Woman With a Wolf Challenges ‘Bad Rap’ Given Breed

McKaela and Karen hardly go anywhere without each other.

In fact, if Karen, 32, is asked out on a date, the wolf she named McKaela goes, too.

“She feels a real closeness to me, and I can’t leave her,” said the North Orange County resident who asked that her last name and address be withheld to protect the wolf from curious people and thrill seekers.

Instead, Karen has been taking her 94% wolf--the father is 100% wolf and mother is 88% wolf and 12% malamute--to schools to help change what she considers a false impression about wolves.

“My whole goal is to speak freely and give seminars to people, especially to our younger generation, that will some day change things,” she said.

“Most of what people know about wolves is through myths and fables,” said the longhaired Fullerton College graduate who works as a cosmetologist at the Upstairs-Downstairs Beauty Salon in Brea.

“Wolves always got a bad rap,” she continued. “Actually, they are gentle and passive and are frightened of most everything except what they eat.”

She contends that there has never been a reported bite or attack on a human by a wolf.

To train her, “I would bite her on the nose, just like a mother wolf would do,” she said. “I don’t have to do that any more.”

Those and other facts are part of the information she delivered recently to seventh-graders at Brea Junior High School as part of their language arts program.

Of course, she brought McKaela.

Before her visit the students read “Julie of the Wolves,” a novel about a runaway Eskimo girl who was helped by a pack of wolves. She also preps teachers and provides a video on the animals.

The children are not permitted to touch McKaela.

“She is gentle, but she is so loving she would knock them over and kiss them to death,” she said.

McKaela, a name derived from two other names, looks like a longhaired dog and has been trained to sit and lie down.

She is also housebroken. “She gets my attention by nudging a bell at the back door when she wants to go outside,” Karen said.

Her meals usually consist of ground turkey, rice, carrots and potatoes.

“I trained her, and a lot of people said I wouldn’t be able to do it,” she said.

Karen said her interest began five years ago after researching her own lineage. She discovered that her great-great-grandmother was a Blackfoot Indian.

“That really interested me, and I learned Indians believe the wolf is a spiritual symbol of a teacher, and I set out to find one.”

Karen said she searched for a year before settling on McKaela. “Since getting her, my life has changed dramatically,” she said. “When I first got her it was real hard for me to go to work. She’s just like a child.”

Karen said she will continue to pass the word “until people understand that wolves are not vicious and should not be killed.”

They recently returned from a 10-day camping trip. “We slept in a tepee,” Karen said. “We just got into Mother Earth.”