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Embudo wolf-dog pack faces scrutiny – The Taos News
Aug
Courtesy Tiffany “Azlan” White
Bred and owned by Tiffany “Azlan” White, the pack of wolf-dogs are descended from a red wolf and Newfoundland dog.
Courtesy Tiffany “Azlan” White
Bred and owned by Tiffany “Azlan” White, the pack of wolf-dogs are descended from a red wolf and Newfoundland dog.
Courtesy Margaret Campos
Margaret Campos, a resident who lives near a pack of wolf-dogs in the Embudo Valley, said she observed the entrance gate to the wolf-dogs’ enclosure left open.
Courtesy Margaret Campos
A pack of wolf-dogs living in the Embudo Valley was spotted on local resident Margaret Campos’ ring camera in 2025.
Courtesy Tiffany “Azlan” White
Bred and owned by Tiffany “Azlan” White, the pack of wolf-dogs are descended from a red wolf and Newfoundland dog.
Courtesy Tiffany “Azlan” White
Bred and owned by Tiffany “Azlan” White, the pack of wolf-dogs are descended from a red wolf and Newfoundland dog.
Courtesy Margaret Campos
Margaret Campos, a resident who lives near a pack of wolf-dogs in the Embudo Valley, said she observed the entrance gate to the wolf-dogs’ enclosure left open.
Courtesy Margaret Campos
A pack of wolf-dogs living in the Embudo Valley was spotted on local resident Margaret Campos’ ring camera in 2025.
Six hybrid wolf-dogs belonging to a pack in the Embudo Valley were found dead on N.M. 68 in Embudo on Sunday, Aug. 2, reigniting conflict between the pack’s breeder and area residents who fear for their safety due to the animals’ repeated escapes.
Bred and owned by Tiffany “Azlan” White, the wolf-dogs are the descendants of a red wolf and a Newfoundland dog. White said she and caretakers initially thought the wolf-dogs who died were struck by vehicles.
“I saw the dogs in the back of the caretaker’s vehicle,” White told the Taos News. “They went to get gas or ice at like eight in the morning and found the dogs dead on the side of the highway. We all assumed at first that they got there and were hit by cars.”
White has come to believe their deaths were deliberate and that they were left there on the road.
“Rama wasn’t even capable of walking two miles, so I really think they intentionally hit him on the dirt road, walking slowly, then carried him,” White said of the 10-year-old elder wolf-dog. “Or, they coaxed him and hurt him. I don’t really know, but I think they dumped him on the dirt road.”
White has bred and cared for the lineage of wolf-dogs for around 14 years. The pack is currently housed on steep, rocky land near Embudo Station overlooking the Rio Grande. About 40 animals live in two family groups on the hillside property. She described the animals as “the Emissary Wolfpack.”
The hybrids aren’t dangerous, she insists, noting they want to run and play in the forest. But White has had to relocate the pack multiple times over the last 10 years and the animals have frequently broken out of their fenced enclosure.
“They’re escape artists,” White said. “They want to run. Mostly, they’re innocent and don’t really hurt things. They will eat a cat and they will eat something little if they can get it, but mostly, they eat rats and mice if they have a real ecosystem. That’s what they’re good at and that’s my work. I want to show through a private refuge how these dogs are ‘farmers’ that protect bees.”
White has spent approximately $200,000 on fencing, but acknowledged it isn’t sufficient to reliably keep them enclosed. She pays $40,000 a month to feed them.
“We just had a breakout, so I have to fix it,” White said. “I have to do better.”
Tensions with some nearby residents have escalated since the animals arrived in the area. White named one neighbor, Margaret Campos.
“She’s a resident in that area now and never wanted us there even from the beginning,” White said.
Campos said the pack of wolf-dogs that have roamed near her family’s land has left her afraid to walk down her own driveway.
“My family’s been here since 1956 and they’ve been using that road since then,” Campos said. “We’ve owned this portion of it since the ‘70s. It’s not abandoned. There’s 17 families out here and that doesn’t include the people that own property, but don’t actually have homes.”
She’s also watched the wolf-dog hybrids grow as a pack and expand their range. She claimed she’s repeatedly observed an entrance gate to the wolf-dogs’ enclosure left open.
“I think that the dogs, the wolves, have gotten more comfortable, so they’re expanding the areas that they roam,” she said.
White opposes spaying and neutering the animals because she wants to preserve their family groups and genetic lineage. Females in the pack continue to reproduce, including one White said recently gave birth to about three puppies.
Campos said that makes keeping them enclosed even more critical.
“There’s the saying that good fences make good boundaries,” she said. “But sometimes in New Mexico, there are no fences. Everybody just knows where their boundary is and people come out here, see wide open land and assume there’s no boundaries. That’s just not how it is.”
For over a year, Campos said she’s repeatedly tried to contact Rio Arriba County Sheriff’s Office’s Animal Control, but received little to no response. She recently encountered Ismael Olguin, the sheriff’s office’s Animal Control Supervisor, on the road shortly after the six wolf-dogs died.
“He had no choice but to stop because we had to pull over so he could get by and he rolled down his window,” Campos said.
She said Olguin, who did not respond to a message seeking comment, told her he was reluctant to trap the wolf-dogs.
“What they told me is they don’t want to trap them because if they take them over to Española Humane, they can’t handle that volume of animals and nobody wants to euthanize them,” Campos said.
White’s long-term plan is to relocate the pack to a larger, more secure property, possibly in Taos County. She hopes to create what she calls a St. Francis-inspired healing refuge and “preserve” for the animals and visitors. Properties White is looking at range from about $700,000 to $1.5 million, including a roughly 300‑acre parcel in Valdez.
She said she wants any future site to have multiple perimeter fences and large interior pens, both to reassure neighbors and to give the wolf-dogs room to run. If she relocates the pack to Taos County, White may ask if the Taos Police Department might be willing to advise her on security and fencing.
“I think that a strong double layer perimeter fence on top of pens that hold them, that are large enough where they have plenty of space to run,” White said. “If the police are capable of making jails that criminals can’t escape from, then maybe they can oversee my project and help me make a fencing system that makes sure these animals won’t get out of the community.”
She praised Taos police officers for helping her relocate the animals during an eviction on a property near the Carson National Forest about eight years ago.
“They watched me be the animal whisperer and they sat quietly while I did it,” White said. “Then they would come up behind me and lift them because I couldn’t always lift the dogs all by myself … They gently just worked with me for hours and hours and hours, and we got them all into the cages.”
White said she is open to speaking with her neighbors while she continues looking for land on which to relocate the animals.
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What i commend this person who thinks she is doing good…WRONG..these are not wolves..they are half dog..what this woman is trying to do is wierd..help the wolf population ok…half canine, nope..pure wolves yes..anyone who has lived in the country and raised livestock knows how dogs alone can cause huge losses..if ya have ever seen a 6 mo old horse shredded by someone’s 2″ harmless “pet dogs,you will have a different outlook
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