Tayanita († July 2009)

View the slideshow (15 images)   

• Species:
  wolf
• Birth Date:
  4.5.2008
• Birth Place:
  Herberstein
• 10. Day, Weight (g):
  430 g
• Mother:
  Sitca
• Father:
  Who knows?
• Foster parent:
  Claudia Hatschek

Our smallest wolf and the sister of Kaspar. Small and Slight, but if she wants to achieve something, she becomes very single-minded.

Taya is blind since her birth - she does not even see the light. Even though she is blind, she is orientating excellent in the enclosure and on the walks we take her on. People often do not even recognize that she cannot see when watching her.

With us she is the most enthusiastic at greeting: if one of us arrives, she is always the first to greet us and she whimpers and wines long to show her happiness. She wants to be petted, and follows us all over the enclosure. If the wheatear is fine, and we sit down outside, she comes next to us, just to continue her sleep close to us.

With new people she is the most trustingly, she is always the first to approach them, to greet them and sniff whether they have food or not.

Despite her blindness nothing that smells after food or is food is secure from her. Fast as lighting she goes up to tables, into the kitchen or gets into one’s pocket if she thinks there might be some eatable stuff. She shows real wolf-like behavior in only one situation, and that’s the feeding. As soon as she catches her portion, she defends it from everybody and everything. She cannot see if one of her siblings comes close to steal her dinner, so she learned quickly to growl and snap as soon as she hears any kind of noise next to her.

The first impression (May 2008)

She is half the size of the others, but full with the desire to live and grow. Tiny little body and fragile bones – she is simply cute.

She was the first one to feed from the bottle, but she gets tired pretty quickly.

Maybe the power of her personality will raise her to be the female leader of the pack?

With 6 months (October 2008)

Taya is more and more our dog-like, human-loving wolf-alike. She freaks out in welcome ceremonies, cannot get enough of it having her ears massaged and her belly stroked. She is great and friendly with people (tail wagging like a Golden retriever) after an initial careful approach.

Only if food is in the game she can get quite unreasonable. This is probably due to the fact that she is blind and has to defend her food very hard against the other three wolves – otherwise it is gone. And thus, she is very agitated when she got a piece of food and does not really discriminate between wolf and human. So, if she has a food piece, we rather stay out of her way.