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Malik keeps pushing Grizzer to the edge. Perhaps he is trying to gain back his status as second ranking male, taking every opportunity to accomplish this. He’s been growling at Grizzer and lunging at him, but Grizzer’s confidence in facing him, makes Malik nervous and results in a run up the hill of the enclosure. Malik has also being doing some bark howling, specially on windy days (who knows, he might had problems with a branch), but contrary to Shadow’s bark howl, his is more fearful.
Written by Nannies, Tina and Ed Stimpson – Denali was very active during the afternoon programs. He played tug of war with Aidan. Denali initiated play bows with Aidan in the evening. He was also stalking Aidan in the pup pen. The pup pond was filled this evening; Denali enjoyed jumping in and out of the pup pond. Denali and Aidan joined the Exhibit Pack in howling this evening.
Written by Nanny Team Members, Tina and Ed Stimpson – In the morning, Denali spent thirty minutes caching chicken. He would cache it and Aidan would find it and dig it up. Denali would find it again and dig it up and cache it again. After thirty minutes, Denali decided to eat the chicken. Denali and Aidan both did jaw sparring, tug of war, food possession, and squashes during the Behind Scenes program this morning. Denali was anxious today during the afternoon programs.
Written by Weekend Nannies Cindy Ludwig and Debbie Shepard: Aidan was reluctant to participate in the programs, likely due to large, noisy crowds with a lot of movement. Aidan, being the more predatory pup keys into movements in the crowd. Wolf care staff attempts to entice the pups into the program, but nothing is forced; if the pups don't want to participate, they don't have to.
The following log was written by Nanny, Deb Lewis: Aidan was very active during the afternoon Pup 101 program. He is nimble enough now to jump up on the auditorium window ledge. While there, he tried to catch a fly on the glass. He paced the window ledge and made a few attempts to get past a nanny to escape the pen. His attempts were foiled by nannies distracting him with bits of meat.
Lakota has developed some interesting habits. She will only eat if she is hand fed or if the staff pretend to leave somthing on the picnic table, acting like she is not suppose to have it, then she grabs it and runs. This is how we managed to feed her 2.5 lbs of venision steak and roast this morning. Her other habit is to come into the wolf lab and watch the staff work at the computers. Her photo this week shows her curiosity. Of course, she is always attended in the lab, but when staff are not watching closely, she still has a habit of taking mouse pads. She has a great spring in her step, and every morning the routine is the same. The retired enclosure is opened, she trots out to the walkway, if the pups are locked up, she can go straight into the yard. If the pups are out, she watches and waits by the gate. After the pup introduction, she will be very excited to change the routine and come in the wolf yard every time.
Maya and Shadow have been spending a lot of time sleeping together and sharing time at the fence with the pups. She has been a bit reserved with wolf care staff, which may be the result of the long summer waiting for the pups. We do anticipate her playing an active roll in protecting the pups as well as socially greeting them. She does that now at the gate and we are looking forward to her actual face to face contact with them. The next logs, posted on August 4th, should reveal the complete details of this introduction.
The pups are slowing down in weight gain, as metabolisms begin to change, they will still have spurts of growth, gaining 1/2 lb increments, but not on a daily basis.
Maya remains very alert to the pups’ movements, and every time they are running or playing rough in the pup enclosure, Maya whines at them. When she is not checking the pups, Maya has been chasing Grizzer, dodging behind the rocks in a “hide and seek behavior.
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