Zimbabwe Wild Dogs

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Sep 06 2008 | By: zimbabwewilddogs

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the lack of news up here for a while, but as you might be aware Rosemary is away for a while and I’m helping out till she gets back and we’ve had quite a week so far!

First of all the exciting news…The ‘Mavericks’ Pack down in the south of the conservancy, we now know has 4 dogs and not the suspected 2 that we had only seen before.  Very encouraging as it is down here that the poaching is the worst due to the ‘illegal’ settlers and….well…lets just say non-conformal government actions.

However, now for the depressing part, the way we found out was that 2 of the dogs in this pack have been snared. One older male dog around his waist and the other female around her neck. 

To summarise the last 3 days, we basically tracked the dogs the whole day (for like 10 hrs) and finally caught up with them and managed to dart the male with the waist snare.  Very elusive dogs these and not stupid either.  They certainly know how to give one a run around! Anyway we cut the wire off, it had dug really deep into his one hip and had actually (squeamish people stop reading!!) cut right through his penis and the sheath so that it was literally in half…poor boy!!!!  We cleaned out the wound thoroughly, gave him some antibiotic and watched him run away into the dark (we only finished at 6.30pm) after he’d been given the reversal dart drug.  I’m sure feeling much better.  When we saw the dogs the next day, our patient was certainly looking more comfortable and much happier and seemed to be on his way to good recovery.  They are so resilient these animals.

The next day we had another shot at finding them again and darting the female this time with the neck snare.  Unfortunately we were not so successful.  The dogs were feeling quite harassed by this stage, as you can imagine after being snared for days, followed for more days by these strange animals..us.. and then also having to evade bush fires which are raging in the conservancy at this time of year (made worse by increased ‘settler’ populations).  The alpha female in this pack didn’t get her role for nothing here.  She is extremely intelligent, quick, strong and responsive to the needs of her pack and was most certainly not going to let them be further stressed out by us, and so she has to be with 3 injured companions in her care.  (The collared male is limping quite badly on his left front leg – but it doesn’t look too bad). 

So after a real ‘bundu bashing’ day without achieving anything further, we decided to give it a bit of a rest for a day or so till the poor animals had got some peace and settled down a bit, when maybe we could try again…if only they knew we were the good guys who actually want to help them!  Hopefully she’ll hang in there though and give us a chance to help her when we try again.

On a sad note, in the area where we managed to dart the dog, there was an old rhino carcass lying decimated and forgotten about up against a rock where it’s life came to a tragic end.  Another statistic to add to the rapidly growing number of shameful rhino slaughtering.

Anyway that’s it from me for today.  Will be back soon with more exciting bush news updates from the heart of the Savé Valley Conservancy – our little piece of paradise. 

Cheers for now

Lindsay