Eurasier Dog and Wolf Stepmother Bolita raises offspring of her own

Diary entry, 17.04.2011, Kurt Kotrschal

Bolita was my dependable partner in all our wolf and dog hand raisings. Just four weeks ago she gave birth to eight pups herself.

Pictures of the day (6 images)   

As a principle, we hand-raise our wolves and dogs at the WSC only in the presence of our private dogs. One of if it is my Eurasier female Bolita vom Kleinbodenbach. With four years, she is now in her best age. Four weeks ago, she gave birth to eight healthy, fast growing, mischiefeous and securely attached pups. Although it seemed as if she would not allow the sire, Erik vom Ragenvald to please her. A hard job for him to persuade a female with a boosted self esteem due to her routine interaction with the wolves. But finally he made it. Somehow.

She is a phantastic mother, extremely finely tuned towards the needs of the pups and with a milk production like a premium dairy cow. She compensates by happily eating four times as much as normal without increasing in weight.

Bolitas reputation as beautiful and self-confident dog has spread widely and she could have given birth to twice as many pups to satisfy the demand. Still, as a biologist, I would want to emphasize that Bolitas phantastic features are not just in her genes; they are as much the result of her social environment, wolves, other dogs, the colleagues at the WSC and of course, of her embedding in the Kotrschal family :-)