Walking with Wolves

Since moving, I have re-joined an organisation that I belonged to 15 years ago - SPICE (http://www.spiceuk.com/). The interest for me is trying out new and different things, one of which was walking with wolves. I went to a wolf sanctuary in Bedford (www.anglianwolf.com/).

Well, the girls are great, great, great, great ancestors of wolves, so it was visit that had to happen. They have 4 wolves at the sanctuary and when we arrived we were told about their history, the specific wolves and a few behavioural things. Then we went for walkies with one of them. They are definitely not “domesticated pets”, but they have been socialised with humans, which means that if you treat them very carefully and only approach them when told to and stroke them as directed, they won’t take your hand off. Although when they first walked up and down their pen checking us out they looked like “butter wouldn't melt”, when they were narked with each other you could see they potentially could do real damage and when they ate their dinner, several chicken carcasses and large lamb chops EACH, you wouldn't want to be near them!

When we were first introduced to the wolf that went walkies with us, we stood in a row and held our hands out in a clenched fist for her to sniff. She walked along and back along the row to “check us out”, and I got a lick on my knuckles. Reckon it’s because she could smell Pip and Tinker. Wolves can smell something 4 football pitches away! There was only one bloke in the group. Wolves are extremely sensitive to human gender, and apart from the lick I got, it pretty much ignored the others ... until it reached the chap, when she started rubbing herself across his legs like cats do and sniffing his bits! I got to rub her during the introduction and then another two times through the wire fence in their compound, and amazingly when I got back, neither Pip nor Tinker sniffed me – yet if I've stroked someone else’s cat or dog, they sniff me all over wanting to know where I've been, what I've been stroking etc, yet there was no reactionswhatsoever that my hands smelt of wolf.

There were two males and 2 females. The males had thicker coats and if they were painted white were the spit of Pip. The females were leaner and had shorter hair and one of them was the spit of Tinker.