Aidan continues to be very needy with wolf care staff. He clings like glue and guards defensively when Denali approaches. This diminishes with time in the enclosure, but reoccurs every time wolf care staff enter. His social behavior with Denali is increasing, with several play bows and wrestling bouts on the den sites. They have started sleeping near each other again, with Denali on the top of the slate den, and Aidan at the opening. The pond has been a source of interest, as the temperatures have cooled again to below zero mornings, the pond melt water has frozen solid, creating an ice rink for the wolves to investigate.
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Aidan continues to roll over and socially engage these pups, even after Boltz started to do a little testing behavior. Aidan clearly favors Luna over Boltz, which reinforces Luna’s confidence. But, Aidan is starting to get a lot more intense with Denali, and Luna is right there to help Aidan. The winter season is known for intensity, and while it may look like they are picking on Denali, the reality is, a wolf pack works best if the rank order is clearly defined. Aidan is defining Denali to be below the pups. This will change when the pups reach full adult size and may no longer be viewed as pups, but for now, this is life in an Exhibit Pack that seems to have a defined pack leader.
We have definitely noticed some confidence in Boltz. Not only is he defending his food, he was also observed doing a direct stare to Aidan with ears pricked forward. In Ethogram terms that means, “look out, I’m looking to move up a notch. Aidan held his ears back with a bit of intimidation and averted Boltz’s gaze which means, “ I’m not up for any testing today. Boltz gave him a muzzle bite and they both walked away together. We also see Boltz and Luna wrestling together and Boltz trying to do some dominance behavior over Denali, especially when Aidan has Denali on his back. This will be the last weight we gather until spring due to the cold weather issues with a metal scale. Boltz is well on his way to becoming a healthy adult.
Denali’s tail posture has been lowering as the activity increases in the pack. His lower tail posture is most commonly observed after a chase scene. Most of the chases result in Boltz or Denali being chased after some excitable social behavior gets too intense. Aidan is the one who might initiate a chase, but Denali gets attention especially when he tries to take possession of something from the pups. Aidan is still protective over the pup’s food possessions. What’s been interesting is that Denali doesn’t do much to show dominance over the pups. This is very similar to the relationship that Grizzer had with Aidan and Denali when they were pups. Without limits, Boltz will be opportunistic, we’ve observed this wolf behavior before
Grizzer had a great time rolling in the fresh snow and seems to be very interested in the Malik/Shadow relationship. Every time Malik tries some opportunistic behavior, Grizzer is right at the adjoining gate posturing with a T-2 tail. This makes for some very interesting interactions and is the reason why Grizzer can't join the arctics in retirement.
There were several observations of Aidan rolling around in a submissive posture and both pups asserting some dominance. Initially, Aidan took it in stride, but as the day turned to evening, he started to get a bit anxious about this new found pup confidence and started to show a bit of dominance over them. Boltz immediately submitted, but Luna rolled over then came back with more intensity. I would suspect we're going to start seeing some more active dominance from Aidan towards the pups, but he seems to content rolling over for them until they start getting a bit too excitable.
We had intended to transition the pups to a 2 or 3 times a week feeding, but we see some intense behavior from Luna when she's hungry which makes the entire pack tense. She is ruthless when it comes to guarding food and even has Aidan on the run. I don't know if this is just her personality or if she burns so many calories from running around and the smaller body frame needs more energy. Regardless of the reason, it's in everyone's best interest to keep Luna full and happy. We will continue to feed Luna whatever she needs to keep her active and a cohesive packmember.
Maya continues to be source of exercise for Grizzer. They chase each other up, over and through the den. This type of young energy is why we raise a minimum of two littermates together. The older animals don’t often display these energy bursts that seem to occur multiple times a day. Maya’s video shows her enjoying the remains of the weekly deer carcass.
Shadow's been a lot more active this week than last week. We have not observed any coughing, and we have an interesting clip on Youtube showing some invite chase/playbow behaviors from both wolves. It does appear that Shadow is becoming less tolerant of Malik's constant testing, one scene from the clip shows Shadow in a full growl threat. Whatever ailed Shadow last week doesn't seem to be an issue. The only clinical signs that we are seeing is an increased water consumption in the enclosure, and it appears to be mostly Shadow. Shadow doesn't have a good drugging history, he typically has some respiratory issues during the process. With this knowledge of his history, we are very cautious to immobilize him without having other clinical symptoms to help determine the cause of his down behavior. We are pleased that he's seeming more alert and interactive and at this point, our course of action will be to monitor and document interactions.
We did get the results back from Luna’s medical tests. The 24- hour fasting blood draw was done on November 10th and a full blood chemistry as well as vitamin D levels were tested. The vitamin D level of 145 is well within normal range for dogs which is 60-215. This has been a long road getting her to this point. We have been sampling periodically since we discovered her issues and her values have increased from 34 on 5/16 to 78 on 7/18 to 117 on 10/22 and her latest value of 145 on 11/10 tells us that she is able to meet her dietary vitamin D needs through her normal diet. We stopped the daily supplement on October 12th due to some concerns over negative conditioning. We still see an issue with limping when it’s cold or when she’s been at a heightened level of activity. We started her on a one-month treatment of Adequan which is an injectable treatment twice a week to decrease inflammation, reduce painful sensations and improve joint issues. She’s responded well to the first two doses. We weighed Luna this morning and are very pleased with the 73.92 lb weight. She runs so much in this pack that were concerned that she was burning more calories than eating, but she manages to still grow. Aidan's very good about grabbing food and bringing it up on the hill to let Luna eat. Although, if you watched the Youtube video, Luna has no problem defending her own carcasses.
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