Newsletter - Summer 2006
(click to link to pdf download)

Sanctuary Update

This Summer has been an extremely busy and trying season. We went into Summer with record setting low’s, in respect to rainfall. This is the first year we have actually had fish die in our pond due to insufficient water flow. We continued this trend up until several weeks ago when we started getting small amounts of precipitation. It has still been very limited and we are praying for much more.

The Wide Awake Rescue has kept all of us very busy and challenged (see WideAwake-The Saga Continues). The majority of those animals are doing much better and getting stronger every day. We were blessed to have an ophthalmologist (Tanja Nuhsbaum, DVM, MS) volunteer her assistance with Mucqua. The first step was to do a thorough exam on him and determine whether he was even a candidate for cataract surgery.

On Wednesday, September 6th Mucqua was caught up at the Sanctuary without any problems, given a tranquilizer for the trip to Boulder and loaded up in the Wolf vehicle. He traveled very well and his exam lasted all of 10 minutes. It was very obvious that the damage to his eyes was severe and that he was not a candidate for cataract surgery. The technical term was Diffuse Retinal Wasting. Our understanding of what that means is that the retina in both of his eyes is disintegrating and therefore he has no vision whatsoever. Even if his cataracts were removed, he would still be completely blind.

We are making plans on getting him integrated with Gead. There is some belief that providing a blind animal with a companion helps to ease the stress from being sightless. It would seem that one will help the other in ways that humans cannot discern.

Again, we have had to say goodbye to some beloved friends (see Ghost & Spirit). Spirit died very unexpectedly on July 28th and we are still trying to deal with his passing. Ghost died on September 3rd and although not unexpected, we miss his physical presence immensely.

A new animal, Shadow Hawk, was brought in from a failing sanctuary as a companion for Kiki (see Kiki's New Companion). We have visited two such sanctuaries in the last quarter, trying to determine if there was any way for us to help with their situations (see The Future of Wildlife Sanctuaries).

We finally found a suitable companion for Shaman after looking for almost a year. She is a sweetheart, although still a very high-energy puppy. She also kind of got stuck with a nickname of ‘Squeak’ (see Shaman's Squeaky Toy).

We had our annual Volunteer Picnic on September 10th and had a wonderful time, actually relaxing for once, with those who make our mission possible. It did decide to rain on us just as we were finishing lunch, but this allowed us to move inside to present awards to some of the individuals whose dedication has been exemplary. Although we do not have enough space here to list them all we did want to at least recognize a few of them.

We also handed out memorial sweatshirts made for all the volunteers who helped to make the Wide Awake Rescue a success. Their hard work, extreme dedication and perseverance was the only reason we were able to save 18 animals.

We are very excited to announce that we have added a new individual to the Wolf staff. Well, not really new -- Kiley McGowen has been a volunteer at Wolf since August of 2003, when she was a student at CSU. After she was graduated, she moved to Montana, but could not separate her path from Wolf. She even made the trip to Colorado to help with the Wide Awake Rescue, where she decided that her true calling was with the Sanctuary. She also received one of our yearly volunteer awards recognizing her dedication during the building of the Wide Awake facility -- it was the ‘Build Star’ award. Although she is originally from Kansas, she does seem to have the spirit of a mountain woman and we try not to tease her too much about her flat-land origins. She is an outstanding addition at the Sanctuary and we are blessed to have her.