Uptown Wolves

By Randy Lawrence

It took some 32,000 years and much wrangling between different branches of the natural sciences, but  in the early '90's, the American Society of Mammalogists and Smithsonian Institution used DNA evidence to finally confirm that Canis lupus familiaris, our domestic dog, is indeed a subspecies of Canis lupus or Gray Wolf.

With all due respect:  "Duh..."

Many of us cut our own canine teeth on nature shows of some sort or another, and much of that footage on wild canids has always been easily recognized in our dogs' behavior.  Take Firelight Dreamboat Annie with her litter of puppies.

Just a week or so, Annie began bringing gifts to her puppies.  First, it was a favorite toy.  Lynn Dee had to be vigilant to make sure it was not the heavy bone that Annie chose the first time, something that could be dropped to bonk delicate puppy noggins.  In the photo above, she's sharing a toy that is a great deal less menacing.

At night, Annie gets a biscuit snack.  Soon she was hauling that into the whelping box, the she wolf bringing prey back to the den to share with her pups.  Lynn Dee now has to break the biscuit into bits to make sure Annie eats, rather than ferries it, back to her crew.

 A calm, well-adjusted dam shapes her brood as surely as have her wild ancestors for eons.  Breeders like Lynn Dee remove all of the external forces that might pressure a litter of wild wolf, coyote, jackal puppies (or poorly maintained domestic ones), freeing the female to keep order among clean, well fed, confident youngsters.   

In The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling writes, "For the strength of the pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the pack."   Annie's pack of sturdy individuals takes their cues (and considerable inherited talent) from their bold, self-assured mother.  When it is their turn to run the woods or prairies,  sifting scent, parsing cover, learning the ways of grouse and pheasant, quail, partridge or woodcock, may they be partnered with savvy human hunters who know how to take advantage of all that Annie put into her puppies.  That's a surefire path to a howling success.