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The pups are now just over 7 weeks old. It's amazing how quickly time flies by. Just a few short weeks ago they could barely walk, now they are racing about so fast that's it's near impossible to keep up with them, even with a good autofocus lens!
The puppy photo sessions involve one or two people who get two hours to photograph, and if they want, interact, with the pups. It's always a lot of fun, especially for the wolf pups. We did not have the enclosure at Eastlake all mowed and ready for the puppies to live in. The grass over there gets to be many feet tall in a matter of weeks and a pup in that kind of environment would simple disappear in the forest of grass. A very nice option, one which we have never done before, was to simply lock the three red foxes, Angel, Basil and Corey, into the back part of their enclosure for the duration of the session and let the pups have the larger section to explore and have fun. Angel LOVES pups! She in fact causes some concern. While the two boys just ignored the pups, Angel would grab anything she could find which she deemed suitable. An old bone, a piece of meat, anything, she would run up and down along the fence whimpering, begging to mother the pups. Although this was very cute, the problem was that the pups only seemed to want to bite her. We don't think the pups could hurt her much, but they certainly would not do her much good. So, whenever a pup ran over to the fence attracted by Angel, one of the puppy mothers would have to distract the pup. Fortunately, this did not last too long and soon Angel stopped begging and the pups went off do to more photogenic puppy things. 
I had brought out some frozen chicks which all the animals seem to enjoy. These were donated by a nature center in Mt. Bethel, PA. We really need to find a local source, for the animals love them. There is a hollow log in the fox pen, so by placing chicks inside the pups found it a great game to search and eat this new found treat. After about an hour and a half, the pups settled down a bit. The non stop racing about and excited greeting of humans and foxes alike were beginning to wear on them. This is when good photos could be had. Rather than racing right over the log, they would actually pose, sometimes for as long as 2-3 seconds.  Plenty of time to capture a half dozen photos or so if you were quick ;-)
The pups also discovered the fox pond. The foxes have a little plastic ornamental pond with a little waterfall. The pond was stocked with feeder goldfish several years ago and because the pond is fairly deep and the fish seem to know how to deal with hunting foxes, no fish have yet been caught. I believe only Corey has ever been seen to put much effort into his fish hunting, but as of yet all fish are accounted for. The foxes also do not show any tendency to swim. I guess they are a bit more like cats in that respect. They don't like to get their feet wet, for that matter. Wolves, on the other hand, often go swimming when given the opportunity, well, at least most of them do. The pups were no exception. One pup, then another, ended up either jumping in or falling into the pond. They had no trouble swimming across such a small area. The pond is easy to climb out of, so a wet, rather bedraggled looking puppy would haul its dripping body out of the pond, then the pup would race about  the enclosure, being chased by the others. Wet wolves seem to have a natural born tendency to race about and act quite goofy when they have been swimming. Now, I just wonder what the fish thought about all this!
Well, after all was done and many rolls of film exposed, the pups were pooped. Bellies full of chicks, fur a bit damp from fox pond water, their only interest by the end of the session was sleeping. I think they slept quite soundly that night! As an addendum, the two female pups went to live at Deer River Wolves in Red Creek, New York. The male went to live at Wolf Timbers in Bolivar, Ohio. All are doing quite well. - Monty |