Yep, maybe you thought when I wrote a whole Posting about Animals Love Eating Poop[1] that I would have gotten it out my system. On the other-other hand, maybe I was just getting started. Maybe I should change the Focus of this Blog from “DATA confronts Narrative” to something like “It’s really all about Poopy” — what do you think? Poopy might be much more interesting.
Nashoba has big troubles just standing up. And, he almost invariably leaves artistic (no good statistics [haven’t been keeping DATA in a Logbook]) poops of various sizes and shape and volume where he was due to the strain of the endeavor of standing up. And he can’t really pick up his feet, he drags them through the snow. So, I’ve been working very hard to stomp down the snow to make our “Patrols” easy for him.
“Patrol” is our approximately 1/8 mile circuit through the woods that we take in the morning before he get’s his raw chicken leg for breakfast (though he get’s his ground beef meatball with a doggy-aspirin first thing in the morning, or when I first remember, like right now). Most often when I give him his chicken leg he just chomps it right down, bones and all. And some days he carries it around in his mouth for a few hours and whines, as he’s doing this morning. Haven’t really figured this one out. He’ll bury it in the couch, or hide it in a corner, and then go back and get it and carry it around whining. And then he takes it outside with the whole thing in his mouth and just the little part sticking out, and walks around with it out there, and then brings it back inside half-digested and buries someplace else, perhaps in my bed. So, yeah, I have a neurotic wolf, but what am I supposed to do, get a therapist for him ? He doesn’t have any Medical Insurance and I doubt I could afford a therapist.
Patrol is also his Territory — he’s “Perimeter Trained”. We never go outside Patrol unless in the car, and he will never leave his Territory (unless my neighbor is gutting a deer, and then, well, all the training goes out the window). If we were to take a walk though the National Forest from here, then he would think all that land is his Territory, so we always take the car first to some tail-head.
So, anyway, you’d expect Nashoba would be really grateful for me tromping down all the snow around our Patrol, but interestingly, he’s been doing a lot of “off-road” excursions with with 4-paw drive. I was wondering whether he was getting ditzy or something (you hear stories of old people going out walking and not knowing where they are or how to get home), so yesterday morning I followed him. He showed me two places where the deer had bedded down for the night (or day, I don’t know). Last night I again followed him, and again he went to a place where deer had bedded down, and he then he lied down in the snow and started eating the snow. And, on closer inspection, I found that he was also enjoying frozen deer poopy (just like M&M’s for people) as he lay there.
Wolf Heaven. Nice and cold outside, fresh snow to eat, and frozen deer poopy ! What more could you ask for ?
——————————
[1] https://timellison.substack.com/p/animals-love-eating-poop