The next time you’re in the dog-food aisle of your corner supermarket, reeling over the cost of a can of Alpo, think about Kelly Reed.

Every three weeks, this Tonopah resident has to buy one ton of chow to feed his canines. Of course, Reed has 82 of them, most weighing between 80 and 120 pounds, and all considerably more ravenous than your average poodle.

They are wolf-dogs, you see.

And the living space they share with Reed and his wife, Patricia, is the Eagle Tail Mountain Wolf Sanctuary, a 10-acre, wolf-hybrid, “safe haven” within barking distance of the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station.

Which brings us to Reed’s first wolf-hybrid lesson: Don’t call them wolf-hybrids.

“Hybrids don’t reproduce, and these guys do — unless I spay or neuter them, which I do,” Reed said right off the bat. “The correct term is ‘wolf-dogs.’”

To the uninitiated, the seven or eight wolf-dogs that greet visitors at Reed’s gate seem much more dog than wolf. Their first instincts are to sniff you, jump up on you and slather your face in wolf-doggie slobber, roughly in that order.

“These are my house pets,” Reed explained. “They come in the house, they sleep with the cats. It’s all in how you work them and love them.”

One of these house pets, a mammoth timber wolf and Akita mix named Mituk, came into Reed’s care when she was 6 months old.

“Her humans used to beat her,” Reed said. “It took her three months to come around to my wife, to understand she wasn’t like that. Now, Mituk is a sweetheart. She loves everyone.” Not all of Reed’s wolf-dogs are quite so trusting. Most, about 75 of them, are kept in 50-foot by 50-foot pens at the rear of the property — pens with six-foot cyclone fences topped by barbed wire, topped by chicken wire.

Wolf-dogs, you see, like to jump. And they are very, very good at it.

“About half of the dogs here were abused by their humans, because their humans didn’t understand them,” Reed said. “Humans who bought these dogs as cute little fur balls, as trophy dogs — and then didn’t know what to do with them by the time they were 2 years old.

“I have some that were kept in 10-by-10 pens until they were 4 years old. I have some that were kept in apartments. That drives wolf-dogs crazy. They need space.”

They also need understanding.

“The greatest misconception about wolf-dogs is that, because they’re mixed with dogs, people think they’re going to have a dog that can be trained like a dog,” Reed said. “Well, you’re not going to get a dog. You’re going to get something that’s mixed up. They’re puppies until they’re 2, they’re teenagers with attitude until they’re 5. After that, they’ll mellow out.”

Alas, some people can’t wait that long.

“In our adoption contracts, we have a clause that says if things don’t work out between the animal and the human, they can bring them back to us,” Reed said.

Although Reed charges a $200 adoption fee, that doesn’t mean anyone who shows up with two bills is going to go home with a wolf-dog.

“I’m more picky about adopting these dogs out than I was marrying off my daughter,” he said. “They’ve already come from abusive humans. I don’t want to send them back to that.”

If a potential buyer seems serious and sensible, the first thing Reed tells them is to learn as much about wolf-dogs as they can.

“Then, if they want, they can come out here and work with their animal for a month, so they can bond together,” he said. “They have to bond, because I am more interested in these dogs’ happiness than in some human’s happiness.”

“Wolf-dogs,” Reed said, “ can be tamed but not domesticated.”

What’s the difference?

“Taming is teaching them to do the right things, like not jumping on people,” Reed said.

“Domesticating is where you expect them to live in your apartment, and you expect them to not eat your couch. Wolf-dogs will eat your couch. That’s the kind of thing they do for entertainment.”

Reed tames his menagerie not with his hand or a rolled-up newspaper, but a squirt bottle. The method seems to work.

“Have I ever been bitten? No. Have I ever been scratched because they’re jumping up to lick my face and be loved? Yes.”

A native of San Bernadino, Calif., the 50-year-old Reed first arrived in Arizona in 1983 and first got into the nonprofit wolf-dog rescue business about 10 years ago, when the sanctuary was in Round Valley and owned by a woman named Liz Taylor.

“My wife, Patricia, and I became volunteers, and we even adopted a few of the animals,” Reed remembered. “Then in 1996, Liz found out she had cancer. She asked my wife and me if we’d take over if anything happened to her. Patricia and I talked it over, then told Liz we’d do it.

“Liz was supposed to have at least five years to live. She died two weeks later.”

The reason he agreed, Reed said, is “my love and passion for these animals. And knowing that if they aren’t rescued, they’re destroyed.”

In Maricopa County, as in many other areas of the country, wolf-dogs picked up by animal control are immediately put down, Reed said.

“While it is perfectly legal to breed, sell and own wolf-dogs, the authorities still consider them to be semi-wild animals,” he said. “And because the pharmaceutical companies don’t guarantee that dog rabies vaccines are effective on wolf-dogs, they are destroyed without a quarantine period.”

That’s why Reed now is involved with a study by the American Veterinary Association to prove that the rabies vaccines are indeed effective for wolf-dogs. All the wolf-dogs at the sanctuary have been vaccinated, and none has demonstrated so much as a mild ill effect, Reed said.

Of course, all this costs money: the dog food, the pens, the studies, the time. To help pay the way, Eagle Tail Mountain Wolf Sanctuary is funded primarily by tax-deductible donations of members and other individual supporters, and purchases from the sanctuary’s gift shop.

“Every T-shirt we sell buys a bag of dog food,” Reed said.

But Reed also will accept the donation of time.

“These animals can always use some loving and brushing,” he said. “Volunteers don’t have to scoop. I have plenty of things they can do around the property.”

And if anyone has or knows of a wolf-dog that’s being mistreated or misunderstood, “They should call us, and we’ll check it out,” Reed said. “We’re kind of their last chance, the wolf-dog’s last, real hope for survival.”

For information about the Eagle’s Tail Mountain Wolf Sanctuary, call 623-386-9653 or visit its Web site at http://www.eagletailmountain.com.

Mike Burkett can be reached by e-mail at mburkett@westvalleyview.com.