Today Grizz is 74 days old. Grizz greeted the staff well today, and tried to playfully bite at clothing. However, whenever he did, Nyssa would growl and dominate him. Grizz seems to have less aggression towards nannies, but continues to have problems when being woken up. During the heat of the day, staff have been bringing the puppies into the lab to escape the heat. Grizz seems to calm down and dig in the 'toy' box. He found a paper bag that he played with for a while before he crawled under a desk and fell asleep.
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Today Maya is 61 days old. She was calm while the crew was filming today. She kept herself occupided by chewing on a deer hide the whole time. Our nannies were able to capture pictures of Maya and Grizzer cuddling with each other.
Now that the pups are outdoors, the nanny staff are outdoors as well. The Nanny coats are designed to be waterproof and more importantly mosquito proof. The nannies may spend hours in the pen encouraging the pups to eat, gathering photos, cleaning the pen and socializing the pups.
During the 10 pm program, Maya initially ate her food very quickly, then started caching her food in different places throughout the enclosure. She grabbed the food from the nanny's hand and went to cache it and seemed to be annoyed by the nanny hand-feeding.
Today Maya is 74 days old. Maya has been showing numerous attempts at caching food. She taked hunks of meat from her bowl and buries it in various places about the pup pen. We then observe her digging it up a few hours later and consuming it. This morning Maya greeted staff very well. She licked and whined, and also submissively rolled over. When the Arctics began to howl, Maya ran to the fence, whined at licked at the fence before joining in with her own howling attempt.
Today Grizz is 75 days old. Grizz continues to have problems in the Pup 101 programs. He seems to react negatively when he hears children crying. Staff now let him walk in and out of the auditorium at his own discretion, attempting to build his comfort level with the crowd. Because of the heat, Grizz has been taking dips in the pool that is in the pup pen. He stands in the water, splashes around a bit, and then goes to lay down in some dirt.
Maya seemed to be interacting more with Grizzer today and less submissive. She initiated play with Grizzer several times, biting him on the hind leg, biting his head and muzzle and he rolled over a couple times. She then pounced on Nyssa, getting Nyssa to roll over. Yesterday, it seemed that Nyssa and Grizzer were interacting more and today it seems that Maya and Grizzer are interacting more.
Exciting afternoon for Maya, Queen of the Mountain. After a little hesitation over nannies bringing in a wheelbarrow full of rocks, she decided it was too much of an adventure to miss out on. She climbed up on the rocks in the barrow and practiced getting her footing, taunting Grizzer with her elevated importance. Finally the other two pups joined her, but you could tell. Maya is a natural rock climber. Grab those caribiners and let's go! After such afternoon, it was difficult to get an accurate weight on her.
Today Nyssa is 71 days old. She willingly went into the program, showed no interest in greeting the Arctics, preferring to rest. She did well during the program, submitting to Grizzer after a tug of war over the deer skull. At one point, Grizzer sat on top of her while she continued to chew and protest as only Nyssa, Ms. Vocal, could do. At the end of the program she was a little testy with the nanny and snapped and had to be subdued by staff before making her exit. She was fine being picked up out in the wolf yard and taken to the pup enclosure. She was very playful so no weights for her either.
Today Nyssa is 87 days old. When Nyssa was inspecting a dying moth before a pup program she swatted at it for several seconds and then did one of her first scent rolling behaviors. During the final pup program of the day Nyssa along with her littermates were very anxious and didn't want to be in the pup pen at all. Nyssa and Grizz have also been actively dominating Maya today. All the pups have been running around the pen playing with one another. There is no doubt today's cool weather has contributed to high pup activity levels.
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