Wolf Science Center final thoughts

It's been a week since I left the Wolf Science Center. Since that week I managed to sort out my university courses, start working on my dissertation and return to regular life. Wolf Science Center however will always be a great and wonderful experience. In this post it will be bit of a letter to all the people I worked with and a bit of an experience blur for those who weren't there.

Firstly. I keep mentioning that the people working there are great. This for me was a huge component to what made the experience work. Wolves in captivity aren't hard to find, however a great group of people to work with sure is. From the students( whom we all bonded together through nights of drinking, playing werewolf and experiencing wolves together) to the trainers (who we joked around with, convinced to do extra pack visit and all sorts of funny stuff), the Wolf Science Center is staffed by great people. Never have I bonded with a group of people so fast ans so strong as the summer spend there. I am sure a lot of people share similar experiences but getting along with coworkers make everything better. Like every workplace there are kinks in the system that need to be worked out of course and some days can become frustrating. This to my experience is natural and is just the day. Even if the day was bad, the animal refused to cooperate there is always someone there with a better mood to cheer you up. If any of you guys are reading this, keep smiling, give Wamblee and Amarok a big kiss for me and stroke Enzi's cute ears.

Secondly. The animals are kept under great conditions. One my main concerns before I visited were in regards to animal welfare. The wolves are kept in great conditions and so are the dogs. There is of course the issue that they are in captivity. They can't escape conflicts and obviously whatever life they would have in the wild would be in theory better than captivity. They are however more than happy to participate in any tests and experiments on going there and now testing that I have seen influences animal behavior in a long term.

Finally it was great working with animals there. I learned so much and I really enjoyed my dissertation work there. Good luck to everyone in the Wolf Science Center and if anyone is in Austria pay them a visit. The place is great.

Wolf Science Center week 3 update

So I am on my third week here in the Wolf Science Center and I decided to update all of you on some of the happenings here.

First of all I got myself a project. I am aiding a PhD student here in inequity aversion in wolves and pack dogs. Inequity aversion essentially boils down to whether wolves or dogs understand that they are being treated unequally and whether or not they do or feel anything about it. It's a very interesting subject and the more I read into it the more I get excited about the results we might yield. The person I am working with (all people remain unanimous unless they say okay) is great. She knows a lot about the subject, lets me do hands on work and she knows exactly what she wants. I am very glad about that.

As a side project I am doing wolf observations on my free time. This is to ensure some data to comfort my advisor back home. There is a lone wolf here that is currently being introduced into a new pack and my aim is to observe any relationship changes/conflicts that happened to the back after the wolf introduction. At the moment the wolf has been introduced to two of the three pack members and things are looking good.

What is very interesting here is training and the methods used. Although we aren't told much, some of the students decided to shadow a few of the trainers and I got taught a few very interesting things about training and in general animal behavior. I think animal behavior is definitely something a lot easier to understand when the subjects you are studying are not just in theory but rather present.

In addition to that I began work on my dissertation. It is probably too soon given that I have no idea of results or data collected yet but I started my research and the basic introduction stuff just to give myself a heads up.

I think the most important thing that made the transition here really easy are the students. Everyone here is great. It's a great company that bonds easily and there have been many interesting conversations between us. We share many things in common but are still diverse enough to have different view points on things and it's interesting to see biology and animal behavior from other schools and other perspective.

Three weeks have past faster than I thought and soon we will begin collecting data and I look forward to it. I will go in depth about certain aspects of what I learned soon.

Wolf Science Center first impressions and dissertation topics

As I a writing this I am sitting in Wolf Science Center student house in Austria. I am here for three months to collect data from my undergraduate honors project.

First things first is that I have no idea what my project will be as of yet. A lot of ideas are floating around as of now and obviously we need to test whether they can be conducting in the center or not. I think so far my project will be about cognition in wolves and dogs or behavior. Everything seems exciting here and the other students all have exciting projects so I am hoping my project will be equally exciting.

The Center is very well organised. Wolves and dogs are all raised in the same conditions and exposed to the same stimuli so their behavior would be comparable. The staff are all very careful about repetitions, stats and are very science oriented which is good for me as it means my data would be quite concrete. Testing enclosures are always sought after so organisation is present to dictate which person tests which wolves or dogs.

Also it is a great place for dog lovers. We spend some time with puppies, we have access to the puppy house where you can sit and be loved for hours on end by young puppies( just dog puppies for now) and dogs are around everywhere as members of staff all have dogs. It is great to be exposed to so much nature as the forest and birds and animals are all around us.

Lets take a minute to talk about sacrifices though. This is a bit more of a personal note but I feel it should be here. Throughout the blog I have talked about following your dream and pursuing a career you always like Working with animals usually means travelling and that means making commitments you may not like. At the time of the writing I still have about 117 days left( a few more or less depending on my data collection). This is the first time for me that I have committed to something big.I left Aberdeen and ventured into an unknown place with unknown people and for me that was terrifying. Not to mention not seeing friends or family or people you love. It is a bittersweet feeling. On the one hand leaving people and your house behind and on the other hand pursuing a dream and a project you spend a lot of time organizing. Endless emails, phone calls,money, networking and writing went into making this project and trip a reality and when it came to the last few days I was feeling very anxious and nervous about it. Pursuing your dreams and making sacrifices isn't as easy as people think it is.

Overall I am extremely pleased with my selection on where to conduct my project whether it may be and I am happy I got to pursue my dreams. On the other hand the sacrifices and the worry just work as a painful reminder that not everything good comes free. This project has to be perfect and get me a good grade. Otherwise it may not be worth it.