Two very special canines have called the North Coast home since May this year.

The Courier caught up with animal expert Daneel Fuchs and his two wolves on the beach at Granny’s Pool in Salt Rock last Friday morning.

Zeus and Ashley are pure-bred Alaskan Greys who were hand reared by Fuchs at Crocodile Creek, just north of Tongaat.

“You cannot train wolves,” said Fuchs, “they are more intelligent than dogs and get bored if you try to train them. They see me as their pack leader.”

Ashley and Zeus, at one year and seven-months-old respectively, are still pups, but are already bigger than an average Alsation.

“They have to eat raw meat every day, Zeus has five kilograms every day and Ashley consumes seven kilograms over two days,” said Fuchs, giving Ashley an affectionate nuzzle.

They also need a lot of fat and intestines, requiring the iron content in organs such as the heart, liver and kidneys, according to Fuchs.

At the beach, Fuchs had the wolves on leashes, as they could pose a threat to small dogs, which they see as prey. But on the farm, the wolves run free when he takes them on long walks through surrounding forests three times a day.

“They move so quietly you can not even hear them, and they roam far, but when I whistle they come back to me,” he said.

“Wolves were brought to South Africa in the 1970s, with the hope of training them for military purposes,” said Fuchs.

Zeus and Ashley are descendants of those first furry settlers.

“I’d like to breed them one day but I mainly want to educate people about wolves,” said Fuchs

Hollywood misrepresentation has led to Wolves getting a bad rap, but according to Fuchs, they are timid of humans.

“They would make terrible guard dogs, if someone climbed over your wall a wolf would run and hide. It is the dog-wolf hybrids that are aggressive.”

According to Fuchs, these are the first wolves to have left their paw prints on an African beach.

You can meet Ashley and Zeus at Crocodile Creek.