Retargeting animations distortion from maya to unity

so I made a model in maya and tried to skin weight and re-rig it into another rig altering the skeleton as well to fit my current model using preexisting animations from another fbx animation wolf rig. however the model comes in normal when importing to unity but when i play the animations for the creature using the fbx animation files of the preexisting animations, the creature distorts to conform to the original wolf rig. everything functions in the game for the most part and it animates but the problem i have is the creature model mesh is distorted and ugly. skin weights don’t apply too well either. i looked for various articles and blog concerning this problem but im at a lost as to what’s going on. i just want the creature model i made to not conform to the wolf rig and instead somehow have the animation conform to the creature model instead. or at least maintain its proportions and structure as originally intended