Collaring the dogs...

I finally got my hands on a Painted Dog today as it lay snoozing on the ground. Not a natural sleep I should add but a chemically induced one as we had darted it to allow us to take biological samples and fit the dog with a radio collar. Thanks to Jealous, PDC's expert dog tracker, we were able to find the pack of four dogs that we had to fit collars to.

Jealous, PDC's expert tracker & comedian

With only approximately 80-100 painted dogs left in the 14,000 square kilometres of Hwange National Park, Painted Dog Conservation is working hard to help the dogs that live around the fringes of the park escape the man-made dangers that they are so prone to. The two big killers of the dogs is snaring (see previous blog 'Art is what you make of it...') and road traffic accidents. The park is surrounded by long straight tarmac roads that people zoom along at 60mph and above and the dogs have little to no road sense at all. At night it's doubly worse as the dogs camouflage is so good that you can be on them before you know it. Warning signs only work for those that heed them and it seems that with long distances to travel, people are always in a rush.

The dogs are darted from a vehicle using a combination of drugs we use very commonly in the UK for domestic dogs and cats. They obviously feel the needle but react very little. Within 5 minutes they are snoozing peacefully and we can approach and scare off the other dogs.

'Surf' a 2 year old dog with dart in his bum

Collaring the dogs helps in a number of ways. Firstly the radio collars are reinforced with metal plates and studs to stop snares biting into the dogs necks to give them a chance to pull themselves free. This isn't perfect as snares can fasten on legs, the body and either side of the collar, but some have managed to get themselves free as damage to the collars contest.

Cathy taking a blood sample from the jugular

Secondly the collars now fitted have reflective orange covers that shine out in headlights of cars. It doesn't interfere with their ability to hunt but may alert a driver in time to brake or avoid the dogs on the road.

Jealous fits the collar

Finally the collars allow the packs to be found. Normally only one or two dogs per pack would be collared in a research situation but with dogs being killed in snares and on the roads almost on a weekly basis the remaining dogs need to be found to see if they are okay. Injured or isolated dogs can be picked up and taken to the rehabilitation centre where they can be patched up and carefully introduced into a new pack before being released to hopefully cope with this dangerous lifestyle. Without these careful interventions it was very likely this endangered beautiful carnivore would have disappeared from this precarious foothold.