An explosion of wild dogs at Selinda, Botswana

By Roxanne Reid
We’re flying, bouncing off-road over grass, avoiding aardvark holes and driving over a small mopane bush here or round a Kalahari apple-leaf there. We’re at Selinda in the Linyanti, Botswana, and we’re following an explosion of wild dogs.

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​The Selinda Spillway area in northern Botswana is home to some of southern Africa’s biggest elephant and buffalo herds. It’s also a stronghold of the endangered wild dog. We were staying at Great Plains Conservation’s remote and beautiful Selinda Camp and we’d been trying for three days to find them.

This was our last early morning game drive before returning to Maun. It was so cold that our guide Donald Senase had packed ‘bushbabies’ with the wind-cheating ponchos – a hot water bottle to warm our lap and hands.

Determined to end our stay on a high Donald worked really hard to find the dogs. We returned to an area where he’d previously seen the pregnant alpha female cleaning out a den. We’d looked there on our first afternoon but found nothing. This time there were fresh tracks so he followed them until they disappeared into the thicket.

​He drove around and scanned the area. Then a small band of wild dogs exploded out of the grass. Some of them had blood on their faces so we thought they might have a kill somewhere.

​Another dog approached from the other direction and there was lots of excited yipping and greeting before they all set off together, travelling quickly through the long grass, trotting then jumping up in the air, all four paws off the ground to see where the others were, so they could follow. 

​They stopped at Mogobe Pan for a quick drink then they were off again, loping through the veld.

We set off after them. At first Donald kept them in sight as he navigated along the sandy roads, where he could go faster than across the veld. Dogs can run at about 40km/h so it was a hectic Lewis Hamilton chase to keep up with them, not lose sight of their position. (Note that ’fast’ is a relative term on safari, top speed being only about 35-40km/h.) We were swaying madly on the back of the vehicle, hanging on with both hands and laughing, part hysteria and part adrenalin. 

​Lost and found
Then our road made a long detour away from the dogs and we lost them.

Our hearts dropped, fearful we wouldn’t find them again. Three or four long minutes passed while we desperately scanned the veld for any sign of movement.

Then Donald spotted one of the dogs and we bumped across the veld to get closer. We found them in a busy cluster around a kill. A photographer himself, he positioned the vehicle for the best angle, the best light on the action. And there they all were eating together, pulling and gobbling, white-tipped tails curved up from their backs. 

Unlike lions who bicker and growl and curse at each other while they eat at a carcass, here there was no tension, just ten dogs really happy to be eating together. Three would grab different parts of the same chunk of impala and in the blink of an eye they’d pull it apart. No sound of growling, just the crunching of bones. ‘They eat the soft bones and leave the hard ones for hyenas,’ said Donald.

I have no idea how much time passed as we watched, occasionally grinning at each other, smugly rejoicing in our luck, Donald’s good tracking and even finer chase-car driving.

Then one by one the dogs left the carcass and trotted through the grass, circling the area. Things were winding down after the excitement of the meal and reunion. One dog peed on the remains, nothing much left by now but the spine.

Six hooded vultures swooped in from the sky. Two settled on a tree nearby and four on the ground to pick at pieces. ‘This was where the kill was made,’ said Donald. He reckoned that some of the dogs had probably run to alert the others when we caught up with them.

My heart had been beating hard in my chest. It felt like I was plugged into a light switch, so great was the exhilaration of seeing these energetic animals in action. The adrenalin rush had been huge, but now that the high-speed chase and action were over my head was pounding.

High five to Donald for his tenacity in finding what turned out to be the most thrilling and prolonged wild dog sighting of our lives.

Note: I was a guest of Great Plains Conservation for two nights, but had free rein to write what I chose. I paid for all travel costs.

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