There are many animals that we can keep as pets, from common ones such as cats and dogs, to more exotic animals like parrots and snakes. However, if you’re lucky enough, on very rare occasions, you see more unlikely pets like Kira, the wolf.
Abandoned at 3 days old by her mother, Kira wasn’t able to survive alone, and then came along her saving grace, Alida, who took her in, trained and raised her, and brought her up like a dog, and gave her a second chance at life.
As wolves are wild at heart, they don’t have the domestication gene like dogs, and hence, domesticating Kira was quite difficult. Kira was extremely cautious of new things, which made Alida work extra hard, making Kira socialize a lot more, meeting other animals, adults and kids.
In an interview, Alida had this to say: “Kira’s mom used to live with a family, but they didn’t manage to take care of her and she ended up in a nursery. She no longer trusts people. Kira was born in the same nursery. If released into the wild, there’s a high probability she will die since no one taught her to hunt. Kira’s mother abandoned her babies when they were 3 days old and in the nursery, so they were fed by hand. And I took her away as soon as Kira got stronger and also first fed her with milk. I took her from the nursery when she was 28 days old.
She is smart but very stubborn. When making decisions, she focuses on herself, not me. From the very beginning, I began the process of her socialization. She saw a huge number of dogs, people, and children. We walked in different places so that she could study different smells, hear new sounds. Wolves have an innate neophobia, a fear of everything new. This is a very difficult process, long and tedious, but it is necessary so that Kira can live with me in an urban environment and feel comfortable.”
At 28 days old, Alida takes Kira home, and started to care, feed and domesticate her. She also had this to say about the wolf: “Upbringing, too, had its problems, but with age, it all goes away and the work bears fruit—Kira has a stable and mild psyche, does not react to aggression from other dogs, and does not provoke conflicts herself. She treats children very carefully and if the child is afraid of her, she doesn’t approach him.”
To make sure that Kira would get used to the modern world, Alida went on lots of adventures, and she also says: “On the street, people generally react with curiosity, ask to be photographed, ask if it is dangerous to live with a wolf, and especially when there’s a child at home (I have a 7-year-old son, Bogdan.)” After all the hard work put in by Alida, Kira is now fully domesticated and lived with her mom and 7-year-old son who she loves to death.
The woman also gets asked by strangers about living with a wolf. Alida also had this to say regarding her situation with Kira: “In real life, people react quite normally, because Kira is very friendly and doesn’t instil fear in people. But on the internet, people are both angry and stupid, they write different things. Especially after a series of reports about us, there were a lot of reports that I was acting very stupidly since I kept a predatory animal at home.”
You can follow Alida on her Instagram she.s.a.wolf to follow hers and Kira’s daily lives.
