Reviews for 3 Among the Wolves: A Couple and Their Dog Live a Year with Wolves in the Wild

The average rating for 3 Among the Wolves: A Couple and Their Dog Live a Year with Wolves in the Wild based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-08-27 00:00:00 Craig Powers If you read the natural history books by Farley Mowat, James Herriot, or Gerald Durrell as a child, this is the book for you as an adult. Thayer and her husband Bill explored the social order of three different wolf packs by living with each for a season. Their part-wolf dog, Charlie, was their entry into the pack, allowing them to watch ravens and wolves teasing each other and sharing food; see an older wolf teaching the pups to watch for airplanes (carrying hunters with guns) in the sky; and be protected from a grizzly by the pack. As they grew to know the wolves better, it was like looking into the life of a family: the wolves became characters in their own right, and the departure from each pack was moving. This is my third Helen Thayer book; I find them captivating. She is an amazing female adventurer (named "One of the Great Explorers of the 20th Century" by National Geographic and NPR). Although each in their late 50s during this journey, both she and her husband were pulling 300-pound sleds in the Arctic when it was -36 degrees Fahrenheit! The Arctic ice portion was terrifying: within 3 days of starting, they had nearly fallen through the ice as it cracked and moved and had two polar bears charge them, the second one stopping only after they fired two rounds of flares and Charlie eventually scared it off. That strong sense of place made for compelling reading. If you like books about adventure, you might enjoy Thayer's other books: Walking the Gobi: A 1600-mile Trek Across a Desert of Hope and Despair Polar Dream: The First Solo Expedition by a Woman and Her Dog to the Magnetic North Pole Or Deep Water Passage, by Ann Linnea

Review # 2 was written on 2019-08-28 00:00:00 Kimberly Gygi Never Cry Wolf but this time it's a true story In 1994, Helen Thayer, her husband Bill, and Charlie, an Inuit dog with wolf ancestry, set out to study wolves in the wild in the Canadian Yukon. They spent six summer months near a wolf family's den, and another couple of winter months among the wolves and polar bears of the Arctic. Through observing and documenting the wolves' daily lives, they eventually felt an interspecies bond developing. The couple and their dog spent another few years checking on their wolf friends, and the book provides an "after" to their stories. For those familiar with more popular stories, the first part (Summer) feels like Never Cry Wolf (which, if someone's still not aware, is a work of fiction), but in this case, they really spent these months among wild wolves. In contrast, Jim and Jamie Dutcher lived among captive ones, as described in their Wolves at Our Door. It's a bit repetitive at times, and the writing isn't spectacular, but boy, is the story amazing! I forgot about this book, but then it was recommended to me a couple of weeks ago and I finally ordered a copy. No regrets. (Photographs by Helen Thayer)