CHRISTINA MAYER

Animal trainer

I learnt about the WSC in one of Kurt Kotrschal’s lectures at the University of Vienna. I found it to be a great project and wanted to know, how working with wolves feels. Coming to the WSC in September 2010 to look over everything and only a few hours later having downright been thrown into a wolf pack, the feeling was that overwhelming and I knew, I want to write my thesis here. What finally worked.

Then I started in February 2011 as a student at the WSC. I stayed there for 7 months to gather data for my master thesis. The topic was "Feeding aggression in dogs and wolves". In addition, I could help in the daily work of the trainers, which I really loved.

In June 2012, there was space as a hand raiser for the wolf puppies on short notice. That was an opportunity I didn’t want to miss. It was an intense, exhausting but also wonderful time, and as they offered me a position as a trainee, to become a trainer at the WSC. I just stayed, because ever since I started to study biology, it was my dream to find a job where I can work with animals. An office job was not imaginable for me at that time.

And the rest is history.