terms, or we walk a rescue out to an established greeting zone where they choose whether they wish to socialize
2. We have removed the cost-barrier to interacting with our rescues. Instead of us profiting off these encounters, they are completely free to guests who visit the sanctuary for a Guided Tour or Specialty Tour
3. Guest will receive an educational talk, led by one of our wonderful Animal Care Specialists. Our team will tell you how to interact with each individual rescue, the methods we use to build relationships, explain the behaviors the rescues exhibit, and more!
4. Our focus will be ensuring that these encounters are a positive, enriching experience for our rescues! For encounters that occur on leash, the rescue will have free-reign to roam and interact entirely on their terms. For encounters in enclosures, we aim to broaden the horizons of our rescues by structuring visits in a way that will reduce stress around visitors, get them accustomed to all types of humans and to positively condition social interactions!
5. Lastly, if a rescue does not want to participate in an encounter, that is absolutely okay. We have plenty of different enclosures/rescues to choose from, each of which offer a unique educational experience for the critters and the humans

Encounters are open to both large and small groups, as well as a wide range of ages and disabilities.  This makes this exciting experience perfect for individuals, families and even school groups who wish to stop by! However, Wild Spirit will only be open to the public for another 4 months this year (until the end of December), so come visit Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary soon for a Guided Tour at 12pm or 3pm on Thursday – Sunday, or book a Specialty Tour today!

As mentioned, these encounters are completely complimentary following or during a tour (Self-guided tour guests may also participate at 1pm and 4pm following our Guided Tours, but an encounter will not be offered if there was no Guided Tour during that time slot).

For information on our Guided and Self-Guided Tours, click here! Or if you would like to book a Speciality Tour, please click the button below.