VIRAL! Zooey Deschanel Went for One Dog—and Came Home with TWO! Her Adoption Tale Will Melt You

Hunting for a pal, Deschanel wound up with 2 amazing loves

Article by Katie Nanton, CPDT-KA

We're suckers for adoption tales like Zooey Deschanel's. She met a pup named Dot and fell hard. The shelter mentioned Dot had a sister, Zelda—so Deschanel walked out with both dogs.

For Dana Ramirez, those calls of the wild are the best part of her day. “It’s the dogs’ way of doing a pack check—they do it at nine p.m. too—and they’ll keep singing until everyone’s chimed in,” says Dana, who runs the rescue, rehab centre, pro racing kennel, and educational sled-tour business with husband Fernando. If even one dog is missing or has just died, the pack will cry all night searching for him.

Fitting, then, that Rancho Luna Lobos means Ranch of the Moon Wolves.

Most wouldn’t look forward to lost sleep before an 18-hour workday, but Dana, 33, and Fernando, 35, aren’t average dog owners. From their 55-acre mountain property in Peoa, Utah, near Salt Lake City, the couple cares for those 79 singing dogs—plus their five kids. They’re driven by a deep love of dogsledding as sport and therapy, having seen first-hand how it transforms neglected, abused, or disabled dogs.

It started when eight-year-old Fernando caught the bug after watching Balto—the true-ish tale of an outcast half-wolf, half-Husky who becomes a hero leading a team 600 miles across Alaska for medicine. Crafting a sled from a plastic table and skis, young Fernando harnessed his little yellow Lab and trained him as a lead dog. Seeing his passion, Fernando’s parents made a rule: to race, every dog had to be a rescue. So he gathered a team of underdogs and started mushing.

Fernando later turned pro as a runner and set dogsledding aside. Then, training for the Olympic marathon team, he met Dana. “One day we were driving, talking about dream jobs, and he said ‘Dogsledding. I’d love to be a musher,’” she recalls. Surprised at first, she felt his sincerity. “So we just went for it!”

Within a week they’d assembled a sled-dog team and a theme for their kennel—rescues only. In 2010, Rancho Luna Lobos was born.

At first the couple sought shelter dogs needing a second chance, often the last stop for those animals. These days they still work with animal control and shelters, but the direct interest in their story keeps the kennel full.

“He is not only incredible to watch,” says Dana, “but he is living proof that if you have disabilities or obstacles in life, there’s a way to reach your goals and dreams.”

For the Ramirezes, the core goal is rehab and unlocking joy in these canine lives. “A lot of these guys have been through hard situations,” says Dana. “We use dogsledding as their therapy.” Above all, Alaskan Huskies are built for it—more endurance and faster recovery than most breeds, plus top speed, making them their race team’s stars. With nonstop drive to run, calming them is the challenge.

If a dog gets plenty of time to try the sport but doesn’t take to it, no problem—they’ll spend years, sometimes up to five, finding him a great home. For the runners, Fernando mushes the best on their pro team, currently ranked 12th in the world, placing 12th at both the 2020 Pedigree Stage Stop Race in Wyoming and the 2020 World Championship Dog Race in The Pas, Manitoba.

From mid-December to mid-March, when snow blankets the sage and aspens, Rancho Luna Lobos runs junior and adult musher programs and highly interactive sledding up and down the scenic ranch. “We hold true to the athletic sport it is,” Dana adds of the bucket-list experience. “You hike, push behind the sled and run, lean like on skis—like a real musher. Not sit in the sled like the movies.”

Before anyone rides, guests get a kennel tour and a talk on Fernando and Dana’s story and what their rescues have overcome. The Ramirezes believe in education first and insist sledding is neither circus nor show. “We know there’s a gray area and weird light around this sport—that it’s cruel, or we force the dogs to run,” says Dana. “But that’s not it. We want to show how much these dogs love it, done right, where they’re over-the-moon happy.” (For COVID-19, the ranch is open this winter with distancing and masks in place.)

In winter, a few extra staff join for tours, but only one year-round ranch manager helps the family operation. Days start at 6 a.m. and end near midnight—training, feeding, running, playing, rotating boarders in and out, cleaning—and Fernando studies dog therapy at night. All tour, camp, and boarding revenue goes back in; they’re becoming a non-profit.

Despite the chaos, they spend quality one-on-one time with each dog daily. Many rescues never had a healthy bond, and this time builds confidence and trust. Never wanting a dog to feel like a number, they know each personality intuitively. A few hardy pups stand out.

Four-year-old Humberto, an Alaskan Husky-Shepherd mix, arrived skittish and bumping into everything. “Our vet confirmed our guess: he was born 100 percent blind,” Dana recalls. “We figured he’d be stressed on a sled, so we left him behind—but he’d scream and cry.” When they clipped his collar to a seeing-eye buddy, he navigated the yard so well they tried him on a sled. Today he trains as a lead dog. “He is not only incredible to watch,” says Dana, “but living proof that with disabilities or obstacles, there’s a way to your goals and dreams.”

A giant timber wolf-Malamute-Shepherd mix named Goofy left a huge void when he died early this year. He arrived as a badly abused nine-month-old with a fractured jaw and deep trust and anxiety issues. “It took a long time. But one day my husband just kind of hugged him—they looked at each other like, ‘Are you okay with this? Yeah. Are you? Okay.’ And that was it. Bonded.” He became a skilled sled dog, running four years before dementia retired him. Soon they’ll rename the whole kennel Goofy’s Sanctuary, with a plaque and a statue at the entrance.

Not every dog arrives with a hard past—some are just Huskies needing a home, surrendered for owners’ changing circumstances. These take their own time to adjust. When they do take to sledding, it often clicks like a light switch. “The pep returns to their step,” says Dana of the joy that finds a forlorn dog mid-race. “Our mission is for each dog to find his identity, his voice, his passion—sledding or not. We just want them to tell us what they want.”

That deep communication is why some call them dog whisperers; Dana and Fernando prefer “listening.” “We say, if you shut off the noise for a second, you just feel it. Look in their eyes, watch their behaviour, fur, ears, the energy they give off—it lays it all out. A feeling just washes over you.” An animal tells them worlds through energy: hunger, fear, tiredness, frustration, jealousy. “We let them have a voice, to speak, instead of doing it for them.”

That compassion runs through everything. With a firm no-hands discipline policy, the Ramirezes cue like parents—time-outs or lost privileges for change. Scraps happen but dogs usually sort it out. For the worst, their ranch dog steps in; she’ll pin and stare a dog down if needed, never bite.

“It’s really a big game of compatibility,” says Dana. “People got so used to chaos, noise, and the idea you need a certain treat to get your dog to do what you want. People forget these guys are wild animals, in a sense, with their own language. If you stop long enough to learn it, they’ll talk to you.”