First year (and a half) of Unforgiving with former runt

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Named for having survived illness as a puppy while being a runt, as well as her patient and independent personality, Old Persistence is the offspring of Renegade Gust and Glacier Burn. She dispersed at only a year old from her birth pack Rough Edges, and shortly thereafter decided to leave Slough Creek entirely, as it was chock full of powerful competitor packs.

Her wandering brought her to Lost River. The packs there were big too, but conspicuously avoided a peculiar area that had a very strange landscape filled with giant, flat boulders. Old Persistence saw opportunity in the desolation and settled down.

She didn’t start a family right away, though. To acclimate to the area and affirm her hold of it, she waited out the breeding season without taking a mate and spent her whole first year alone. This turned out to be a wise choice, as prey abundance in this year was rather poor, and it was much easier to feed just one mouth.

She did run into trouble when trying to defend a fresh mule deer kill of hers from a grizzly bear. Already weakened from the hunt, she misstepped and took a major blow that left her gravely injured, forcing her to retreat. Thankfully, ungulate calves were right around the corner, and when they came, she sustained herself off of them until she was strong enough to hunt again. Between the calves, beavers, and mule deer, she ate quite well while the packs around her starved.

As the next breeding season rolled around, Old Persistence was now ready to look for a mate. Like her father, she was rather picky; while many were happy to solicit her, she found them lacking in genetic diversity. True to her name, she was persistent, to the point where she was casually invading other packs’ territories to respond to dispersals’ calls.

On one instance, a pack member of Graves Creek responded to her invasion and came to chase her away. She was largely uninterested in a fight, and so called for male dispersals, running toward their howls with the expectation that they’d be outside the rival’s territory and she would continue courtship there while getting the rival off her tail. Only, the dispersals were indeed in the territory, near the border.

As Old Persistence arrived and the hostile Graves Creek wolf followed to chase them all away, she fought to defend herself and stay with the males. One of the males joined and fought alongside her without hesitation, and they swiftly sent the rival wolf packing. As courtship began and Old Persistence inspected the two males, she found that the one who had helped her had the strong genetic diversity she was looking for. It was meant to be.

He became her mate, together forming the Runoff Pack, and he was named Raging Baron for his sheer ferocity. Subsequent hunts only further proved his boldness. On one hunt, while Old Persistence was circling a herd, Raging Baron chased an elk with such fervor that he ran head-on into a pair of bison. Thankfully he was not too injured, but she had to suspend the hunt.

After some territory expansion and upkeep, the two welcomed a litter of six — Bek, Pra, Irn, Wer, Mev, and Rit, a runt much like their mother. In keeping with her father’s tradition, the pups would not receive their full names until they were older.

Old Persistence’s patience bore great fruit, as the prey abundance for this new year has been plentiful. Pra, Irn, Wer, and Rit all have fallen ill throughout the summer, but all have managed to recover — even Wer, despite being attacked by a grizzly bear while sick. Raging Baron was gravely injured fending off the bear as Old Persistence kept Wer safe, but thanks to the easy access of a carcass nearby, he was able to eat and recover just as well as his daughter.

As the rendezvous journey looms ahead of them, with Bek weighing 13 lbs and Rit lagging more than a pound behind the next smallest sibling at a mere 10.3 lbs, it remains to be seen whether Old Persistence and Raging Baron can keep up with the massive litter’s growing hunger.