In the middle of the packing for the trip to Texas and trying to get the Winter Newsletter picked up and sent out, the snow we had been praying for hit -- all at once! It started snowing on March 16th and before it ended late on the 17th there was 6.5 feet of the heavy white stuff.

The five staff members of Wolf weren't going anywhere. They began shoveling walkways, decks and roofs and plowing the road the morning of the 17th and finally were able to get all of the paths cleared and drive to the main road, 2.25 miles from the facility, five days later.

Luckily the weight of the snow caused it to condense quickly, especially when the animals walked on it. We also felt blessed that none of the trees that broke affected any of the fencing. Although we are very grateful for the moisture, pray that next year it's spread out a little.

 

 

 

(Frank Wendland)

Yes, this is the Spring newsletter. Sorry it is so late -- there just never seems to be enough hours in the day. Hopefully we will be more prompt with the Summer edition.

The most notable events continue to be the Big Snow we received in March and the Texas Rescue . Both of these combined have again pushed our resources to the max. I have included one more photo of each situation for you on this page. In general this spring has been a total reverse of last spring.

We have had a good amount of moisture -- all of the ponds are full. For a while we actually had two of the five ponds overflowing their banks. The wildflowers have been spectacular and the threat of wildfire has been minimal. We did have one scare on Father's Day when six fire trucks went quickly down our road after a lightening strike. Luckily they were still searching for the smoke and it ended up to be very small and more than four miles from our property. The hummingbirds returned very early this year (about two weeks early), seeming to know that the flowers were ready. We even had an early clutch of seven ducklings hatch at one of the ponds.

Just as we were in the middle of celebrating the results of the Texas Rescue, we received news of three more large rescues needed. These situations quickly took the wind out of our sails. We were lacking the resources to even think about helping, but it seemed to be more of a quick slap in the face saying, "there's more!"

One was a purported sanctuary in Oregon (Medicine Wolf), which was closing down and twenty-some animals were left without homes. A courageous volunteer is caring for the animals and trying to find them new homes. Coincidentally, these animals turned out to be familiar to us. Back in 1998 a disreputable breeder just south of Boulder was ordered to reduce the number of animals at her out-of-control and horrible facility. Wolf organized a "MASH" team of six vets, 12 vet techs, and about 20 volunteers, to neuter all of her males. She ended up sending twenty-some animals to this lady in Oregon. By the way, since those events in 1998 the Colorado breeder has continued to breed and has had over 60 animals confiscated and killed by the state vet.

The second a private individual in Idaho. This person has twenty plus pure wolves, which are in two enclosures that are too small for the number of animals. Out of three litters born this year only three puppies were not killed by the rest of their pack. This is not normal for wolves.

The third situation is again in Texas. A breeder was shut down by animal control and all of the animals needed homes quickly. A rescue in Texas is spearheading that situation. Hopefully these will all have successful outcomes.

Wolf continues to believe that only through education will these situations ever have a chance of being prevented. A new respect for other species must be found by humans. We encourage anyone who is willing to sponsor an educational presentation to contact Pat for scheduling.

We have begun the construction of the first of two one-acre enclosures. Although we are still restricted by our county on accepting new animals, we will relocate one of the existing packs to this enclosure. The funds for this new enclosure were provided specifically for this purpose.

All of the animals seem to be doing well physically -- outside of the general geriatric concerns. We did have two scares, one with Mesa who developed pancreititus, most likely from some ugly piece of meat that was buried too long. He was treated and seems to be doing great again. The second was Jasmine, who we believed to be too old (nine) when we received her, to be spayed. Because she was only going to be contained with her sister, we did not bother. Well, at 16 years of age she developed problems and the only reasonable decision was to perform the spay. She came through it with flying colors and is doing spectacularly -- go figure!

Texas Rescue Accounting

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