Facts About The Mejestic Wolf - Forest Ostrander (best motivational books of all time .TXT) 📗

it as just that. You must have patience and understanding to be able to seek out the right mate for you and it may take much time and experience.

Adopting Pups:
Adopting a cub is an important decision because as with becoming a member or courting/mating within the Sweet Mystics, it is usually for life. There will be a ceremony announcing the adoption. This does not mean the cub is a Pack Member, but may become Assessment to join.
For more info and to read the Relationship Rules go to the Relationship Page

Hunting and Eating:
When hunting, the actions of the prey, as well as the environment, are represented using :: :: by the Pack Members or Full Assessments depending on the size of the prey

For Example:
[Wolfie1] ::A small rabbit chews on a patch of grass at the edge of the clearing::
*Wolfie2 darts after the rabbit
[Wolfie1] ::the rabbit gets spooked and runs away::
Wolves are opportunists usually most successful in catching and killing the weak, sick, youngest or oldest of a species. If you overly hunt within the clearing you will be warned. A cache of remains is kept near the base of Myst Tree to feast upon. After a Group hunt, eating is much like the way of a real-life wolfpack. The highest ranking eats first, then down the hierarchy.
After a hunt the Alpha, Beta, or ranked Hunter will memo #soulwolves of the food supply .
For more info and to read the Hunting Rules go to the Hunting Page
Weather:
The weather, such as wind and precipitation, is managed by Pack Members using :: ::. Keep in mind, TimberMyst is located in Canada where, generally, winters are long and summers short. Season changes will be posted on the History Page with a description. Harsh conditions, such as snow/rain storms, would be shown in the channel topic. Daylight/Nightime follow EST (Eastern Standard Time).

Being a Sweet Mystic earns certain privileges, like using :: :: in hunting, the weather, and control of the environment. Members are expected to show good judgement, as in all situations.
The Wolf has always been a symbol of evil as well as good, either a demonic, brutal killer or a reflection of the mysterious, untamed wilderness. The reality of the matter, however, is that the wolf is neither evil nor exceptionally good. Wolves are simply predators. As with humans, wolves need to eat to survive. In this way, wolves also help preserve nature's delicate balance by keeping herds of deer, elk, moose, and other large mammals in check. They also keep these populations strong and healthy by hunting the weak and sick.
Both the idealized wolf and the demonic wolf are created by the human mind. The Big Bad Wolf has filled our myths and legends and if you only know of wolves in that sense, then you truly do not know the wolf at all. What humans don't know, they fear. That fear is possibly the greatest threat to the survival of the wolf.
Fear breeds fear; hatred breeds hatred. Enveloped in a dark cloud of anxious imagination, wolves attained a fearful reputation for gluttony. On the one hand, they were accused of unbridled depredation on livestock, though in fact they almost always prefer wild prey. On the other, they were denounced for craving human flesh, though in fact they do not generally hunt down human beings. It is the true nature of wolves that humans never really understood. Their normal response to people is not aggression but curiousity or fear.

The Big Bad Wolf

With the spread of Christianity, the Bible's dictate to control and conquer the world flew through the forests with the force and destructiveness of a fire as man declared war on the wolf. The wolf was especially evil in the folklore, literature, and Church teachings of medieval Europe.
It is true the wolves in the Middle Ages, like foxes, skunks, and even domestic and wild dogs, sometimes carried and transmitted rabies. Rabies is a terrible disease that we, luckily, almost never encounter today. Back then rabies was always fatal. However, fables of evil skunks, foxes, or dogs were not created as they were with the wolf. Man's extreme fear of wolves were stirred up by tales of wicked creatures acting out of devotion to the darkest powers of hell.
However, man's fear did not stop there. Worse then just the wolf was the human-wolf creature known as the werewolf. The thought that a human could transform into a wolf and be able attack, kill, and sometimes even gorge other humans struck deep fear in the minds and hearts of many medieval men. Yet only the fears of facing the court of the Inquisition were greater. At this time, werewolves became equal to witches and sorcerers. Relatives and friends accused each other of evilness. If they did not fear, they would most likely be found as witches or werewolves. The Inquistion was a terrible time of witch hunts and torturing that the Church and higher ups named a spiritual cleansing and where many innocent people died a horrible death.
When Europeans arrived in mass in North America, they brought with them eighteenth-century versions of these lurid misconceptions. And to add to this: a struggle against wilderness that was both literal and mythic. The settlers arrived with a mission to tend a garden in a wild land. There was no place in the garden for predators. Wolves were killers, and, in addition to any actual threat, reminded the newcomers that they were ultimately not in control, even in this new and promised land.
On both continents, Europe and North America, wolves were persecuted with fury; hundreds of thousands were slaughtered due to these false beliefs.

Native American Views of the Wolf

Native American perceptions of nature were very different from those that Europeans shared. The different Native American cultures shared a deep respect for other creatures.
Many Native American people called the wolf the PathFinder or Teacher. They admired the wolf's intelligence, courage, and strength. They also saw in the wolf a loyal pack member who help with the family as a whole when necessary. The tales handed down from generation to generation are mainly stories of wolf the keen hunter, wolf the devoted family member, wolf the proud defender of his territory, wolf the intelligent teacher, and wolf the true survivor. These were characteristics deserving great respect and emulation. To carry wolf power, among many tribes, was to be greatly honored and admired. In turn, the wolf was celebrated in ceremony and legend, as well as in dance and song.
Understanding of wolves differed between Native Americans cultures that depended heavily on hunting and those that were mainly agricultural. It was for the hunter or shaman that the wolf played the greatest role, rather than the farmer.
The Navajo, however, called the wolf mai-coh, meaning witch. Their fear of wolves was based not on the nature of the wolf, but on human nature. Both the Navajo and the Hopi believed that human witches used or possibly abused the wolf's powers to hurt other people. While Europeans warned of a wolf in sheep's clothing, certain tribal beliefs cautioned against a human in wolf's clothing.
The profound similarities between human and wolf have been celebrated in many Native American cultures for centuries. In some traditions, this kinship is believed to transcend even death, for in the spirit world, wolves are uniquely powerful. When they howl, are the spirits calling to us? According to a Cree myth, it was Wolf who, after the great flood, carried a ball of moss round and round the survivors' raft, until the Earth reformed.
It is no longer possible to trace the relationship between wolves and humankind to its origins, but it probably extends back at least two million years. Even then, wolves lived much as they do today, and our far-distant ancestors may have watched them running single file through the trees, hunting hoofed animals on green prairies and bearing their pups in the comfort of sand dens. Indeed, our ancestors may have followed a similar way of life, travelling in small family groupings and feasting on what they could kill.

Change?

"Everybody believes to some degree that wolves howl at the moon, or weigh two hundred pounds, or travel in packs of fifty, or are driven crazy by the smell of blood," Barry Lopez points out in Of Wolves and Men. "None of this is true." The truth is that we know little about the wolf as it is and a great deal more about the wolf as we imagine it.
The wolf has been the symbol of great respect and honor as well as hatred and persecution. We, as humans, must let go of our fears; our legends. We must strive and want to understand that every creature on this earth has value and purpose. We must learn to know the importance of nature's balance and beauty. Only then will the wolf's true destiny come to view.
What is a "hybrid"?
A hybrid is the offspring of a cross between a wolf and a dog, a wolf and a hybrid, a dog and a hybrid, or two hybrids. Hybrids are also known as wolf-dogs. Hybrids are generally defined in one of four ways. The most common way is verbal; a person simply says their animal is a hybrid. It may have a wolf ancestor, or it may not. The second way is by appearance and behavior. If the canine displays primary wolf behaviors and appearance, it may be defined as a hybrid or wolf.A third way is by ancestry; in other words, any canine that has a wolf ancestor (no matter how many generations ago) is a hybrid. Hybrids defined this way may actually be all or mostly dog or all or mostly wolf. Finally, a hybrid may be defined by its genetic makeup. While genetics are the only way to determine how much wolf and dog is in a hybrid, at this time our genetic tests are not sophisticated enough to make this determination.*
Such animals are bred in the intent of making a super-dog, one that possesses the best characteristics from both dogs and wolves. Unfortunately, this is not the case – hybrids are extremely unpredictable and dangerous to humans. The reason for this is that the hybrid loses the wolf’s natural shyness of humans by being bred with a domestic animal, but still holds the wolf’s predatory instincts and exceptional strength. To them, small children, cats and dogs are all prey.
Wolf-dog hybrids also strengthen wolves’ already false bad reputation of being savage animals. Hybrids often attack and kill humans, but it is usually pure wolves that get the blame. The wolf’s misinterpretation has contributed a lot of harm to the animal. Also, the crossbreeding wolves and dogs is also a serious threat to the genetic purity of wolves.
The Market
Unfortunately, a market exists for wolves and for hybrids that are predominantly wolf. Such pups may sell for hundreds of dollars. These animals are often sold to naive people by breeders who greatly exaggerate the percentage of wolf in the pup. Sometimes breeders do this knowingly to increase the price, and sometimes they are simply ignorant of the difference between genetics and ancestry. Either way, the pups' new owners may be unaware that their animals are dogs or mostly dogs, and therefore hold them out to friends and family as wolves or genetically high-percentage wolf hybrids. Naturally, these canines are the "hybrids" one most often meets on the beach, in town, playing with children, etc. Because of the characteristics, true wolves and high-percentage hybrids are not commonly seen in public.
Breeders falsely advertise hybrids as being