Chani, the little, white, “porcelain” wolf died on Friday, November 12, 2004. Her parents were Betsy and Sirgei of the main pack (known as the Wolf Woods West Pack back then) and her littermates were her sister, Sierra, and their brother NK. She was the last surviving member of her immediate family, and the shyest of what used to be called the Mini Pack when we first moved them over to East Lake.

Betsy gave birth to Chani’s litter in a very wet April and when her den flooded she moved the pups above ground and curled around them. She and Sirgei were attentive parents, but I can remember times when we had separated them from their offspring when we could see them visibly tense up when we started to raise the drop gate between the two enclosures. On one such evening we decided that the young grass piranhas parents deserved an evening off, and left the gate down longer than intended.

Chani, like her mother Betsy, lost the colored pigment in her coat fairly rapidly; again like her mother she was nearly snow white between her fourth and her fifth birthdays. Her sister and brother remained a pale biscuit tan into late middle age, so on a field of green, Chani was the one who was almost blindingly white.

She and Sierra had one knock-down, drag-out fight when they were just six weeks old and another after they were full grown. After the second fight, which left Sierra, with a painfully swollen face, Chani was the undisputed alpha female. Although she suppressed Sierra quite often, it was very mild, particularly compared with a number of other alpha females of our acquaintance. She and Sierra lived together, mostly amicably for the rest of their lives. Though she was higher ranking, Chani was shyer than Sierra. Sierra was not only an important source of companionship for Chani, she also often took the lead in approaching new people and new things. For months after her sister’s death, Chani found the world scarier place. We wish that we could have been more of a comfort for her after Sierra’s death. The irony is that she had been much more out going with the people in the two October seminars than I recall her ever being with such a large group at once. At least, not without Sierra.

On November 12, 2004, Wolf Park staff member Dana found Chani lying on her side, bloated and unable to get up, about 10:00 in the morning. She responded to us a little but was starting to go into shock. We rushed her to the veterinarian and she died on the table within moments of her arrival. The gross necropsy showed deterioration of several organs, some of it the sort of loss of function you expect in an elderly canine. But the immediate cause of death was a rupture in her stomach, with stomach fluid leaking into her body cavity. We do not know what caused the rupture; there were no sharp foreign bodies in her stomach that would account for it.

She appeared normal the previous afternoon. In fact she had a new interest: Eclipse, her new next door neighbor, just back from the Turtleback Zoo. And Chani was also eager for treats of lamb & rice dog food.

Chani had a summer that was reasonably good considering she did not have Sierra with her. When we put her in a holding pen, which was inevitable when we were mowing, and once the puppies were moved outside permanently; all the singletons had to take turns in a holding pen, she did not like it, but she could be mollified by putting her next to Deneb. While Chani never had Deneb’s passion for fence fighting, the old girls would make a few passes at each other and then settle down in the shade to exude satisfaction.

All summer she continued to be skinny even though her coat was good. She also had tear tracks at the corners of her eyes, much as Koshie used to during the season known as “hayfever” among humans. But she still enjoyed the company of trusted friends, and she came up and made the day of more than one intern by approaching cautiously to sniff. She surprised us pleasantly in this regard during the October Seminars – she came up and greeted lots of seminarians (lots for Chani, and those she did not actually greet had a fairly good chance of being carefully sniffed from behind.

Since Chani was shy, whenever she trusted someone enough to come up and interact, it was special. Especially when that meant being attached to a human by a leash, or being picked up by a human. She tolerated this with amazing grace, even when it meant she was going to be put in a holding pen for a while. She was starting to become more outgoing than last year, although she also had days when she regressed to her shyer self.