In the past two days, we've seen a change in Denali. He is right at the fence greeting wolf care staff, whereas, even earlier in the week, he was more isolating, and only joining the pack when there was howling. He's also shown more interest in engaging Maya in activity, a behavior that is typically Aidan's. Grizzer is showing dominance, but nothing physical, it's more posturing and charging. This has Denali a bit nervous, but the less Denali runs, the less Grizzer chases. There are still times when activity peaks, generally late afternoons we can expect to see some posturing, but Denali and Aidan have been trading off on the straw beds near the pond, and are spending time together.
Denali is starting to show less testing towards Oscar and more social behavior. He's been more likely to follow Oscar as staff take Oscar for daily walks. Denali has also been extremely tolerant of fly ointment, often standing for several minutes as staff not only coat his ears with ointment, but get in between his toes.
We unsuccessfully attempted rabies vaccinations on Malik and Shadow today. These two individuals are a challenge with some of the basic care that we need to provide. Vaccines and fly ointment are the challenges. We will try again after they have had a full meal and are a bit sleepy on a warm spring day.
Shadow has had a lot of howling bouts lately. On Thursday staff said Shadow howled so much that he was wobbly when he jumped off the den. Other than the howling, staff have had good interactions with Shadow. He continues to display the most intense social greetings of any wolf on site.
Grizzer is healing well, although we are still seeing weeping from the wound. He does allow close inspection and cleaning of the wound as long as you don't have anything in your hand that resembles a medical supply. This is a challenge; we would certainly like to scrub the wound with cleanser, but the risk of drugging him again, and having to pull him out of the pack even for a short period of time is too great. He has the top ranking status, he has all he can do to manage Denali now, and the medical benefit of cleaning his head is not worth the risk of the procedure, and him losing status. Even if we were able to clean his wound, the smell of the product would probably stimulate scent rolling in the straw after the procedure, and we don't need straw in the wound. Grizzer is very associative with wolf care staff and spends time circling the staff and guarding the staff from Denali.
This week's Youtube footage shows Malik doing some posturing towards Shadow. It's not very intense, but it is that time of the year that even older wolves hormonally cycle and try for status. It's always interesting to work with the older wolves, just when you think they are too old to pull a stunt, they surprise you. On Friday, the Curator was installing a new camera for the Center' Wolf Link project. Her hat fell out of her pocket when she was on a ladder and Malik was quick to retrieve it, and enjoyed the chase that ensued to get the hat back. He was pouncing and play bowing and tossing the hat in the air, it certainly created some good enclosure enrichment for a period of time. But, it is 10 degrees and the Curator needed her hat back, so a bit of bone dust as a distraction and the hat was retrieved, initially by Shadow, but then the Curator got her hat.
We allowed the pups some outdoor time yesterday, it was finally warm enough and the sun was shining. Aidan was extremely interested in the pups and afterwards, rolled on his back and pawed socially at Denali. A clip of this will be in the Youtube video this week.
Malik is showing some increased interest in the pups smells, or maybe it's the pup formula on our coats, but the issues last week have subsided. As I write this, both Shadow and Malik are sharing den space in the rain and have some good social bouts of activity.
Malik is on antibiotics again, this is the last attempt before a more invasive procedure is scheduled. As we've said before, Lakota had a similar situation and the 2nd round of antibiotics took care of it, but every wolf is different. Malik should be easy to immobilize, and we have no concerns about his absence from the enclosure, as Shadow has shown some good tolerance. We have 7 more days of Antibiotic treatment left to know if we need to be doing a procedure.
Shadow hasn't had much news to report, he's still particular about who and how his food is delivered, and he tolerates Malik's posturing, but his generally in good spirits. We are observing constant marking behavior when new straw is delivered, but it's not the marking behavior that's the issue, it's the scrape that follows. Shadow manages to scrape most of the straw back off the den within minutes of the delivery. He has wolf care staff fairly trained to pick it up multiple times a day.
The International Wolf Center advances the survival of wolf populations by teaching about wolves, their relationship to wildlands and the human role in their future.