denali – May 22, 2008 12:00 AM

The pups had a busy today with a media event at 4 pm and an open house for Ely residents at 5 pm. Red Paw showed some anxiety with the camera crews, but relaxed a bit, but didn’t calm down until he returned to the lab. Earlier in the day, after Attila did a head-butt at the gate, the staff let the pups out to explore the lab. Red Paw was very calm and explored every corner of the lab, as it’s a familiar place. In contrast, Attila, who deals with unfamiliar things well, became very nervous and whined. Red Paw ignored him, and continued to explore. Jess Edberg was raking straw in the pup pen, and neither pup showed any anxiety to the motion of the rake. These are all conditioning items that the pups need to be exposed to, as raking is a big part of wolf care. The pups started lapping formula from a bowl today, and will be getting a gruel mix of weaning formula and esbilac. This will help the bottle feeding issues and should increase the pup’s weight gain. The video clip for today shows Red Paw dragging the stuffed wolf pup into the den box, doing a head shake. His audio includes the sounds of both pups lapping formula for the first time.