So, word in the animal keeper world is that the person who ran Pack West is leaving to go on reality TV. What's gonna happen to her animals?
I don’t know, honestly. From her personal instagram, it looks like she’s leaving for a month this summer to go on Naked and Afraid, but there’s no mention of who will be caring for her two wolfdogs or the GSD and the cat. Her posts mention that she’s currently moving to a new property so it’s not clear if her previous housemates (who know the animals and probably could care for them appropriately) will still be around, and from my previous interactions with her, it sounded like the goal was to move into the total wilderness. It’s not exactly easy to get a pet-sitter who has the know-how to care for any wolfdog when you’re removed from urban areas, much less find someone with the skills to safely manage a high-content like Ivar - that pretty much requires finding a person with professional exotic animal management experience.
I dunno, I’m just… kind of angry about the whole thing. There’s no way the producers of a show that focuses on survival and wilderness skills and unique contestants won’t want play up the “dancing with wolves” aspect, which means her whole deal with continuing wolfdog education with Ivar will probably become even more famous… and since she’s never fully acknowledged publicly the extent of how appalling her choices during the PackWest debacle were… people will likely want emulate her lifestyle and her husbandry and her management choices… and that’s frustrating because what I personally observed of her practices makes it clear to me she shouldn't be mentoring anyone on wolfdog ownership.
Also, like, good exotic pet ownership doesn’t involve leaving for a solid month (and being fairly unreachable in an emergency) only a months after constructing new enclosures in a totally new environment.
