First: Shame on you. You made my heart skip.
Don't shame me, I almost screamed with joy myself.
Second: You didn't do it, you weren't able to duplicate. You have a white wolf, not a ghost wolf. What you did is easily duplicated, over and over, every time. What the OP did was actually get a ghost wolf permanently.
Uh, nope, no she didn't- I was right in saying this was a big bug/glitch/etc, the DC problems were most likely what did it somehow. What I did was replicate the attempts, the crashing most likely WAS the cause for it; the server hiccuped, she tamed a wolf that thought it was still buffed, and by all rights/reasons should still be a white wolf. All the tames prove it, there's no 'getting it any more righter'. This is a glitch and it shouldn't be bothered with because the pet is not a real ghostwolf; and has been said before, the buff disappears on death.
Ergo it's a sparkly trinket you can't play with :/
All this being said, I think the OP is and has been on the right track all along, but just didn't know it. The OP was attempting to the opposite of the Oily wolf, treating the transformation into the Ghostwolf as a spawn ... and thus taming at the point of spawning versus taming at the point of despawning.
But I already did find the magic point basically. The wolf has to take a little over 180~ damage, 200 seems to be tyhe trick. When 200 hp is gone it usually transforms; as said multiple times when I did manage and when others managed, the wolves all shazamed, just like Garwhal! And then they poofed back into wolves. The buff is what proves this is well, not supposed to be happening so if anyone else succeeds, you pretty much are breaking the game.
And Acherontia I'm so sorry that your wolf died, I'm sure we all wouldn't have minded you having glitch wolf, I didn't.
Rest in peace, Glitch Wolf.