Boy it has been a wet year so far, last 4 weeks…rain! With only a hint of sun once in a while. This has caused some soggy conditions but all are doing well. We had to say good-bye to another old timer, sadly timber wolf Shilo reached the end of her time with us. She was going on 15yrs old and developed degenerative mylopothy, she lost the feelings in her hind quarters. This is a common ailment for german sheppards and in all honesty even though her paperwork stated she was a pure breed wolf we have always had our suspicions that she was a hybrid, which could be the reason for her coming down with this. It was a difficult one because there is no treatment for this problem and even though her mind, appetite and the rest of her was good she could not live in a wooded enclosure dragging herself along causing wounds to her legs. So we had to make that very difficult decision to help her along and ease the suffering. She was a wonderful wolf and will be missed so much. With her passing Teeko was left alone and is still going strong at almost 17yrs old. He developed some swelling in hes face so we needed to have him visit the vet. Turns out he had 2 bad teeth that had to be removed and we then moved him into a new enclosure with Rain the timber female that had to be separated for fighting. The 2 of them get along great and it might be what is keeping the old man going, a new younger girlfriend and a new home!.
I took advantage of an empty enclosure was able to cut down 19 dead trees, we had volunteers come for a clean up day and cleaned out the enclosure. Our goal is to always give the wolves as much room as possible so the plan is to finish this enclosure and move Luna and Khuno in from theirs since this one is larger, then we will connect their old to the enclosure Rain and Teeko’s are in so they have more room.
Sassa is doing great, with her disabilities and no plans to breed her, it is actually healthier to have the females spade. Less chance of tumors, cysts or cancers. So little miss Sassa was spade and has fully recovered and is a happy little girl.
We had some great pieces done on the preserve one by Tamron lens company they came out and did a video shoot featuring one of their new lenses and NJ.com did an internet video featuring the preserve and the following week we had a banner week with visitors who found out about the preserve from the video.
On June 3rd for the first time in the 20 years we have been doing this we took one of the animals from the preserve for an event. It was a private event we hosted at the winery, a fundraiser for the preserve and we set up a large enclosure for Sassa and had a Dinner with Sassa fundraiser! It went great and we raised some funds to help the preserve.
Some exciting news, we have 2 new editions to the preserve. A baby Canadian Lynx named Logan after the biggest mountain in Canada mt Logan. And a baby bobcat Becky named Sienna. With Bobby, the last of our original bobcats, going on 25yrs old we decided to bring in a few new cats to continue our educational programs. They were both born in captivity one in Montana and one in Tennessee. So it was a lot of traveling for Becky and Emily to get these guys here. Bobby is slowing down and sleeps a lot so these active little guys will bring some excitement to the preserve. Hard part is i need to redo all the fencing in the bobcat enclosure. Sadly our other cats had been declawed by previous owners, we will not be declawing these guys so all the fencing has to be higher, bigger cantilevers and trees trimmed up and coned so they can’t climb out. We have been super busy with visitors so i only get a chance to focus on these other projects once in a while. The new cats are still way too small to be at the preserve so they will be staying with Becky and i till they are a little bigger. The plan is to put them at the preserve a little later in the fall.
In trying to keep with the times my daughter Emily has helped us set up an instagram account so now you can see updates and photos and videos about the preserve on facebook and instagram.