Darlene quickly realized that she needed to get to the root of the problem. She began to take her newly-formed shelter into a more proactive role: providing education about wolves in the wild and wolfdogs as pets. Out of approximately 250,000 wolf-dogs that are born in the United States every year, 80% will probably not reach their third birthday. This is mostly due to the fact that people that cannot care for their wolf or wolf-dog anymore for whatever reason will surrender them to a shelter.