He is NOT on the Tour Path.
In July of 2024, tragic news struck the wolf and wolfdog world when a beloved member of the community, Sue Cranston, passed away. Not only was Sue a tremendous advocate for these animals, she was also the Founder and Executive Director of Indigo Mountain Nature Center, a non-profit sanctuary located in Lake George, Colorado. With her passing, Indigo Mountain was on the cusp of shutting down, which would have left their 25 canid rescues without a home. With the over-saturation of wolfdogs already in sanctuaries (and more requiring placement each day), there was nowhere for these animals to go.
Losing a sanctuary is much like losing a life boat on a sinking ship, which is why Wild Spirit stepped up to offer a solution. Our first idea was to save the sanctuary itself; to purchase the Indigo Mountain property and in doing so, preserve the home of the 25 wolfdogs. The objective was to dissolve the Colorado sanctuary into our own, allowing Wild Spirit to operate in two neighboring states. This was called our “Save Indigo Mountain Campaign,” which saw an unprecedented amount of support from our incredible followers, as well as celebrities such as Kate Linder, Diane Warren, Bo Derek and many others. Unfortunately, the total up-front cost of this project (which included the purchase of the property itself, facility upgrades needed to acquire USDA licensing, and vet care for each rescue) would be approximately $1,500,000–a steep hurdle to save their lives. Regretfully, we were unable to amass the fund necessary to purchase the property before the owner’s deadline, and the land was sold in February of 2025.
Luckily for the residents of Indigo Mountain, Wild Spirit does not know the meaning of defeat. Though they lost their home, we were adamant to save their lives. One life boat was now officially gone, so we instead committed ourselves to building a new one! This began an even greater task of expanding Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary and creating 18 new enclosures to bring the animals here. We knew it would not be an easy endeavor. In fact, we were fully aware it would be far more difficult than simply purchasing the Indigo Mountain property, due to the limited space and resources here at Wild Spirit. Additionally, we had a new deadline of only 3 months to make it all happen; failure to do so would mean the 25 wolfdogs at Indigo Mountain would lose their homes, and their lives. Thus, the “Save Indigo Mountain Campaign” became our “Unite the Packs Campaign.“
The first step was securing enough money to make this transition possible, which we estimated to be a grand total of $171,729.44. Our donors, once again, proved their commitment to these animals by allowing us to reallocate a portion of our funds from the previous campaign to this new purpose, immediately securing $148,450.76 across 806 donations. Those who could not support us financially instead volunteered their time for enclosure construction, or donated enclosure materials (shout out to our good friend Jesse at Arkansas Wolf & Wildlife Center). All that was left was to construct the enclosures, and get the animals off property in time . . .
On March 12th, 2025, we officially rescued our first 12 animals from IMNC: Chappa, Tioga, Cassidy, Tahoe,Jaeger, Sonoma, Tippy, Blizzard, Stella, Summit, Frisco and
This is, by far, the largest rescue that Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary has ever conducted, and we cannot possibly express our endless gratitude to every human who helped make this possible. Thank you.
Finally, in order to share the full stories of our Indigo Mountain rescues, we’ve included their original bios below:
One morning in the Spring of 2016 we went to take the trash out and found a kennel with three puppies huddled inside it at our gate: Tioga, and his two siblings, Tahoe and Sonoma. Although we have tried to locate the owner we have never been successful.
Tioga has grown into a large boy who can be quite the stinker when he wants to be. He currently lives with Chappa.
