| 29th May 2005 |
 |
A ridge covers
southern England, bringing very light winds. Conditions at 12z (1PM
BST): |
As you may remember Friday was a remarkably hot day in SE England - the mercury stopped just shy of 30C here on Sheppey, thanks to a SWly wind cancelling out the NEly sea breeze. The night that followed was insufferably sticky, meaning by the time Saturday dawned I was grumpy and irritable. That was just what I needed as I had to be up early the following day for the show, with instructions to be at the showground (130 miles away) by 8 AM! In the end I woke up at an unholy hour, suffice to say I saw the sun rise yesterday...
By the time I got to the showground at Highclere Castle in Hampshire I felt a bit like a zombie - most unusual for me, although I had time to wake up as they wouldn't let me in without a ticket. A few minutes later another volunteer arrived and the two of us managed to get in; in fact we were escorted to the wolf stand.
Duma and Dakota were already in their mobile enclosure, while the rest of us set up the merchandise on our stall.
Duma and Dakota
There was a surprise in store though, as Paula (who's in charge of merchandise) had a bag full of polo shirts for us all. A long time ago special shirts with the UKWCT logo embroidered on them were given to volunteers and I'd been secretly coveting one ever since I found out about them - so I was thrilled at receiving one of the new ones! Indeed, it made us all look quite professional I thought, which was handy as there was a TV crew wandering around...
Meanwhile the skies were milky, with the strong May sunshine beating down. The GFS had forecast cloud to increase during the day, as had the MetO mesoscale, so I watched with interest as the clouds gradually thickened exactly as forecast. By noon (GMT) the sun had all but vanished and we didn't have to use our fence panel to provide shade for the wolves.
Things went much as usual at shows, a stint on merchandise then time off to roam around the show - and unlike the Cowpie show there weren't huge queues for food thankfully! The first bit of excitement came at midday as the wolves were due to make an appearance in the main arena. After closing off the route to the arena both wolves were lead out, while John (the senior handler for the day) delivered a half-hour talk about wolves. It looked exhausting!
Dakota in the
arena, with John in the background
Once that was out of the way it was time to go in with the wolves and help with "meet and greets". That meant putting collars on the wolves and Duma lay there placidly while her collar went on. She continues to lay there and doze while a succession of visitors came up and rubbed her belly. When we're doing meet and greets we always have two people per wolf, one to hold the lead and the other to guide the public, to make sure they stick to rubbing the belly and not the head or back, which would be seen as dominating the wolf.
Another session on the merchandise stall followed, then it was time for the second arena event. Dakota decided she'd rather stay in the enclosure this time, so Duma went in with half-a-dozen or so people. It's amazing the amount of litter that accumulates in the arena and it's important to hide it or remove it before the wolves get there, as you don't really want them chewing on an old shoelace or the like! This time the talk was given by Sue (who's lurking out there along with others from the Trust) and as it was the first time she'd done it the experience must have been nervewracking - I didn't envy her one bit! Nonetheless she managed just fine and we filed out a half hour later.
Vaguely menacing
clouds, 16z, Highclere
Not long after that came my favourite part of the day, ice-cream time! As I've mentioned before the wolves love the stuff and unlike me they can manage to scoff a double cone in 10 seconds flat, something which would be quite painful even if I could fit that much ice-cream into my mouth!
Dakota wolfing down
her ice-cream...
...and a few
seconds later she looks pretty satisfied!
Dakota notices that
the volunteers get to eat ice-cream too - you can almost
see her drooling!
After spending a glorious twenty minutes or so in there I left to allow others the chance to go in, then it was time to pack everything away and head off to home. The show's running today as well and there was talk it might be the European wolves going along today, to give Duma and Dakota a rest.
The full show schedule for the rest of the year can be found on the Trust's website, just in case anyone's near one and fancies seeing the wolves in the flesh!
Needless to say the one I'm most looking forward to is the Kent show, although it'll be an absolutely exhausting time! I just hope the weather's as kind then as it was yesterday...
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