Wolf Haven

Field trip, today! I maintain it was research related. (And it was! Sorta.)

I headed on down to Wolf Haven, near Olympia. I went once in middle school as part of a camp field trip, and had very pleasant memories. I was extremely impressed on how well it held up. The volunteer who led our tour was very professional and packed in a huge density of information, which I really appreciate in a tour. The sanctuary itself also seems very well run–they keep wolves that are part of the species preservation program out of sight so as not to accustom them to people, and the the rescuees that they use for education that we saw on our tour are mostly neutered, so they don’t overrun their space with pups. That makes really good sense to me.

Pictures below the jump.

Chillin’ on the roof.

I even learned something I hadn’t realized before. I’d always thought wolves looked so darn scrawny in person, but I could never put my finger on it. This guide explained it! Wolves have extremely narrow chests compared to a dog of a similar size. Once I had that pointed out, I realized that’s what I’d been reacting to when my brain said scrawny. Have a look:

I think the biggest thing I took away for use in my novels is some coloration patterns to describe other than “white” or “gray”, which gets old really fast. I figure it’s like different individuals of any breed of pet look completely different once you get to know them, but to an outside they’re all “Siamese cats” or “gray wolves”. I think I’ll start accumulating pictures of different coats, so I can use them to describe when I need to give one of my Were an individual pattern on their wolf-form coat. I’m starting with this one:

I leave you with an art shot.