aidan – Dec 23, 2011 12:00 AM

You may have noticed a little discoloration of Aidan's nose in recent photos. Initially, we thought that he may have scraped his nose trying to cache in the lack of snow. The ground is frozen and without a protective layer of snow, the wolves try to cache and push frozen soil. But, we also experienced another similar condition with a wolf in 2001. Lucas, the dominant male of the Exhibit Pack, had a similar condition that advanced to a stage of total pigmentation loss on his nose and on the pads of his paws. A medical exam in 2001, with the help of a tissue biopsy, diagnosed this condition as Vitiligo. There are several possible causes, but there is some evidence that this is an auto-immune disorder. We have been inspecting Aidan's paws, and see no evidence of pigmentation loss on his pads. Both Aidan and Denali are scheduled for a complete medical exam in 2012, and a tissue biopsy can be collected. At this point, there appears to be no other issues or problems. We will certainly review Lucas's medical files to understand the progression and our successful treatment of this in the past.