Smokey accepted people only
after considerable time and repeated demonstrations
that they were not afraid of him -- and yet still
awarded him the respect he was due. This aggressiveness
is why he resided in a hill-top enclosure rather than
being on the public tour.
Trust is not a quality he freely gave to humans. Born in captivity in 1986, he was
bought by a family in Illinois as a birthday present
to their 16-year-old daughter. They soon discovered,
as have many people who try to
"domesticate" a wild animal, that wolves do
NOT make good pets. Not only did Smokey prove to be untrainable, his behavior distinctively clashed with
human social rules. Smokey was both devoted to and
extremely protective of the daughter, and he
dominated all of the other members of the family, his
pack. He was aggressive to visitors of both the two-
and four-legged variety. His howls at all hours of
the night were a constant source of complaints
throughout the neighborhood. All of these were normal
wolf behaviors, so naturally he did not understand
why, at the end of 1989, his family brought him to
Wolf Haven and then abandoned him here. He was
heartbroken, and therefore vowed not to trust people
again.
Smokey was placed into an
enclosure with a shy, white female wolf named
Hurricane, who was also a former pet with a similarly
tragic history. Though his depression caused him to
ignore her for months, the two wolves eventually
bonded. Since Hurricane was extremely submissive to
Smokey -- a trait absolutely necessary to match his
ultra-dominant personality -- their relationship was
long, if sometimes rocky. Irascible even to his own
species, Smokey sometimes took out his frustrations on
her, yet they could also be seen enthuiastically
playing together. When Hurricane died suddenly in the
fall of 1997, Smokey howled his devotion to her.
**Special
note**: The year after I joined Wolf Haven and adopted Smokey when I
went to renew my membership he was no longer listed for adoption.
Afraid that
Smokey had died during that year and I had not known, I wrote to
Wolf Haven regarding him. They had discovered that Smokey was not a
full-blooded wolf and
took him off the adoption list. But they also informed me that they
would be
delighted if I wanted to remain his sponsor. I quickly replied that,
of course, I would
love to sponsor him. I chose him because of his bio and picture and
that "inner
connection" that happened ... and that did not change because
he wasn't 100% wolf. He was "all wolf" in his heart, mind
and soul ... rest in peace Smokey!
