This will be welcomed like a fart in a lift o.0

Sorry to reply so very late - I missed your post.

The real circumstances of the new "alpha" male wolf accepted into another Yellowstone pack was not as JF claims in her book i.e. that the Yellowstone male who was not part of the pack was accepted into a pack because he stood his ground when charged by the "alpha" (i.e matriarchal) female.

This supposed wolf behaviour was her argument for claiming the dog accepted the one it was aggressively charging due to it just standing its ground like the wolf, also disreguarding that (IIRC) it only "stood its ground" as it was held (or tethered?) there with no option!

I had come across a much fully account of this interaction when looking at Yellowstone wolf behaviour and specifically the reintroduction programme.

This stated that this same pack had earlier killed a wolf from a rival pack who came into their territory. In fact the greatest cause of death to wolves living within the protected area of the park at that time, as the numbers increased, was intra species competitive aggression from wolves from other packs.

However since the time they had killed the other wolf from the same pack as the eventually accepted one, they had gone out of the protected area of the park and the female's breeding partner had been shot and killed.

Hence when they came back into the park they had not been in occupation of that territory for a few weeks (i.e their territorial claim was weaker), and there was a potential vacancy for an unrelated breeding male to be accepted by the female, rather than chased off or killed by her male partner, from that male's established, owned, home territory.

At another time, under different circumstances, standing his ground would have got him killed, as some of his previous packmates had been. Indeed the greatest cause of death of wolves in Yellowstone (where they were protected from human hunters), as both the number of packs and the number of members within packs rose and territorial overlaps occurred, was interpack disputes.

IIRC it was on a TV documentary, specifically about the Yellowstone wolves but I have looked at so many things about wolves (and other animals) throughout many, many years that I cannot remember which this was in.It would have been one of the earlier ones, when they were newly introduced.

As you can see the full story puts a very different set of highly significant circumstances in place than that single. and erroneous, theory put forward by JF that this male was just accepted because he stood his ground. In other circumstances he would have been killed, like his pack mate.

what I would give to see this a nasty little man with no interest in dogs and no idea what he's doing, just looking for a 'quick fix' to enhance his TV career

CM is the one who left his own dog behind in Mexico to come to America isn't he? Who looked after that dog when he left? Just wondered if anyone knew?

Mind you a free holiday would be good

Here we go get your popcorn ready everyone!