Limpopo Valley Carnivores

Category: Snoopy and Barclay | Date: Aug 26 2008 | By: limpopocarnivores

We are lucky enough this week to have Louise Wilson, a specialist sniffer dog trainer from Wagtail UK Ltd, out to help with our sniffer dog programme. Having made good progress with Snoopy, I was struggling to get Barclay’s concentration and Louise has stepped in to help.

By assessing both the dogs and my training techniques, she has been able to help enormously already in just a couple of days. Snoopy is working better than before with more enthusiasm for the job and I feel more confident in what I am doing.

Scent-training with Snoopy in an enclosed area:

When Louise takes in dogs for training, she typically assesses them quite quickly, and her expertise allows her to tell quite quickly if a dog will be suitable. A very particular character is required for a sniffer dog. Very often they are dogs that are so hyperactive and obsessive that they do not make good pets, and are often animals that pet owners could no longer cope with. Both Snoopy and Barclay fall into this category, but unfortunately Barclay’s obsession is with the many game birds in the area. He is a hunting dog from hunting lines, and it seems that this may be too strong an instinct in him to allow him to concentrate on the scat sniffing. Dogs mature at different rates, and even at a year old, he is still very immature, so there is a chance he may gain focus with age. We will continue with his assessment for a few more days, and try to build his motivation for the scat sniffing work before making any decisions. If Louise feels that he is not a candidate for the sniffer work, he will simply be found another job to do here on the farm. Our dogs have jobs, but are also much loved members of the family.

The surprise of the week so far has been than Louise has spotted huge potential in one of our other dogs. Minki is an 8 month old Miniature Dachshund who I had never even considered trying due to her tiny size, but she shows all the character traits required for the job. Louise has suggested that I train her up for two reasons. Firstly, it will give me more experience in this specialised form of dog training, and secondly we can use her to double check on Snoopy. Leopard and Cheetah scats can look very similar, so if we train Minki onto leopard scats, we can test every sample Snoopy finds before we send it off for expensive analysis. If he says it is cheetah and she shows no interest, we can be sure that it is. If however, we see a scat that we think is cheetah and he doesnt indicate on it, we can get Minki to check it out. To fully test him, we need to train with samples from cheetahs on mixed diets, and from males and females of ranging dominance, and from females that are in all stages of their reproductive cycle. Obviously this can be hard to get all the samples to cover all bases, so by double checking with Minki, we can make our system more efficient, and pick up a need for more continuation training with Snoopy as early as possible.

Minki, our new superstar team member:

 

The scat sniffing is a relatively new field, but using a Miniature Dachshund as a sniffer dog I think is a worldwide first!

Minki enjoying a walk:

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Category: Cheetah, Wild Dogs | Date: Aug 08 2008 | By: limpopocarnivores

Here it is! The first photo of this year’s litter of Wild Dog puppies. There are only six in the photo but there are in fact seven puppies. It is extremely exciting as not only are they remarkably cute, but they are the future of the Venetia Pack.

There were other babies seen yesterday as well, this time a group of three cheetah cubs. In a spot very close to where we saw the cheetah and cubs crossing our fenceline a few months ago, we were lucky enough to see another group, also split across the the fence. The mother was calling from the Venetia side to three small cubs on our side of the fence. It is definitely a different group as these cubs were only about three months old at most. This is very encouraging that they are doing so well. It must be another female as even if the first one we saw had lost her cubs, she would not have had time to have cubs of this size, so we are confident that they are two families using the area. This family were happily reunited when we watched the cubs slip through the wire strands of the fence onto Venetia.

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Category: Hyena, Leopards | Date: Aug 08 2008 | By: limpopocarnivores

Our call-ups on Mapungubwe National Park took place over two very cold nights and, while we were chilled to the bone, they were a great success. We had good responses from Spotted Hyaenas at all sites, and on the second night we were lucky enough to see Brown Hyaena, Porcupine, 3 Bat-Eared foxes and a number of Black-backed Jackals. The big excitement for the evening, however, was seeing first one, then two leopards coming out of the bush and carry out an elaborate courtship ritual in front of us in the moonlight. The male was large and the female was a small one, perhaps breeding for the first time. As if this were not enough, we were treated to another female leopard appearing later on in the night as well, this time a  much larger one than the first.

Overall it seems the Hyaena population may be picking up, possibly from migration from over the river in Botswana where the density is very high indeed. When this area was all farmland on the South African side, Spotted Hyaenas were visciously persectued as stock thieves, but they are making a slow but steady comeback.

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Category: Wild Dogs | Date: Aug 05 2008 | By: limpopocarnivores

We have seen them at last! I am extremely pleased to report that there are seven new members of our Wild Dog pack. They are doing extremely well to raise so many with only three adults and yearling. Wild Dogs can be very resiliant and bounce back quite quickly in suitable areas. If most of these survive and there is another successful litter next year, this pack will have pulled back from the brink of extinction and re-established themselves as a force to be reckoned with here in the Limpopo Valley. Now that they are old enough to have left their first den site, we are hopeful that most, if not all, of these puppies will make it. This pack has had a rough ride of late, but things are definitely looking brighter. Watch this space for photos!

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