I had to go with photos from two hikes for June. These were Josie’s first and second hikes ever……let the adventures begin!! In fact if you look closely at the wolf’s right leg, you can still see where she was shaved for her IV catheter from surgery (we spayed her almost immediately after meeting her as well as had to remove porcupine quills from her face….yup, that should have been a clue to me as to what I was going to be up against). She was just a fuzzy 6 month old pup here, soon to gain over 20 more pounds in the coming months…mostly in her legs. She is a long-legged beast to behold! The girls quickly earned themselves trail names…..Beauty and the Beast. I am sure you can figure out who is who!! The beast stomps the ground and wades right through mud without a care, regularly belching like a man as a bonus. Beauty is dainty and perfect always finding a log to walk on over the mud to keep her feet clean and glares with distain at anyone who belches on the trail. Two more different girls you could not find. But we needed to learn and grow together as a pack. Nova and I were like a well-oiled machine by this point in our hiking together and the monkey wrench that was Josie Lynne was not easy for either of us.
Josie had oh so much to learn!! As a puppy with no positive life experiences, she would need so much patience and training. Luckily, she is an intelligent girl and quickly learned from Nova and myself. But sometimes not quickly enough I can tell you that!! There were many hikes when I cursed my choice to bring her into our pack if I am being honest. But now, almost 6 months later, I can’t imagine not having that wolf by my side! She recently saved my life, but you will have to wait until November for that story! I think the biggest thing I learned about wolves this year is how stubborn and intense they are. As a very stubborn woman myself, we often did not see things eye to eye and I have had to learn to make her think she wants what I want. Josie is strangely deathly silent and wants to constantly survey and process the world around her. She also can run like the wind. I now understand how wolves can take down a caribou. I have never seen anything like her in all the dogs I have owned. She has a gift of being able to spot the tiniest movement and then will sneak and pounce like a fox to get it. You do not want to be a woodland creature around this beast unless she is tied to me!! Then you don’t really want to be me when she is tied to me! I think I understand what victims of the old torture stretch racks must have felt like! Thank God for weight lifting and exercises to strengthen my core is all I can say!
The hike pictured at the top was her first. This was somewhere between 14-16 miles and in open range country in central Oregon. I knew the trail and knew it was open and fairly easy for a first time hike for her. I also knew there should be no humans which would allow for us to really do some training without distraction. Well our timing turned out to not be the best. Suddenly every ranch in the area had turned out their cattle to graze on this range land. This means as we opened and closed the gate systems to move through the miles we were mingling with giant free range cows. Even worse was when we found ourselves hiking in the same paddocks as even larger bulls. At one point, we had to walk within probably 40 feet of 2 bulls who were staring us down, one pawing at the ground with his monster hoof and the other bellowing at us. We were in deep doo-doo and all I could think was that I was going to have to shoot somebody’s prize bull when it charged us. Then I worried that a 38 revolver with hollow point bullets may not be enough to stop a charging bull of their size and at that close distance. But I had no trees to climb and no other hope, so I kept my hand on that holster. I think the only reason they did not charge us was Josie. She was lunging at her line tied to me and trying to take them down…..take them all down. She wanted to chase every cow, calf and bull we found. Every female cow took one look at that wolf and turned tail and stampeded in the opposite direction after their eyes bulged out of their heads. Clearly cows have an instinct that a wolf is a wolf and they were not buying any other story I tried to sell them. The bulls did not run, they turned to face us and gave us all the cues in the world that they were very unhappy. But they did not charge us either.
I could tell that Josie was new to this world of hiking on this day because she had to stop and smell every flower, every butterfly, every blade of grass. It was a slow and long day with all her lolly-gagging. Even Nova was like “come on already!” Her and I have always been very fast hikers blazing our trails with a focus to get to our peak or destination as quickly as possible. Josie has really taught us to try to slow it down a bit and enjoy the journey and not just the end. I think God has been trying to tell me the same thing for a long time. But I like to argue with him that He is the one who made me this impatient. I don’t particularly enjoy when He likes to teach me about patience. But Josie has perhaps been the nicest and most pleasant way He has taught us this lesson.
The hike pictured on the bottom was Josie’s second hike….another beauty known for its balsamroot flowers this time of year. We were a bit at the end of the season for them, but found many to enjoy still. You can see in the distance behind the girls an old abandoned barn that was from the early 1900s when this was a working ranch. I always enjoy exploring this area any time of year. Winter hiking up here is very difficult I will say, but mostly from exposure! Anyway, this hike was the first time the wolf met another human on the trail and I realized that I was in real trouble with Josie. I had not realized how extreme her aversion to humans was until she spotted a figure heading toward us across the fields that day. She tried to bolt, nearly taking me off my feet. I think she whipped me in a full circle with her leash tied to my waist. When that didn’t work, she stopped and laid on the ground refusing to budge unless we could run in the opposite direction. She had a complete and total panic attack. It was so embarrassing and the other hiker was clearly concerned for their own safety. I felt the need to explain that this dog was new to me and in training as she was being so dramatic. This is also when I first began to realize that humans would take one look at Josie and judge her for who she was. People either immediately ask “Is that a WOLF!!???” without even saying hello first or they just exclaim “What a beautiful dog—what is she?!!” You can instantly tell who loves her and who is terrified of her. It is like Nova and I no longer exist on the trail…..everyone looks at Josie. While this is a blessing in disguise for me, I knew I had to get her behavior more acceptable around humans. The humans that were freaked out by her already were not helped by her fear response to them which was easily misinterpreted as aggression. I tried to keep my pockets full of treats to reward Josie for proper behavior, but learned that when she sees a human and is fearful, she wouldn’t eat a steak if you placed it on her nose. Nova probably gained a pound in those early months of hiking as she happily took all the training treats I was trying to use.
So here I was with a stubborn wolf who was not food motivated in any way and had a huge fear of humans, whom I would soon learn she could sense for miles away. If you look back at that photo on the bottom, you will see that Miss Nova is happily looking right at me. Miss Josie is intensely focused on the retreating human form who was probably 2 miles away by then on a far ridge whom I could barely see. But Josie wouldn’t take her eyes off that hiker. In fact, she wouldn’t move until she could no longer see that human form at all. Intense is the word for Josie. Ultimately, I started her on a low dose of some anti-anxiety meds which did take the edge off a little. Great I thought….I have a wolf named Josie on Prozac. Just what everyone needs! What I also learned was that anytime another human is approaching us, we have to stop and pull off trail and just let them pass us. It never works to keep Josie moving past the thing she has terror of. If I get both girls to sit and just wait and watch, all goes well and everyone thinks I have the best-behaved dogs on the trail. But if the humans try to stop and talk to us, that is when the wolf starts to melt down. I keep all conversations very short to keep people moving, which is fine by me! This has changed my old hiking style though of blowing past all other people on trail and always staying in the lead, but it works for Josie and therefore our pack. Happy pack, happy hike. Once again, God seems to be trying to slow me down! “Always in hurry” will be on my tombstone someday if I don’t learn this lesson. I would prefer it to say “She wore her big girl panties and pulled up her bootstraps”. But I guess I am not the one writing it at that point.
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