It all started early January with a girl – Isabeau. Shaman and Isabeau are the alphas of their pack, with Nashoba the omega. When Shaman was younger, he was kicked out of Tunyan and Kasha’s pack when they bonded. He was not about to let that happen again. Anytime Nashoba and Isabeau played, Shaman started growling and stepped in between them. At first, this was no big deal, Nashoba submitted to him, and everyone was calm.

To further his point, Shaman began biting Nashoba and putting him to the ground anytime he went near Isabeau. Nashoba would still submit and back off, a little frightened and bewildered. But he still wanted to play with Isabeau, as any 2 year old wolf does. Shaman continued his demands more incessantly than ever, now starting to make Nashoba scream bloody murder (even though there has never been any injuries), and force all the humans to run back to break it up.

Things continued to escalate until this was nearly a constant occurrence at dawn and dusk. Isabeau of course played her part, intentionally instigating play with Nashoba until Shaman came after him, so she too could grab him by the throat and hold him down. The humans began yelling at them out the back windows of the house. This worked for about a day, when more drastic measures were needed. So we began throwing food out the back window to distract them, which worked well for awhile. The trick was finding new, exciting foods, like stuffing mix. We tried everything: every dog food we have, raw meat, cooked meat, treats, cookies, potato chips, bread, fruit, vegetables, dinner leftovers, cheese, etc. This too stopped helping.

The problems continued to worsen. Finally, Nashoba started to fight back out of fear, irritation or just trying to put a stop to it all. Unfortunately, Nashoba is 2 and very healthy. Shaman is 10 and has bad hips. This is not a good combination. They began ritualistic fighting, tackling each other, and chasing each other around the mountain like maniacs. Nashoba is of course much faster, and we cannot even count the number of bad falls Shaman’s had. This was starting to concern us for Shaman’s joint issues.

The boys continued to accelerate their fights. Shaman has started holding Nashoba down and humping him, while Nashoba has learned jumping on Shaman’s back end will knock him down and give him the upper hand. During all of this, their yells, growls and screams sound like someone is going to get killed. We humans are doing everything in our power to mitigate these issues to avoid removing an animal, probably Nashoba, from the pack. In the long run, this would be horrible for all of them, as they really are a family.

Centerfold -- Nashoba, Isabeau, Shaman