A Thankful November: Dog Walks

Copyright © 2006-2007, Andrew Stark.

All rights reserved.

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I’m thankful for a dog that needs to be walked. Things are always better after a good walk in the outdoors, so I’m thankful for a dog who forces me to get some regular outdoor exercise and then adores me for the rest of the day because she had so much fun with me. (This is an old photo. We have snow now.)

Other thankful folk 

• Ann B is thankful for freedom.
  
• William Meisheid is thankful for being off dead center on his writing again.
• Kim is thankful for new brakes and the old gas grill.
  
• Connie is thankful for a spark from a reluctant writer.
• Kim is thankful that the orthodontist hasn’t charged….yet.
  
• Carla is thankful for giggling.

Doesn’t that list make you thankful, too? Why don’t you participate in being thankful with us? Here’s how:

• Mention something you’re thankful for in the comments here, and I’ll include it in one of my thanksgiving posts, or
  
• Email me to tell me what you’re thankful for and I’ll include it in one of the thankful posts, or
• You may post your thankful thought(s) on your own blog and send me the link(s), and I’ll link to your post.
• If you’ve posted something thankful and I missed it, please remind me.

Do Not Dance With Them!

North America  has it’s first documented case of  a healthy wolf killing a human in the wild.

A coroner’s jury in Saskatchewan has determined that Ontario university student Kenton Carnegie was killed in a wolf attack.

Carnegie was 22 when he died in November 2005 near Points North Landing, Sask. On a work term for a company at the mining exploration camp, located about 750 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon, Carnegie went for a walk and didn’t come back.

Searchers later found his body surrounded by wolves.

Not that the findings are undisputed. One expert witness, Paul Paquet, testified that it is more likely that it was a black bear that killed Carnegie. However, he did not rule out the possiblity that it was a wolf attack.

Mark McNay, recently retired as head of the research department at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (who happens to be my cousin, and with whom I visited in September when he flew through Whitehorse on his way south), testified that he was convinced that it was indeed a wolf attack. He argued that bears would have been in hibernation at the time Carnegie was killed, and that no bears had been seen in the area for several weeks before the attack, nor were any seen for months after.

In photographs of the site, what Paquet identified as bear tracks were actually wolf tracks, said McNay. The tracks were on the lake’s surface, which had not completely frozen over. When the wolf stepped into the ground and broke through to water, the water came up and made the track larger, leading people to believe it was bear tracks.

McNay said it was also unlikely that two wolves would have eaten the same hair from the dump on the same day Carnegie was killed.

As for the argument that wolves don’t attack humans, McNay said that is not the case anymore because wolves are becoming habitualized and losing their fear of people.

These incidents of wolves and people, predictably, are going to increase,” he said. 

So if you’ve been been told that wolves in the wild in the wild never behave aggressively toward human beings, you might want to file that thought under urban myths, and I use the word urban deliberately.

 
Sources: OHS Canada, CBC News

You’ll find more info on agressive and nonagressive wolf-human encounters in this case history (pdf) done for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game by Mark McNay.

I Try to Keep Things Simple Here

Swiped from Rosemary.