Selena joined the Big Pack in the Sky on April 5th, 2011.
She passed at the age of 14 just before her birthday due to old age.
Selena was born on Wild Spirit property on April 7th, 1996, near the beginning of the sanctuary’s’ “conception” itself! She was one of seven pups in a litter that were produced by Ammon Ra and Nashoba–two other wolves residing at the sanctuary.
The litter, which included Selena, Ghengis, Zeus, Taza, Lycea, Shakti, and Chaka Zulu, spent their first weeks outside being raised by their parents. However, tragedy struck, and Nashoba died soon after birth due to gastric torsion.
The pups were quickly moved indoors, and staff took on the responsibility of bottle feeding the litter! It was tireless work with little rest, especially given the staff’s efforts to ensure that the pups had enough access to their father to be raised by both humans and wolves. Once they were old enough to survive, the pups were moved outside into suitable groups.
The combination of Selena’s small stature and big attitude caused tensions with her siblings, causing her to be the first to look for a new companion. We attempted several pairings, all of which failed due to Selena’s feisty nature!
At long last we found her a companion who could handle her . . . a domestic dog named Amani. This pair is a wonderful example of how we have learned and evolved as a sanctuary. Many of this pair’s early struggles and conflicts came down to an inability to communicate properly, hence why all pairings we do today are the same, or very close, wolf content-level.
Though wolves and dogs are extremely similar, they do communicate in different ways. Dogs have a more simplified form of communication with their fellow canines, as a result of ~20,000 years of domestication, where they adapted to live with and understand humans. To provide an analogy, most dogs would be comparable to a human five-year old’s vocabulary, where as a wolf would possess that of an adult! This often results in miscommunication between the two that can cause severe consequences.
Personality
Selena was notorious for having a bit of an attitude. Despite being bottle-fed since she was a puppy, Selena had decided that she didn’t want anything to do with people. She was extremely vocal and never hesitated to warn away people she was not comfortable around with snarls. With a few select people, she would tolerate interaction through the fence, but continued to growl the entire time. As she became older, she became much calmer and seemed to enjoy attention from people.
Relationships
Selena first lived with the rest of the 1996 litter (Ghengis, Zeus, Taza, Lycea, Shakti, and Chaka Zulu). When non of her siblings were willing to tolerate her attitude any longer, we tried pairing her with both Raven and Shadow, both of which felt the same as her siblings!
Selena eventually found a companion in Amani, a domestic dog.
Likes & Dislikes
Selena liked breakfast, fence-fighting with neighbors, and scaring new volunteers by snarling when they walked by.
Selena disliked eye contact, other enclosures getting fed before she had eaten, and large groups around her enclosure.
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