Animal Relationships Are Just As Intricate As Human Relationships

I have two wolf dogs , one is a female and is now nine and a half years old and the other is a male and is now five and a half years old, notice I said “have” and not “own”, because I will never own them – I only get to enjoy living with them. I obtained them both at the same time from a friend who has a “wolf-dog” rescue place and they are the second two I have adopted. The first two are the same age as the oldest one of the two that now live with me and they are both happily living with my ex-roommate that I promised when I got the first two that when I eventually did get my “very own” place that I wouldn’t take them away from him so when I did start buying my own place five and a half years ago I was going to share “custody” but the first two (who are still my friends that I go visit at least once a week because wolves make their bonded relationships early in life and even if they add friends as they get older they are truly only “best” friends with the very few they met first in their lives and I am privileged to be their only best friend besides my ex-roommate so I owe it them because I brought them into our world to go visit them and continue to be one of their best friends) always wanted to go “home” with my roommate because it was the only home they had known for the first four years of their lives. So I decided that, because both my ex-roommate and always a current friend, we both had the room and the desire to have these beautiful creatures part of our lives that I should “re-rescue” two more (they do a lot better if they have a small pack of two than if there is only one of them, and you do better also because they entertain each other so that they don’t depend on you always being there for their happiness. That is what I call a win – win! So I drove down to the place in eastern California that the people live in that I got the other pair from to visit with the many wolf-dogs she had available for me to adopt. I told her that I wanted a “trusted by her” adult female and a male pup so I could be bigger and the boss before it got bigger than me like I had done with the first two I let my friend keep primary care of. She only had three adult females that she recommended to me, being sociable to cats was one of my conditions because I had two cats that I had since they were kittens for seven years. The pups that were available were many, but because I loved the male that I let my roommate keep and his sunny sweet disposition I wanted a relative of his and it was possible, so because there was four pups from a litter that were sired by the brother of the male I let my roommate keep I wanted one of them. There were two males in the litter of ten week old pups and two females, because I wanted to get a male that was a pup (so that I was larger than it was to start with so I could impress upon him that I was the “alpha” which, if you read my stories about how my animals “own” me, might be debatable but nonetheless was my rationale for making the choice I did in adopting the animals I drove home from California to Oregon with sitting in the front seat and the “front floor” seat of my car. I got to my friends’ house, Deb and Charles, on a Friday night just before dark in June of 2007 and they took me out to visit with the approximate fifty wolf-dogs that live on their property in eastern California near Sparks, Nevada. These animals range in age from pup to the fifteen year old female that lives with them full time in their trailer house. They let one other wolf dog that gets along with their old female wolf-dog and their two cats live in the trailer with them on a one month each rotation. Which leaves some of the rescues out because of the socialization they received before Deb and Charles took over their care did not make them able to be social with other dogs or cats, which frequently means Deb has pretty much physically taken the wolf-dog from the person who was abusing it and giving it a new home. This is what I find admirable about these people, Deb and Charles, which was after I had fell in love with wolf-dogs from the one I had for twelve years before she died of cancer. So knowing there were two male pups that were available that were related to the three year old male I had known since he was 12 weeks old I specifically went out to the “wolf” quarters to meet these two young boys. As soon as I walked up to the fenced in enclosure one of the pups put his big paw on top of the other pub that was trying to greet me and he managed to greet me first. He was a beautiful young wolf dog pup and had the silver and white markings that I especially fond of, but when he put his paw on the other pup to stop him from being able to be the first one that got to greet me I took this as a sign and told Deb I wanted to meet this boy. She let only him out and he immediately greeted me and said “take me home”. The adult females that Deb felt would fit into my household consisted of a two year old that was a little odd looking, probably the result of a dog that didn’t mesh well with a wolf, the three year old mother of the male pup I wanted, and her three year old sister who Deb told me was very unhappy with having to share her time in the house with other of their wolf dogs and she showed me photos of this female laying on their couch with one of their cats. This seemed like a good match, I thought the pup I wanted would rather live with his Aunt (because he only knew who his mom was and I was pretty sure he had no idea the other female was his aunt and as long as I made sure no pups happened it didn’t matter if she was his aunt or not) so I told Deb I wanted “Hunter” and “Niner”, they were already named but I saw no reason to change their names. When I loaded my pack into the car and we went to the pens and got Hunter and Niner out and took them to my car they met for the first time and both gladly got into my car and we started the eight hour drive to my home. They immediately took the positions in the car that they still take after five years, she laid on the floor of the front seat and Hunter took point sitting in the front seat. Wolves are apparently much different that dogs as even though they are spayed and neutered they maintain a once a year “sex” session that lasts about a week, but no one gets pregnant. I feel this speaks to what nature really means to occur, Hunter (or Coho in the other pair my roommate has) never knows why he gets “lucky” once a year but he never turns it down. I always sort of jokingly tell my married men friends “it is sort of the same as what happens with you”, but they always say it is only sort of “joking”.