shadow – Dec 22, 2008 12:00 AM

One indicator that the pack is doing well relates to the calmness of the dominant male, Shadow. While there is some issues with Malik and Grizzer, Shadow remains calm and watches the pack. This tells us that it's not too serious, if Shadow was concerned about the pack strife, he would be in the mix. One thing that Shadow has to be wary of is scent rolling or submissive behavior. When we did an Enclosure Enrichment with scents, Shadow scentrolled, which peaked the interest of the pack when he was on his back. He quickly gets up and shows his status, but we need to be mindful of this during activities. He had the same result when he was actively submitting to Curator, Lori Schmidt. When the pups saw him down, they took that as an opportunity to jump on him. So far, Shadow remains strong and is very confident. If we keep the wolf yard calm with no strangers behind the scenes, Shadow will stay calm. Shadow does enjoy spending time in the Retired Enclosure. It is now a weekly practice to draw the wolves over into Retirement so that they remain comfortable with this area. As stated in the other log postings, we did two enclosure enrichments last week, one was scent based that resulted in scent rolling behavior, the other was food based that stimulated the wolves to search and find treats. A YouTube video showing both enclosure enrichment activities will be posted.