HuskyRomi is a non-profit organization providing a safe haven for abandoned and abused huskies and wolves in South Africa. We provide a home to all huskies and wolves that can’t be kept as pets because of their complicated nature. Many of the animals arrive in a poor condition, some not even knowing what grass is, and are rehabilitated with loving care by Larry Paul. The aim of this website is to provide support to the HuskyRomi project and to promote the protection of wolves and other wildlife. The sanctuary is open to the public to come and learn about wolves. We do appreciate donations for the buying of food, for veterinary bills and other expenses.
We currently take care of over two hundred and fifty huskies, wolves and hybrids.
HuskyRomi is NOT a breeding facility where you can buy a wolf, dog or hybrid. We rescue and relocate animals to the sanctuary that cannot be taken care of as ordinary pets. Here their needs are taken care of for the span of their natural lives.
My Name is Romi (A Tribute)
Larry and I go back seven years. I was a young husky pup, who, just like lots of my kind, was dumped at a pet shop. A nice Bulgarian lady bought me and took me home. One day I ran away. A long way away to the house next door where I found Larry! He played with me until the lady’s son came looking for me and took me home. I could hear Larry go running every morning and all I wanted to do, was run with him. When I was six months old, I could jump over the wall and play with Larry. One day he asked my person if he could take me running with him. That was only the beginning. I would spend the whole day with Larry and then go home for supper.
One day my person said to Larry that she felt that I loved Larry more than them and she felt that I would be happier with him. Larry loved me and we were meant to be together, we were good for each other. We would go running every morning up Jacaranda Road in Olivedale so that the kids could say hello to me. I made Larry feel very proud. Larry bought a mate for me called Annie, a beautiful caramel and white husky. We had a litter just as Larry’s kids left to go to New Zealand.
Larry and I started sharing our lives with people and letting them come around to see the pups. We had taken in another husky and Annie’s brother Russ had come to join us so the pack was growing. Every morning Larry took us all running. He came to be known as the “Husky Man”. Larry decided to keep one of my sons “Artax”.
Later Annie had a second litter of four pups and we kept two boys, Bastion and Paikea. We started to take in more huskies when they needed a safe place to live. Larry would say, “If you have seven, what’s eight, nine, ten and so on …”. Larry brought my daughter Nikita from our first litter back by getting together with Thea. She came to share Larry’s passion for huskies and was there when Larry had to go away. She helped with feeding and giving us our medication.
Larry and Thea started to discuss how they could take all the good that we generated with people and turn it into a centre for rescued huskies and people. I have been a big inspiration to them, by doing for others what Larry and I started out doing a long time ago. By offering a safe haven for unwanted huskies and wolves, we offer a lot to people out there who need our help or who just want or need a friend. The rest is history.
More about Romi
When Larry and I started this journey, Larry said that he wanted to make me the most famous husky, if not in the world, at least in South Africa. That’s right, we now have our own company that is dedicated to looking after abandoned huskies and wolves looking for a place to live. I now have a range of shortbread, biscuits, chocolates and a farm named after me, we have lots of people come to visit us and lots of children come out to the farm and spend their free time with us, the huskies and the wolves. Not bad for a guy who started life out in a pet shop. Larry said that I would inspire a lot, but this is more than we planned for in the beginning when we were only five huskies.
Romi (RIP)
When Romi passed away so suddenly, we out here at HuskyRomi received hundreds of emails, Facebook messages and phone calls from around the world and from places like Canada, the USA, Europe, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Through his death, Romi showed us that he had become very well known and liked right around the world. We are building a tomb over Romi’s resting place where people will be able to come and pay their respects.
I will always miss you my dear friend and I will never forget the times we had and the adventures we went on and all that you stood for.
Mountain Bike Club
Over and above the animal rescue, we at HuskyRomi are working with the youth of today, teaching them how to play again, away from computers and television, just as wolves do. We are teaching the youth new skills through MTB in conjunction with the Joberg2C MTB race.
Our Beginning & Achievements
The sanctuary was started on December 16th 2007 with the intention to start a haven for huskies. I had 18 huskies and three wolves, but I never ever saw what was going to happen next!
Kia was the first wolf, a beautiful guy, who was kind and gentle. He came from a situation in Dainfern where he was beaten with a hosepipe and kept locked up in a small courtyard. Soon after Kia arrived, I received a call about a wolf who had just had puppies with a German Shepherd and now they wanted to get rid of her. Mia came into our lives. She was so scared, that she would just sit in the corner the whole day long. It was then that we realized that she had been chained up and didn’t know what it was to run free. We would drag her to the furthest point in the garden and let her go, but she would run straight back to her corner. It took many weeks, but we finally got her to walk around on her own. A call from Save-a-Pet in Port Elizabeth saw us bringing 12 wolves back and with the next call-out we ended up bringing 37. This was the beginning of the wolf rescue.
Since then we have collected wolves from Cape Town, Durban, Bloemfontein, Ventersdorp, Britz, Mpumalanga and all over Gauteng. We get calls from all over the country about wolf rescue, advice on how to keep a wolf as a pet and so on.