A very busy day with my little helper - Conor, my 8 year old son.

It was cool - about 8 degrees and overcast, but these were perfect manual labour conditions... in fact I spent most of the time in only my t-shirt and was still hot.

We arrived about 10:45 in the morning after most people were well into the cleaning. I was not booked for being there for the day and thought it a good opportunity to get some maintenance done.

In Duma and Dakota's enclosure there are some trees that are fenced in whilst they are growing so that the wolves do not use them for tooth picks. It was decided that they are not big enough to make an interesting area for the wolves to walk in and out of now so it was time for the fence to come down.

	Pose for the camera		PULL!	It's coming
Got it!	Then roll up the fencing nice and neat to re-use.			Hard work!
		Lying down on the job	Big pile of fencing stakes.
		oops - an apology - just realised, no wolf pics! Shame as there were some great rallys from the Euro's who are starting to have a change in testosterone levels as the breeding season is starting to come. Should be a lot more interaction pictures to come from them after Xmas.

So the fence came down and we trampled down the weeds and it all looks really good. We also think that the wolves are going to have a lot of fun as there are quite a few mouse holes in the weeds and we saw about 4 mice running around. A little more challenging for the mice, but great fun for the wolves.

Then there was a rather unfortunate incident.

I had planned on staying over the far side of the enclosure until the wolves were out on their walk around the farm with the trainees. However another of the handlers waved at me when they arrived back, so I thought that there had been a change of plan and they wanted me to bring everything out of the enclosure as they were going to let the wolves in.

So I loaded up the wheelbarrow with all the tools and the gate to go out and walked back over to the pen area to go out. By now they had brought the wolves out of the trailer. The unfortunate thing is that Duma and Dakota are petrified of the wheelbarrow. I did not know how much before, but now I do. They dragged the two handlers back out of the holding area to the grass verge near the trailer and did not want to come back.

After that I got Conor and the wheelbarrow out of the enclosure and round behind the trailer and after quite a while we managed to coax the wolves back into the holding area. All in all an incident that would have been better avoided and certainly if I am doing anything with the wheelbarrow again I will be very careful around the girls.

Another unfortunate thing is this meant Duma and Dakota were too spooked to go out with the trainees for their handling, but the bonus they got was to take Kenai instead.

I am not sure if I am going to be down at the Trust again before Xmas but if I am, I will try and remember to take pictures of wolves!

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