Well, I'm jumping ahead a bit.

A couple friends who I met on the Internet invited me to come and visit. Not a problem when it is wolf people.

Anyway, today's adventure is the San Diego Wild Animal Park. Marsha is a member and she had free tickets! That was very nice since the admission is nearly $25 now. We walked about a bit but the only photograph worth posting that I took with the digital camera was this one of an Egret.

What interests me more than Egrets is training. Well, I would have been happy if they had a nice collection of canids. I could really use some new red and Mexican wolf photos, dholes too for that matter. Hey, and I have not photographed a bush dog in years. But, alas, the only canid that I saw on the map was a bat eared fox and they were waaay across the zoo. So, we focused on the animal shows.

They use clicker training. That works great for any animal. You can immediatly cue the animal to what you want and there is never any reason to not use a clicker (well, unless like me you are apt to lose anything not permanently attached and I do not really want to have a clicker permanently attached...) but in general these are great for training.

One of the trainers was out practicing with a young racoon. Looked like he was mainly getting the animal to follow and be attentive. Racoon look at trainer, click. Raccoon follow hand, click. Raccoon make eye contact, click. That sort of stuff.

Then for the show they had a variety of animals. The show is held in a small amputator with a hedge separating the public from the animals. Right before the show there was a young boy, probably about 3 or 4 years old, who was up against the hedge. The trainer who was introducing the show asked them to make sure that the child stayed on the bleachers at all time and for good reason. The good reason was that the fist animal in th show was a cougar. That cat was, well, a cat. Very focused on everything. The child just could not hold still. Finally the father picked up the child and they left. You should have seen that cat focus on the kid then - a beautiful eye-stalk. Good thing the trainer was aware of what that cat was saying.

I did not get good photographs of everybody, but I did manage a couple of the cougar, lynx, caribou and wolf, but the best part was the porcupine. That was the best part. They asked for an audience participant. My friend Kat was picked out because she is really outgoing and I'm sure they pick right up on that for the show, but also she knew what a Coati was. Not many people know what a Coiti is.

The porcupine is brought out and they of course focused on it's defence mechanism. The trainer actually had Kat believing that porcupines can through their quills. Catchers mit in hand, Kat was there ready to catch those quills. It was hysterical. Of course they can't. Then it was Kat's turn to pet the porcupine. Probably not a lot of you have had a chance to pet one, but they are actually pretty soft. The fur you see is their reasonably guard hairs. The quills are underneath. As long as you don't touch the quills or try to pet one backward, you are safe. Of course Kat being Kat tried to touch the quills like a kid having to touch a bench with a wet paint sign on it. Fortunately the trainers reflexes were quick! ;-)

After the show and all the audience left, one of the trainers, Karen, brought Kenai the wolf back out. He is a six year old neutered male who they raised from a pup. He looked to me to be Bear Country in origin, but he came from somewhere else so he might be simply one of the many BC descendants. He is certainly a great animal for their show, very tolerant and well trained.