Three Among the Wolves: A Couple and Their Dog Live a Year With Wolves in the Wild

From Publishers Weekly
In this breezy volume, Thayer, whose previous book chronicled her successful solo trek to the North Pole at age 50, recounts the year that she spent in the Yukon and Arctic wilderness following packs of wolves with her husband, Bill, and their part-wolf dog, Charlie. Like Farley Mowat and others before her, Thayer (Polar Dream) is motivated by a desire to study the behavior that wolves won’t reveal when they’re kept in captivity, particularly the "food-sharing habits they have with land-bound animals, such as grizzlies and ravens." The wilderness project relies heavily on the talents of Charlie, who acts as a canine go-between that both guides and protects his owners as they cautiously make their way closer and closer to a wolf pack. Thayer and her husband copy Charlie’s behavior to transform themselves from threatening humans to submissive, wolf-like strangers. They eat a vegetarian diet and try to minimize their presence as they follow the wolves on hunting expeditions in a cold, forbidding world. Suspenseful encounters with bitter storms and fearsome grizzlies are tempered by calmer moments with romping pups and breathtaking scenery. While the subject matter is not new, Thayer’s smooth prose style moves the story along, and the inclusion of Charlie as a main focus adds a new twist to the first-person nature narrative. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
Explorer and adventurer Thayer (who has trekked the North Pole, the Sahara Desert, and Antarctica), along with her husband and husky-wolf dog, Charlie, decided to live close to wild wolves in Canada. They would study the wolves' food-sharing habits with grizzly bears and ravens during the summer and with polar bears and foxes during the winter. As the couple approached a spring wolf den, camping closer each day, they found that Charlie was their key to acceptance by the wolves. By following his lead and observing his reactions to the obvious interest of the resident pack, they convinced the wolves that they were harmless. What followed was an intimate six months with the pack. Charlie marked a territory around their tent that the wolves respected, but the pups crossed this boundary to get the dog to play with them. This unusual combination of adventure travel and the study of animal behavior is a diverting read and will find a wide audience. Nancy Bent
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
Three Among the Wolves is a highly readable true-life adventure tale combined with a fascinating natural history of the wolf. Helen and Bill Thayer, accompanied by their part-wolf, mostly Husky dog, Charlie, set out on foot to live among wild wolf packs - first in the Canadian Yukon and then in the Arctic. They eventually set up camp within 100 feet of a wolf den, and are greeted with apprehension at first. They establish trust over time, because the wolves accept Charlie as the alpha male of the newly arrived "pack." The Thayers discover the complexities of wolf family structure, including how pups are reared and how the injured are tenderly cared for. They view the intricacies of the hunt firsthand - how ravens direct wolves to prey in exchange for carrion - as well as the wolves' finely honed survival skills and engaging playfulness. Readers observe the ways Helen and Bill model pack behavior and how they address an unforeseen event: the Arctic wolves attempt to lure Charlie to join them.


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The adventure was something of a home-coming for Charlie, who had been raised by Inuits and who shared a distant lineage with wolves. Once in proximity of the wild pack, Charlie asserted his own role as the alpha of the Thayer "pack," responding with instinctive howls, friendly tail fanning, and scentmarking of his territory. The nearby wolves observed this familiar social structure among their visitors, and that opened the door for a trusting relationship to develop between the humans and the wolves. Helen, Bill, and Charlie spent spring, summer, and fall with the Yukon wolves, then ventured north to spend a winter with Arctic wolves. The brutal elements and numerous encounters with formidable polar bears and dangerous sea ice threatened to impede this leg of the venture. But once again, Charlie's canine nature allowed them unprecedented access to two separate winter packs. In the Arctic, the Thayers observed, possibly for the first time, a polar bear sharing its prey with a large family of hungry wolves. On the Mackenzie River Delta, another pack, which exhibited a less certain social structure, even attempted to enlist Charlie to join their numbers. Throughout this gripping tale of adventure in the untamed natural world, a fresh new perspective on the ways of wild animals emerges. Helen Thayer is an uncommon outdoors-woman, and her story is both engaging and inspiring.


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