Honesty Filter: Expired | Akiyama no Roushya - NIPPO Kishu Ken

What you saw was 100% correct. I’m going to copy/paste Sara Movahedi (rescue coordinator at In Harmony With Nature)’s post that she made here, because it’s too long to go into on my own. Sara may be somewhat of a polarizing figure in the wolfdog community, but she is honest and fair. Everything she has brought into the light about Pack West is fact, unfortunately. And more is coming out beyond even this. 

“A few months ago, I was asked by a friend to join the board of Packwest Rescue to assist them with some minor admin hiccups they were having. I had been aware of some of the issues surrounding PW for some time, but was hopeful that they would sort things out and carry on doing what they do. Upon teaming up with them, I made some discoveries that left me rather stunned, shocked, disgusted, and disheartened. I will list a few of them in this post, as the public (specifically wdc people) have a right to know what transpired, and the members of Packwest won’t be able to live in the light, until they can come out of the darkness.

The other reason I’m posting this is to highlight what can/will happen when well-intentioned people take on more than they can handle, and more than they are qualified for, by starting something like a rescue, without first building the basic foundation to support it down the line. It seems every time I turn around lately, someone says they’re starting a rescue or opening a sanctuary… And it never fails, every time I see or hear it, I shudder and think about Packwest… how things went so horribly wrong, so incredibly fast. 

Please let this rescue’s experience be a lesson for you, and think before you decide to open a 501. There are laws in place, and there are penalties and punishments should those laws be broken… to say nothing of the personal loss you can expect should you be on the losing end of the deal. Your homes, your vehicles, your bank accounts, your ANIMALS….any asset you have is on the line should you violate the laws set forth by not only the state you live in, but by the federal government.

-Packwest agreed to take in 2 animals from a couple needing to rehome them in Nevada. Packwest charged the couple a $400 surrender fee, on top of $300+ for gas to drive to pick the animals up. The animals, Sylar (male) and Luna (female) were then transported back to Oregon.

*No self respecting rescue should EVER charge a rehoming/surrender fee. If my sanctuary did that, especially at $400 a pop, we would be rich with all the animals we have taken in. That isn’t how it works, that isn’t how rescue works, and its highly unethical.

-Upon returning to Oregon, the two board members stopped at a predetermined location in Oregon. The board president had a deposit down on a puppy from a local breeder, as she wanted an “ambassador” animal for her fledgling rescue. *This is especially difficult to understand…purchasing an animal *from a breeder* as the first act of a rescue organization.

-Upon arriving, there was allegedly a discrepancy on the remaining balance. The board member still owed $500 for the puppy, but didn’t have the funds. Since she had the $400 surrender fee and the $300 gas money the couple had given her, she used that money to cover the difference and purchased Ivar from that breeder, hours after “rescuing” Luna and Sylar.

-Sylar was sent to the home of another board member, simply as a temp foster. That board member, lived in a small rental home at the time and lacked the space and containment, and should never have taken on a foster. Her situation was further complicated when she adopted her personal wolfdog’s (Kochma’s) mother, Sorsha (later named Sadira) when the breeder decided to get rid of her animals. To make things even harder, the board member and her family welcomed a brand new baby into her home and life at the same time these animals were arriving and starting to settle in.

-Sorsha, an INTACT, VERY high content, VERY unsocial animal was first penned with her son, Kochma, also INTACT. After just a few weeks, the board member rearranged them and placed Sorsha in with her foster, Sylar. *It’s important to note that these changes in housing were all taking place at the very height of breeding season, weeks after these animals all arrived, very likely playing a big role in things happening the way they did. Shortly after being penned with Sylar, and while the board member was at the hospital with the new baby, Sorsha attacked and killed the foster, Sylar, in an attack that can only be described as brutal and vicious. The public explanation given by Packwest was that perhaps wild animals got into the enclosure and killed him.

-Approximately one week later, again at the board member’s home, her personal wolfdog, Kochma, an animal she had raised since he was a pup, suddenly killed his bonded pen mate, Alora, a lower content female, who was also intact. This is especially troubling since he had never displayed any sign of aggression, and was submissive to Alora until that day. It’s important to note, in this case, that the enclosure where Kochma and Alora were housed was in close proximity to Sorsha, where he most certainly would have seen her kill Sylar just days earlier. Again, the explanation (though not public since these weren’t rescue animals) was this was likely another wild animal. Alora had retreated into her dog house to likely tend to her wounds and/or hide from the animal she once felt so comfortable with, who now wanted to kill her… it was there that she was found the next day.

-While this isn’t directly rescue related, it’s important to know that Sorsha later went after the young daughter of that board member, ripping her arms open and trying to pull her into the enclosure. I would normally not mention this, as kids are off limits, but I’m doing so with her mother’s blessing, and to make a bigger point. It wasn’t until months later that they learned Sorsha had a history of attacking children, a history not made known to her by the breeder when she agreed to take the animal.

No responsible rescue would place more on the plate of board members, fosters, adopters, or anyone, who possibly can’t handle it. But when you’re overextended and trying to do things without a plan in place, accidents happen and people and/or the animals get hurt. Packwest should never have placed fosters with that board member, and failed them and those animals. The board member should have made it clear she could not take on additional animals as well. And as a point of fact, it’s incredibly irresponsible to not only house personal animals with new rescues, but also to do so when all personal animals are intact.

-Packwest, as of May 2017, was administratively dissolved as a result of failure to file necessary documents by January of that year. Since that time, they collectively continued to raise funds for the rescue. This is highly unethical, immoral, and illegal. The board members were not aware of the suspension status, and unaware yearly tax forms were not completed. This responsibility lies with each member, and claiming ignorance is no excuse.

-Fundraising efforts included despite them no longer being a rescue, among other things, photo shoots with one of the several “ambassador” animals listed on Packwest’s web page. Those included Tsura (owned by Tracy Hawkins) Kochma (owned by Sage Bohemia Grove) and Ivar, owned by Packwest/Sarah Bartell. This is a problem for MANY reasons, least of all being the fact that they were not a charity in good standing during some of the time these shoots were being done. Another BIG issue I pointed out to them, one I have pointed out to many people over the past year or two, is USDA guidelines governing exhibition, and what you are and aren’t allowed to do with your animals

.-I spent several days sifting through all the information and trying to process it all, and decided to ask the board members what they even wanted from this “rescue.” I was shocked to learn that NONE of them actually wanted to rescue. It seemed the bigger motivation was photography, and online education… and for at least one of them, it appeared perhaps (at least from the outside) to be money.The decision to dissolve this rescue was made at my suggestion, and all agreed. One sobering thing these ladies learned, and I’m sure each will share their personal feelings on the subject, is when you claim an ambassador animal is property of a rescue, or belongs to the rescue, or was purchased for or by the rescue…. when that rescue dissolves, that animal, regardless of who payed what for it and when, will be sold as part of the asset liquidation. When Packwest board members heard that, shit got real, REAL FAST.

-We were able to work it out where nobody lost their animals, however the board president did have to pay the rescue back for Ivar, and for the right to keep him. She also reimbursed the rescue for the $2800 raised by the public for the rescue’s truck… a vehicle deemed her private personal driver since they only did 4 rescues since their inception, 2 years earlier. To put that in perspective for you, I have done 4 rescues in the last 30 days. The money from Ivar and the truck were then donated (as part of the asset liquidation) to a legitimate 501, current and in good standing, and one the board chose privately, without any involvement or input from me.

-As far as Luna… she was being fostered by the rescue’s president, at her home, until she escaped one day while the board member was gone. She was found and posted on a local pet group, and members of the PW board were quickly contacted. At this point, I had not joined up with them yet, so I was only outside looking in. I immediately began trying to contact the board member/foster to no avail.Finally, Luna was returned to her, but by then, I had had enough. I arranged for a fellow rescue friend (who had been looking to adopt a female) to take Luna in, and made plans to have her IMMEDIATELY transferred to that persons care. Luna is currently in that home, safe and loved, and to this day, her new mom has yet to receive the first piece of paper about her. No vet records, no shot records, no nothing. Packwest’s explanation? They don’t know where any of it is.

-Over the course of 2+ years, Packwest raised and spent money without any accountability as to where that money went. NO proof of purchases exists for several big items, like the truck for example. Only certain board members were granted access to the bank account, and no receipts were kept of transactions that were done. THAT IS ILLEGAL, AND A PROBLEM WHEN YOU ARE A 501c3.I asked the board (specifically the president) on numerous occasions to remove any and all Packwest references, and make it CLEAR to people that they are no longer a charity. I also stayed on her to follow up with the states of Washington and Oregon (they were registered in BOTH) to make sure dissolution documents were completed and filed as needed. She assured me she had it taken care of. I also asked her to make a public post to let people know the rescue was no longer active, and that never came either.Recently, I was informed that she was still raising money, still selling items through the website (now slightly edited to include they are no longer taking in rescues, but conveniently leaving out the part about dissolution) and still presenting herself as a charity org. After a heated exchange (mostly on my part really) she agreed to make the necessary calls to dissolve the org officially. She edited the website further, however it still does not clearly spell out that the charity is no longer active and funds raised through the online store will no longer be going towards a 501c3 wolfdog rescue, but actually to one individual person.

I have not posted this to smear these women or further place blame on them. They have been hearing me tell them how badly they screwed up for several months… most of them get it. They know how close they came to possibly losing their animals, and possibly even facing charges.

-Forms they should have filled out to start this org, they payed someone $2,000 to do it for them.

-Forms they needed to stay active and remain in good standing, never got filled out.

-Receipts were not kept.

-Money was mishandled and misappropriated

.-Records were not kept

.-People were bitten and told to lie.

-Paperwork and vet records for rescues was not kept.

-Personal animals were intact.

-A fox was sent to an illegal state, and when a sanctuary stepped up to take it, PW attempted to charge them money as well.

-Having funding and housing and caging set up BEFORE taking in a single animal in, was NOT DONE.Logic, common sense, honesty, transparency, planning, preparation…and sadly ethics…. all went out the window.I am posting this to highlight how hard it is to do this the RIGHT way. Rescue by itself is hard… but to open and run a 501c3, and keep it running, requires organization, planning, and a dedicated and qualified BOD…NOT a group of your best friends.

 Until I joined them, they had never even held a single board meeting, and didn’t even have set jobs/assignments within the board. Board members were not informed of what their president was doing, and when they were able to communicate with her, she reassured them she had everything under control. They didn’t know they were spiraling out of control quickly.

Please take a look at where good intentions can get you. Please think before you decide you want to do this, and if you decide that you do, first work with a reputable rescue in your area and learn the inner workings of 501’s. Learn the paperwork, the boring admin stuff. My dad used to always tell me that before you build a house, you have to set the foundation. If you try to skip the foundation and move on to the fun stuff, decorating, for example, all your stuff will fall down when the walls collapse, because the foundation below them wasn’t there, or was not strong enough. That analogy is true in all things, rescue included.

It is my sincere hope that this post has accomplished 3 things: 

Highlighted just a few of the hard realities behind trying to start and run a rescue responsibly;

Highlighted the absolute and unequivocal importance of preparation, ethics, honesty and transparency, ESPECIALLY when affiliated with a 501c3 dealing with animals;

Highlighted how good intentions are about as useful as good toilet paper without the proper foundation in place.

Please do not send money to Packwest Wolfdogs under the guise that it’s a 501c3. It is NOT. Please do not contact them for animals needing rescue, and please do not refer anyone to them for help…. or education. They cannot provide either. 

“[As WADTT,] I broke off interactions with PW in early spring of 2017, although I’d been harboring some serious concerns about the organization since I visited in January of 2017. I’m sharing this information here and now by [the OP’s] request, as the issues I was concerned with were not actually part of any of her original posting. Here’s a link to what I wrote publicly back when I chose to cut ties with PW. 

The tl;dr is that I was concerned about: the lack of liability waivers or volunteer training for people coming into contact with the animals; the lack of appropriate containment for the number of animals housed on site; the lack of staff with any professional background in training, behavioral modification, or even exotic animal management involved with the rescue; and what appeared to me after a time to be the purposeful evasion of USDA licensure, which is a federal requirement for businesses that conduct commercial activity using mammals (such as the music video Ivar was in). This last was especially concerning because it looked to my eye (and I still agree with this, having reviewed photos and video from my visit) that Pack West was nowhere near in compliance with the type of care that the Animal Welfare Act requires from USDA licensed exhibitors, and that it did not seem from my understanding of the organization that the money existed to make the numerous improvements required for them to pass USDA inspection. In addition to all of that, there were some concerns that I did not at the time choose to post publicly but will share now. Probably the one I am most angry about involves Luna, the low-content animal for which no vet records can be found. While I was visiting in January of 2017, I offered to mentor Sarah [naturepunk - the rescue president] in regards to animal training, in order to help give her skills to manage the animals on her property (I have worked professionally as a dog trainer for a decade). During one session, I got injured by Luna - and I need to emphasize here that Sarah was NOT at fault for that part of it, as I simply screwed up and offered higher value food to Luna with a finger in the way of her access to it. It was a really minor graze, but it did get infected, and when I expressed that I might go get medical attention for it, Sarah asked me to say that Cabal - her GSD - had been the one to hurt me, not Luna, the low-content wolfdog. I don’t think I said anything in opposition to that at the time, as I was stunned that the rescue - which did not have any waivers or paperwork I had to sign to be around the animals, in case of injury - was asking me to lie about what would legally be considered a bite. I’m well aware of the consequences of reporting bites on wolf-content animals, due to rabies vaccines always being off-label use, but that doesn’t make it appropriate for a rescue to ask someone to put their health potentially at risk when something occurs. At the time, I asked if Luna had gotten all her vaccines, and I believe I asked to see the records. I was assured that she was fully vaccinated, but I did not end up seeing vet records. It was really quite unpleasant to learn from the original post that there are, in fact, no vet records available for this animal. (It ended up not needing medical attention, so there was no report or further discussion of the incident. Luna is alive and well to this day, so there is now known to be no rabies risk from this incident, nor is there further action that needs to be taken).  While I was present in January 2017, Luna also spent most of the time (in what was the nastiest winter the PNW has had recently - lots of snow and ice storms) tethered in a part of the yard that was not the main containment. It had an overhang / leanto structure, but no actual enclosed shelter. This was because Luna could physically get through the fencing of the main containment and had gotten out into the yard more than once, and so there was no way to contain her on Sarah’s property at the time except with a tether. During that visit, I helped Sarah put up chickenwire over the cattle panel fencing of the containment so that Luna could be moved into that space (her escape from both containment and Sarah’s property was after that extra layer of fencing was put up). In general, the husbandry / animal care at that site concerned me during my January 2017 visit. During my first visit, which was summer 2016, things seemed much more acceptable. In January, due to the snow, the containment was a huge mess of mud and water and snow and the three animals only had a single doghouse and a leanto to use to escape from it. (Towards the end of my visit, we moved in another dog house and a bunch of bark to help provide dry terrain, but there were still not enough enclosed shelters for the number of animals in the enclosure). I was also concerned about the fact that three large canids were spending 95% of their time in what I recorded at the time was a 750 square foot containment. This was right after Sarah was in a car accident and she was suffering from a bad concussion at the time, so it may be that my snapshot of how much time the animals got to exercise or have space to get away from each other is skewed by that, but I was really uncomfortable with how small the space was and that the animals did not have places to go when they wanted to be alone or needed to let a conflict die down. Both Luna and Jude wore shock collars intermittently during my visit, which were used to encourage them to be quiet when they made noise at night. I cannot vouch for if the collar was only being used on vibrate, however, or if the dogs were actually being shocked - I just know that the remote was kept at hand and was used when the animals made noise, in order to not disturb the neighbors. I believe there was only one collar, which was switched between the animals as needed. The way feeding of the animals at PW was handled was also concerning. All animals were raw fed / carcass fed, but the carcasses were left out in the enclosure or near where Luna was tethered at the time for days. While this was the middle of winter, that’s still concerning, as it did not stay below freezing the entire time I was present. There were things like a random cow head in the yard that was slowly rotting and stunk to high heaven, which also became an issue when animals were being removed from the containment for our attempts at training sessions: because there was no airlock on the containment, nor protocol for the dogs to wait for Sarah to enter, getting the animals out involved a lot of body blocking and attempting to get a slip lead on before the animals charged out the gate - and if someone evaded us and got loose in the yard (which had only 4ft high fencing along one entire side, and holes in the 6ft wooden fence on one other) we then had to figure out how to safely get the animal away from the high-value rotten cow head before we could progress further. Even past that, things like the situation with Romeo (the badly bred malamute with horrible hips) really concerned me. During the early period after his acquisition, I remember Sarah reaching out to me about the fact that he kept biting people and looking for advice. Without seeing the dog or video of the instances, it sounded like he was using biting as a preventative measure to keep people from knocking into him because he was in pain, but either way, the dog had a long bite history. I remember speaking to Sarah about their choices to continue attempting to find a home for Romeo after the xrays on his hips came back and being appalled that the animal was being allowed to continue living in such pain - I showed the xrays that were posted to a number of vet friends, who were appalled at the condition of his hips, to the point of calling it “the worst dysplasia they’d ever seen” - and that they’d try to rehome an animal who wasn’t actually a wolf content animal with a really long bite record. I tried to bring up my concerns with Sarah in January of 2017, and let it drop when I didn’t feel like I was making a lot of headway. I left in January of 2017 mulling over all of this and more (including what I felt like was really disrespectful treatment of the time I had gifted to visit and be a mentor for training) but didn’t cut ties until the Loki the Wolfdog article blow-up. You probably may remember that I wrote an article about the truth of Loki - that he was misrepped, that his owner knows that, etc - and that people were really not pleased. I got kicked out of this group for writing it with no explanation from any of the mods. Well, what pissed me off about that situation is that Sarah asked me to write that article - I had a platform where I could, and she said she couldn’t do it herself iirc. I literally drafted it sitting on her couch next to her. She was my source for the phenotype that people chewed me out over. I didn’t originally source her on that phenotype because I didn’t realize it would be such a big deal, and when it blew up, she completely threw me under the bus. I asked her if I could source her, and she said no. I asked her if she could help me by speaking up for me in this group, and she said no. I took the article down because I was a wreck from the harassment that came from it, and she told me that she’d really like me to put it back up - she’d happily help me rewrite it so it was less objectionable, but no, Pack West still just couldn’t have any affiliation with the piece because it was too political. It did not go back up, and I completely ended all relationship WADTT had with Pack West, or that I had with Sarah. I’m not really surprised that all of this has come to light, but I’m amazed at how much more there was than what I was concerned about. In the summer of 2016, I put together a video with Sarah on phenotyping wolfdogs that used a lot of photos from animals in this community. I was given the impression by her that it was okay to use the photos since they were commonly ones that were passed around as phenotyping examples. I’ve deleted that video in light of the other thread where it turns out people are not okay with the photos of their animals being used in that manner, nor wanting them associated with PW.”

I’m glad I cut ties with Pack West when I did, but I wish I had been brave enough to do something more solid - like contact USDA about an unregulated animal exhibitor. I didn’t want to put the animals at risk and didn’t know if USDA would handle wolfdog issues as badly as normal animal control, but now I wonder if I should have done so anyways. I really liked Sarah - both personally and professionally - and that clouded my judgement on the whole situation. 

Sakura, the Tosa Inu, imported from Japan.

As I understand it, the Tosa was bred from what they then-called the “Tosa Ken” (Shikoku Ken), mixed to western fighting dogs. It was bred purely to be a contender for the Akita back when the Akita was the prominent fighting dog in Japan. The Tosa Inu overtook the Akita as the prominent fighting dog, eventually, and the Tosa Ken changed its name to the Shikoku Ken to not be associated with the fighting dog.