My visit at the wolves

Diary entry, 02.12.2008, guest

My name is Erik Kersting and I come from Roetgen by Aachen in Germany

Pictures of the day (2 images)   

Since morning we were in the wolf enclosure. The first task for today was to collect scat. Because I was a stranger for the wolves, I couldn´t help. New people are only allowed to stay in the first part of the enclosure, to not stress the animals too much. I stayed standing there and observed how interested the wolves looked at the two women collecting scat.

Amazing to me is also how good the blind Taya could follow what is happening around her. She already tried to hunt a raven only after hearing the raven´s wing beat and orientating after it. After the scat-collecting event  all the wolves were so tired, that they slept through a couple of hours. This was not really good for Steffie, because she had only sleeping wolves to observe.
Bea and me watched some videos of the wolves, and about the work with the wolves (walks, touchscreen training and so on), and she told me about some of the conclusions.

As soon as the wolves woke up, Bea took Shima on the 10 m long leash and went for a walk in the game park with her. After Shima she also took out Kaspar. Steffie and me could observe the rest of the pack, how they played with each other, and of course the howling sessions they made. This was good for Steffie, she could collect some data with active wolves.

After the reunion of the pack, and after all the excitement that they had, all of them fell asleep again. They woke up a couple of hours later, Bea involved us in the work with the wolves. They got their meals from our hand. This is an easy task for Taya but not for Kaspar. Except for Kaspar all of the wolves came to me and took food from my hands, although I´m a stranger for them. He is still a bit sceptic with me, but he came quite near to me as well. I could also give some orders like sit or paw to the wolves which came and took food from me. And they followed the orders and did sit or gave the paw. This was a great feeling.

After half an hour of feeding we went back into the house and the wolves did what they are usually doing after having some excitement, they slept. After all it became dark, and all of us wanted to go home, after a long day with a lots of new experiences. I sat down outside for a while, just to cut off for a while. The wolves came close to me, Aragorn, Taya and Shima took social contact with me, they sniffed at my hands and let me stroke them on their muzzle. This happened with so much confidence and calmness, that it gave me an amazing feeling. This was the highlight of the day for me.