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Your character's abilities, like many other things, are important. A character's strengths and abilities will often determine whether s/he is accepted into a pack or not, as the pack's leadership will almost always inquire as to what usefulness your character has. Most wolves can run, hunt, jump, and swim. These aren't "special abilities" at all, so unless your character is the best of the best at one of them, it's not a good idea to consider these as your character's sole skill. On the other hand, if your character has other special abilities like medical knowledge, star-navigation, piercing & tattooing, spying, stealth, tree-climbing, human knowledge, reading/writing, etc, the pack leadership will definitely want to hear of those skills. Be creative and think of something cool you can do, then try as best you can to apply it to a wolf's skills. It's not a good idea to go and say your wolf can do something and have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, though. So make sure you at least know a little bit of what you lay claim to.

Don't forget that your characters weaknesses are just as important as his or her strengths. Make sure your character has at least a few flaws, whether major or minor. Is s/he a homocidal maniac with a taste for puppyblood? Is s/he deathly afraid of heights? Is s/he prejudiced against normal wolves? Against Luperci? Coyotes? Flaws make a character interesting to play; no one is perfect and it gets boring very quickly if your character has no weaknesses.

Quirkiness can often make characters fun to read about and to play. It's nice to give your character a little funky twist here and there. There was a trend in the roleplay community has been to give characters psychological disorders -- many people seemed to have schitzophrenic or bipolar characters. That's all fine and dandy, but keep in mind that too many completely crazy characters running around doesn't make for very interesting or varied roleplaying either, and there are tons of other ways to make your character interesting other than dumping a disorder on them. More realistic quirks like a prejudice or a particular way of speaking work just as well!

Some people choose to have NPC (non-player/playable character) companion animals such as birds, rats, etc. These companions can follow your character around, helping him or her in various ways, or just provide company. You can have almost any kind of NPC character, even other wolves. If you have a wolf NPC, however, certain restrictions will apply. You must designate one of your characters as a main roleplaying character and the other as the NPC. They cannot be equals. Your main RP character may be controlled alone without the NPC, but your NPC character must always appear in posts with your main character and cannot be roleplayed alone. Additionally, NPC wolves may have restrictions placed on the ranks they are allowed to obtain, depending on the policies of individual packs.