Although overjoyed with the new 'babies' there was obviously a problem - the males have to be neutered and all of them have to be given their vaccinations over a period of a few weeks. This is more difficult than it sounds, because although the pups have to be introduced into their adoptive pack as soon as possible, once they're in the adults won't let them back out again. The vaccinations had to be given before the introductions, yet if it's left too long the adults won't accept them into the pack. Time was not on their side.

Also, the pups have to be acclimatized to humans. Wolves naturally avoid humans and normally hide from view both in the wild and in zoos. The fee-paying public isn't keen on purchasing tickets merely to visualize woods where they are told wolves are hiding, so the pups are allowed to play with humans, and in this facility they learn to approach the fences so that they can be seen and photographed.

Fortunately for us these pups had not had much interaction with humans and the owner was anxious to improve the situation, so invited us to 'come and play'! We did not need convincing! How often do you get to play with wild wolves?

After a lot of nibbling (They have extremely sharp teeth!), scratching, pawing, licking and general scrambling, during which we discovered the pups had chewed through our shoe laces and stolen my film pack. At one point I had to remove my watch because two of them were chewing the strap. They also had a habit of jumping in their water trough and then jumping on us; must have been a great game for them.

Time to leave; but we were hungry for lunch and decided on an Applebees diner. Trouble was, we were unbelievably filthy, sweaty, missing shoe-laces, and smelled quite badly of puppy-pee. Convinced that nobody would sit anywhere near us, we hurried our meal and couldn't stop grinning to ourselves all the way home.