Beth Duman's response to the current situation
regarding the death of a child in Michigan.

Last Saturday evening, September 21, 1999, Cody Tyler Fairfield was killed by his family's pet wolf/dog cross, Tanner. Since that time, some of the people on this bulletin board have chosen to change facts, insinuate information or otherwise cloud this reality.

Some of the facts of this case are as follows:

The animal did kill the child. There were no chain marks on the child's body. The child was not killed when a confused animal struggled to get away from a tangled child. The father did not murder his child and then attempt to frame his pet. The animal asphyxiated the child as it held the child's throat. The child had a puncture wound through his trachea made by the canine tooth of the animal. He also had a large number of bites all over his body.

The animal was killed at the owner's request. I had nothing to do with that decision. The head of the animal was sent to the state health laboratory for routine rabies testing.

The animal was a wolf mix. Both the breeder and the owner attested to this information. When I was called by the director of Muskegon County Animal Control to look at the animal, I did not say the animal was 5% wolf, I stated only that I agreed with the animal control officers' assessments that the animal was not as much wolf as some information had purported.

Some of the people on this bulletin board have knowingly & purposely changed the facts in this case. Their motivation seems to be to both cloud the fact that another child has been killed and to personally vilify me. Those who know me personally know that I have spent many years working on behalf of wild wolves and the humane and safekeeping of hybrids.

I would suggest that those of you who doubt the facts which I have presented here contact Muskegon County Animal Control, the Muskegon County Medical Examiner and the Michigan State Police to verify the facts themselves rather than relying on hearsay as reported on this bulletin board.

The bottom line is that these "accidents" should never happen. If you really love your animals and don't want them legislated out of existence, then you are the folks who need to take action to keep accidents from happening. The real villains in this scenario are not the animals or me, but the breeders who produce and sell these animals without giving honest information about how to successfully care for a semi-domesticated animal. The reason so many hybrids end up on chains in backyards is that their owners had no idea what they were getting into when they adopted their animals in the first place. If they had been told that the animal might be overly destructive in their home, possibly untrainable, an escape artist, predatory toward small children and other animals, etc, they may have chosen to get a domestic dog instead. Instead, the owners probably started with a cute puppy with the best of intentions and the animal ended up chained up "out back" when it could not be kept like a common dog.

If you really love your animals, you need to be working to give realistic information about the keeping of hybrids. Potential owners need to know how to build safe and humane confinement for their animals. They need to know that it is not unusual at all for captive wolves and many hybrids to see small children as prey. They need to be given the chance to choose ahead of time whether they want to deal with all the problems of wolf/dog ownership.

Next, you need to police the hybrid community to become aware of those people keeping animals in unsafe or inhumane situations and encourage them to make the necessary changes to keep their animals responsibly. You need to challenge the breeders who are placing animals in situations where they can never have a safe and humane life. A number of years ago, the Coalition for Responsible Ownership worked hard to produce a document that could be used as a guideline for model hybrid regulation. This could be used proactively when dealing with bodies that seek to ban hybrids. Wolf Park has similar hybrid keeping guidelines on its WEB site.

Saying that hybrids are "just like any other domestic dogs" serves no useful purpose. Vilifying those who challenge your misleading information or changing information to suit your whims also does no good for your animals. The tragedy of little Chad's death could have been averted. Now is your chance to keep the next tragedy from happening.

In response to recent events, Wolf Park is restating its
position in regard to wolves and hybrids as pets.

All photographs & images © Monty Sloan or Jill Moore & Wolf Park For permission to use or for more information about wolf photographs please check with Monty Sloan