My first thing to share is that they are not pups anymore. Full blown teenagers/mini-wolves is what we are dealing with now. Life is different!

Look at them on the cliff. HUGE!

Our work starts well before getting our hands on the wolves. Katy spends quite a bit of time getting records, check sheets, medicines, scales, supplies, vaccines, flashlights, spare batteries etc. ready to go and easily accessible for the work to come. Her planning and organization makes the work much easier.

Simultaneously, we’re making the plan for how the catch up will go in the exhibit. Thus far, the pups have  been in the dens when we go to catch them. That’s the expectation for the first three months. However, we’re now approaching 3.5 months old and things are different.

The expectation this morning, August 4, was we’d have to get the pups into the den (which was the correct assumption). Where people stand when the pups are in the den is in blue, while the black writing indicates how our general flow will take place. The Team did an amazing job prepping for the unknown and making decisions rather quickly during the catch when needed this morning.

This is how it looks in real life:

So, once we had the pups into the dens we then had to catch them up and move them to our work area. Jen got this picture off the den camera to see what it looks like inside the den when we go in to get the pups out. The net no longer works, so we used a crate for transport. We put all four pups in one crate. We are not likely to do that again as 40 Kg of pups is pretty heavy to move through the uneven terrain in the wolf yard!

As already said, the pups are big. Our weighing containers still work, but the pups don’t really fit in them. Fortunately, for the most part, the pups go fairly passive once they are caught. All pups looked great today. They got their 3rd round of vaccines, weighed (all are gaining weight at a consistent rate), microchip checked, and a general look over. All of them were in great shape.  Enjoy the pictures below. The last pup health check is the end of August (around the 26) so we’ll have more news then.