Heroes and Hybrids: Part II
Edited by Allie Long
This is part two of Heroes and Hybrids, a two-part article on the wolves of Mattersville, a sustainable community built to house homeless veterans. If you would like to read part one, click here.
For this story, I interviewed Drew Robertson, the executive director of Mattersville, Kristyn Hansen, the chief operations officer, Ben Corliss, one of the co-directors of animal care, and resident veteran, Randy. I would like to thank them all for their time and consideration while writing this piece.
When I asked Randy about the wolves and how they affected him personally, as a veteran at Mattersville, he told me that having them around “helps me center myself.”
Randy–not to be confused with Randy Hansen, Drew’s childhood friend–came from a military family and served from ’07 to ’14 in the US Air Force. During his service, he suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) when he was attacked in his sleep, a moment that would dramatically reshape the course of his life.
He described the period following his service as a “building process,” as he returned to Kentucky where his father lives. He considers this time immediately following his return a “dark period” during which he had to navigate old relationships and learn to cope with PTSD and TBI. While the details surrounding his trauma and past have become hazier, he likens his experience to building a house:
“The more and more you work on yourself, you get better and better at building houses. Now, storms come through, they knock those houses down; however, as long as you have those strong moral foundations, you will never be defeated.”
Randy was not defeated. He moved to Colorado and joined the Bearded Villains, where he got involved with RMWF and met Ben Corliss. When the pack migrated to Mattersville, Randy came with them. As he learned about the program and grew closer to the members of the organization, it increasingly made sense for him to transition there.
“What was that like when you realized you were getting accepted into the program?”
“To feel wanted and to be told, ‘Hey, you’re a positive light. You know how to talk to people, you know how to help them out.’ For me, it makes me happy knowing I’m helping someone else. But ultimately, if I’m helping someone else, it’s helping me, too. I was very ecstatic when I was told, from a unanimous vote, that everybody wanted me here.”
He also told me that he is “completely and eternally grateful” for his acceptance to Mattersville. He still has episodes of dizziness and fainting coupled with short-term memory loss related to his TBI, but for him, he says it “comes down to communication.” Being in an environment where he’s able to freely express how he’s feeling without fear of judgment has helped him integrate into the community.
Ultimately, family is a choice. It’s a choice you make to be there for one another regardless of blood.
Randy derives some comfort from his relationship with the wolves as well. Of the wolfdog Kody, Randy said, “I relate to him a lot because he deals with a lot of anxiety. But when people show support, and they show him love, he calms down. He just wants to feel loved. He wants to make sure that, ‘Hey, I’m still here.’”
Randy calls him a “lovebug,” but it took some time and patience for Kody to warm up to Randy. Now, whenever Randy sees Kody, he rolls over on his back and waits for the rubs to come.
“That just means that he trusts you.”
Kody’s not the only animal that Randy’s developed a close bond with at Mattersville. Randy’s also been spending a lot of time with Gus, the German Shepherd.
“Gus is the goofiest dog on site. But man, he’s so loveable.” Randy and Gus the German Shepherd spend most nights together. In the future, Randy’s hopeful that Gus will become his ESA.
“The way he trots. He’s really oafy,” Randy laughed. “He’s just goofy, and I love that because he owns it.”
Heroes and Hybrids
Heroes and Hybrids is the name of the program at Mattersville through which you can sign up for a veteran-led wolf tour. If you want to learn more about the pack and schedule your own tour, you can do so on the Mattersville website here.
In designing Heroes and Hybrids, Drew wanted to create an organic, immersive hike along the cliffside and through nature. You can see the Sky Pen, the highest point on the property, overlooking a cliff that towers over the surrounding Colorado wilderness.
According to Drew, “it gives not just the veterans, but the civilians a chance to reflect on people in their life that might be serving.” The tour ends with Apache and Cherokee’s Alpha Pen, dedicated to the memory of Randy Hansen.
Pack Healing
In an article from Healthline, Jessy Warner-Cohen, PhD, MPH, a health psychologist at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, asserted that while the use of ESAs in the therapeutic process has “little support in the scientific literature,” there is strong anecdotal evidence that ESAs can be enormously beneficial to individuals suffering from mental illness. In some instances, support animals “can give the person hope and a sense of purpose,” which was one of Drew’s chief aims in developing the Mattersville program.
A review of 17 studies published by BMC Psychiatry supports Dr. Warner-Cohen’s claim, and concluded that companion animals aided in the “distraction and disruption from upsetting symptoms and experiences” as well as helped the owner maintain a “positive identity and sense of self.”
Unfortunately, the mechanisms behind mental illness are so vastly complicated that it’s impossible to say whether having an ESA will help with a given condition, but it’s certainly a valuable tool to have in one’s belt. It’s also a tool that has worked wonders for many of the people I’ve talked with, including the veterans of Mattersville.
In our first interview together, Drew shared a healing story that was particularly meaningful to him. A woman who had volunteered with Mattersville before reached out to Drew about her dad, a Vietnam veteran who’d been exposed to Agent Orange during his service and had since developed lung cancer. Unfortunately, his good days–days when he could get out of bed–were outnumbered by bad days.
He came from Minnesota to visit his daughter after she told him about cleaning up the Sedalia property and the wolves Mattersville had rescued. Her father was enthralled by the prospect of visiting Mattersville; however, his trip was coming to an end, and the family would have to wait until he had another one of his good days.
The call for Drew came on the busiest volunteer day Mattersville had ever had. They were still moving some of the wolves from RMWF and clearing squatter remains off the land. But that didn’t matter to Drew.
“I made it work.” Of course, it can be challenging to guide a private wolf tour when you have a big group of volunteers hanging around. Everyone wants to see the wolves.
The woman’s entire family was eventually able to visit Sedalia, and Drew took them on a private tour. He brought them to “Dan’s Wolf Den”–Dan being the veteran director of animal care–which is a cabin whose fourth wall is a wolf pen. This means when Drew opens the pen-facing door of the cabin, the wolfdogs leap right inside with the visitors!
“So, I took the whole family in there. And I was like, ‘Ok, so as you can see through the windows here, this is Ranger and Lady. And if you could all just get to the back of the cabin real quick…’”
Drew opened up the door, and Lady and Ranger came bounding in. “There’s this veteran who’s suffering from cancer–he started looking like a kid again. And Ranger, one of the biggest males that we have here, he’s face to face with him and he’s looking at him like he was his best friend.”
“But Ranger… he takes time with people usually. But he just, like, selected him. The one that we were all there for, [he] was just kind of spending time around him.”
According to Drew, Ranger is usually “very skittish.”
“It never ceases to amaze me, it’s like they can sense certain connections with certain people. I think it’s that natural warrior respect.” Drew talked to me before about the “natural warrior respect” he’s witnessed between wolves and veterans. To him, it’s almost like they have a sixth sense and a mutual understanding.
“If you could see that guy’s face. He was crying, but not crying, because there was this big ass smile on his face.”
For Drew, it’s experiences like this that are the reason he started Mattersville in the first place. “It was a powerful day, let’s just say that. It’s kind of humbling and honoring to be the one to be able to help facilitate that.”
Group Howl
I spoke with Ben for a long time about wolf and wolfdog behaviors. He believes that what people don’t understand about hybrids stems from not knowing what it means to be part wolf–to always be part wild. Unfortunately, that ignorance can have some hefty real-world consequences, especially in the many states where pet ownership of these species is not regulated.
At Mattersville, they love taking care of the wolves and hybrids. They have a full staff, Pack 22, devoted to caring for the animals the way they deserve. For Ben and the rest of the team, the hardest part is not being able to take in more animals–when they have to tell somebody “no.” Two to three people per week ask him about adopting more wolves, and now that they’re at capacity, he has to refuse.
“Occasionally, we have to say ‘no.’ Which is like the worst feeling in the world to not be able to help all of them.” It’s also indicative of a larger problem. All of these requests are a result of people who sought ownership of wolfdogs, got in over their head, and ultimately were not able to take care of them. Or, as Ben says, they move or their life changes.
Ben and Drew have long felt a deep connection to these creatures, but in more recent years, this connection has taken on a deeper significance for the two brothers as they’ve worked hard to create a patchwork family for their daughters.
“Wolves are one of the very few species that step-parent,” Ben told me. “Say the alpha male dies. The alpha female will continue to run the pack, but she’s going to look for another mate.” Ben explained that while, yes, wolves do mate for life, if some accident befalls a wolf’s mate, he or she will seek out another alpha to take the deceased wolf’s place.
Within a pack, only the two alphas will breed. That makes everyone else in the pack the child of the alpha, whether by blood or by circumstance.
“That new mother or father will take over the parenting role of the [deceased alpha] as if they were their own.”
Ultimately, family is a choice. It’s a choice you make to be there for one another regardless of blood.
And as Ben puts it, “a wolf pack is a family.”
Now Drew, the man who ran with wolves as a child, leads his own pack as an adult. Together with Ben, he co-parents his two daughters. With Apache and Cherokee, he co-parents the pack.
If you ever have the good fortune to find yourself in Sedalia at night, warming your hands over a scrap-wood fire and listening to NOFX after a hard day’s work, be sure to perk up your ears for sounds of the pack checking in on one another.
Who knows? If you spend enough time out there, you might even learn their language.
“Once they get to know you and you start howling, you can actually get that group howl going.”
Get Involved
Join me again in two weeks for our final article on Mattersville, in which we’ll be hearing more about the lives of veterans on the property as well as how the many facets of Mattersville come together to present a single, unified solution to combating veteran homelessness.
If you want to get involved, you can sign up to volunteer or make a donation on their website.
