Aidan – Brushing the Heat and Stress Away

In this week’s photo, you see the wall of Aidan hair as the front shoulders have been brushed out, but the back half of his body still has some dense undercoat.  Staff have focused most of the brushing efforts on Aidan in the Exhibit Pack.  Why Aidan, we definitely want to reduce stress and the side effect of overheating.  The other reason staff focus on Aidan is that he is very amiable to getting brushed, often resting in front of wolf care staff who help block the other wolves from interacting.  This gives us a great opportunity to feel for any other abnormal growths.  As this photo shows his front leg incision which had been prominent all winter has diminished and hair is returning on his incision site from the November, mass cell tumor removal.  Both he and Denali are being treated with daily antihistamines and it appears to be effective in reducing the size and occurrence of these growths.  Time will tell if this is a long-term method.  This is our first experience with a mass cell growth, although Lakota had several issues with the papilloma virus that had a cauliflower–like appearance to the growths.  As animal’s age, we need to be very aware of each individual’s physical condition as we assess and identify, lumps, bumps and tumors and try to decipher the cause, but more importantly the treatment. Aidan is in the pack, but at this point, he isn’t leading the pack, but his presence does have an influence, especially upon Grayson and Denali.  Even Boltz came to rest with Aidan when Boltz was having a particularly hard day with things that bug him, especially the particularly pesky one named Axel.