Grizzer has had a hard week. It is a challenge to manage wolves with injuries. Bringing a wolf out of the enclosure can affect their rank, and can result in a wolf not be accepted back into the pack. Medical decisions must be weighed carefully, and on Saturday, the need to stitch Grizzer's wounds were a priority. Grizzer did extremely well with the procedure, and was back in the pack with Maya and Aidan within 3 hours. Maya showed him great support, licking his wounds and keeping Aidan away, although Aidan is showing very strong signs of bonding to Grizzer, and wasn't a concern. In order to make a clean stitch, Grizzer had to have his head shaved, which eliminates any postcard photos for a while, but overall, his attitude is good, he is still in command of the pack, Maya is showing pair bonding with him, and he continues on antibiotics until the wound is healed.
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The Arctic's had an interesting weekend. Not only did they deal with Denali being in the pack holding area (this caused Shadow to guard his food with more attitude), but on Sunday, a stray husky dog squeezed between the fences and was in the secondary fence next to the retired enclosure. Thankfully the dog didn't get into the retired enclosure, and two people chasing the dog jumped the fence to retrieve it. The combination of strange people and a dog on site didn't help matters for dominance in the Exhibit Pack, but Shadow took it all in stride. After some initial excitement, he settled down pretty quickly. I guess he's seen it all as a former pack leader. We are very thankful that Sherry Jokinen was on site to address the situation. She volunteered to stay the weekend on short notice so the pack was supervised 24 hours day during Denali's time off of the Exhibit.
Aidan is probably the best indicator of pack tension. As the omega, if there's tension, there's redirection to the omega, usually by Maya. If you get a chance to view the Youtube footage for this week, you will see Aidan moving about the enclosure with very little concern for Maya's presence. This type of response certainly indicates calm behavior. Denali continues to be a testing two year old, but his testing is less intense and he's actually been observed playing with Aidan again. Of course, if they wrestle and chase too much, it draws attention from Maya and Grizzer, but it's a good sign of pack cohesiveness. A wolf pack doesn't appear to function well with uncertainty of rank, if everyone knows their position, the pack has a much calmer energy.
Grizzer has retained a commanding presence in the Exhibit, keeping Denali nervous and aloof. Grizzer's bite wound on his head is still a bit infected, and prompted the Vet to continue another week of antibiotics. His posture remains dominant, with high tail, raise leg urination, direct stares to Denali and very watchful of any staff that pays attention to Denali. In order to get Denali his meds and a daily check, Grizzer needs to be brought into holding and be kept distracted. He can't be locked off, or he gets too excited from the separation and targets Denali. Grizzer's main behavior is just intimidation, chasing behavior without much catching.
Malik continues to show Shadow dominance over food carcasses, and a placement of deer scraps resulted in a lot of carrying and caching behavior. We had a surplus of deer, so we will continue to feed large volumes of food in multiple locations to encourage some confidence in Shadow. Malik likely responds this way since he was in retirement first, and claimed the enclosure.
Sorry for the delay, Delay challenged Grizzer for dominance on Friday, and we have been dealing with that issue for the last day. All is fine right now, and I will post more information on Grizzer and Denali's logs. Aidan has not been involved in any of the tension between Grizzer and Denali, with the exception of some chases issues with Maya, he's had some benefits. After the first challenge from Denali on Friday morning, we fed a deer to try to distract the wolves, it didn't work for Grizzer and Denali, but Aidan got to eat his fill of deer. He was later observed sleeping with Grizzer and he was also observed licking Grizzer's wounds.
On Friday morning, Denali challenged Grizzer to a dominance fight during wolf care. There were a combination of factors that contributed to this challenge. It was an extremely windy day, which always increases the wolves anxiety. There has been a stray husky running loose in the area, with tracks in the parking lot and around the back of the wolf yard near the freezer. We also had an overnight group with some excitable voices in the parking lot that morning. All of these factors combined with the existing tension of some dominance testing pushed the challenge by Denali. As with all wolf challenges, we watch and don't intervene due to the concern that if we stop it, we might give both wolves the psychological idea that they both won, causing them to engage more intensely the next time. In order for the rank order to be settled, one wolf has to be the clear winner. The initial challenge lasted about 6 minutes, then ended for the day. They started again after dark, and by morning on Saturday, the pack was calm, and it was clear that Grizzer maintained his dominance. Denali was extremely calm, and came into holding with no issues. We are currently holding Denali in the pack holding area for the weekend to give Grizzer a chance to heal a bit, and will reunite the pack on Monday. There's always a risk in holding a wolf off that they won't accept him back in, but we had to make the hard choice to give Grizzer's stitches a few days of healing.
Denali's posting details some of events that happened in the last few days. Grizzer had a tear on the top of his head that required stitching, but it is very critical that, as the dominant wolf, he was not removed from the pack for an extended amount of time. We immobilized him out of view of the pack, carried him into the lab for the vet care, and had him back in the pack within two hours. We did not want to risk issues with his stitches, so we decided to hold Denali in the pack holding area for the weekend to give Grizzer some time to heal. There is always a risk to pack dynamics when isolating a wolf, but it is better to isolate a lower ranking wolf than the dominant wolf. Even in the short time while we were immobilizing Grizzer, Denali was posturing towards Maya and doing RLU's in the Exhibit. He was much more subdued when we placed him into holding. Grizzer approached the fence and showed a high tail to Denali, but Denali responded with whining and a t-3 tail, but not tucked. This shows submission and not fear, which is what we had hoped for.
We need to constantly remind ourselves that Denali is two, and sometimes, young wolves are just young wolves. Grizzer was the same, the only difference is, Grizzer had a dominant active pack leader that never let the antics of a 2-year old escalate. Denali has reduced the intensity of his testing this past week, but it is the nature of wolves to seek opportunities. Fortunately, Grizzer won the challenge and with it, won some confidence to deal with the pack. Denali should improve in the upcoming year, and by the time the new pups arrive in 2012, Denali will have something else to occupy his exhuberant personality.
Denali is back in the mix, and displaying some great social behavior. There are still the bouts of threat displays, but Grizzer doesn't respond negatively to these displays, he merely postures and reminds Denali who marks on the higher portion of the rock (that's wolf talk for dominance). It is good to have Denali back in the middle of things, and spending time with wolf care staff. Grizzer is less guarding of staff this week and we have noticed a calming effect on Denali.
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