African wild dog pups play tug of war. (Credit: Jenny Brennan)
(Okavango Delta, Botswana)
By Alexandra George
Photos: Jenny Brennan, Steve Segall, Alexandra George
If Aretha Franklin had ever watched a pack of African wild dogs greet each other at dawn, tails wagging, bodies weaving, voices rising in soft chirps, she would have understood her song’s lyrics instantly. No predator embodies community quite like this. And yet, for generations, painted dogs were denied the very thing they needed most: respect.
Spend even a short time with a wild dog pack and the myths dissolve. These are not ruthless killers or chaotic hunters. They are family.
The exuberance of the pack: play, bonding, survival.
(Credit: Jenny Brennan)
(Moremi Game Reserve, Okavango Delta, Botswana)
A wild dog pack gathers, alert and connected. Survival here is a collective effort.
(Credit: Steve Segall)
(South Luangwa National Park, Zambia)
African wild dogs are the most cooperative carnivores in Africa. They raise pups collectively, care for injured pack members and make decisions as a group. No one eats until everyone eats. Survival here is shared, not won at another’s expense, a social intelligence more often associated with elephants or primates than with predators.
Here are a few visuals that reveal who they truly are: affectionate, intelligent, endlessly social.
Future hunters in training.
(Credit: Jenny Brennan)
(Moremi Game Reserve, Okavango Delta, Botswana)
Communication across generations, the fragile thread that keeps packs intact.
(Credit: Jenny Brennan)
(Moremi Game Reserve, Okavango Delta, Botswana)
A rare white-coated African wild dog, a natural genetic variation within a species known for its individuality. (Credit: Steve Segall)
(South Luangwa National Park, Zambia)
A pack of wild dogs move through the wooded savanna of South Luangwa at sunset.
(Credit: Steve Segall)
(South Luangwa National Park, Zambia)
A time when respect was absent
And yet, for much of the 20th century, this intelligence went unrecognized. Wild dogs were misnamed, misunderstood and persecuted across southern Africa. Branded as vermin, entire packs were shot, poisoned, and eradicated in the name of livestock protection and misguided policy. A lack of respect nearly erased one of Africa’s most extraordinary species. Today, fewer than 6,600 remain in the wild.
As I was writing this blog, I was also reading an early wildlife-collecting memoir, and one passage stopped me cold. The author recounts a British officer in what was then Rhodesia offering him a wild dog for Gerald Durrell’s zoo in Jersey. He used the dog as bait. In another destructive moment, the officer describes blocking the entrances to a den and pumping carbon monoxide inside, killing the mother and her pups. The author himself was horrified, and so was I. It is a chilling reminder of how little respect wild dogs were once afforded, and how profoundly our understanding of wildlife, and our responsibility toward it, has changed.
Where respect is being rebuilt
Fortunately, that history is no longer the whole story.
In Botswana’s Okavango Delta and beyond, dedicated conservationists are helping painted dogs reclaim their place on the landscape. The Botswana Predator Conservation Trust (BPCT) has been studying and protecting wild dogs for nearly three decades. Their work is patient, persistent and deeply effective – monitoring packs across vast concessions, responding to injuries and snaring incidents, working with communities and collaborating closely with anti-poaching teams.
Krakatoa, the alpha female of one of BPCT Wild Dog Project packs.
(Credit: Alexandra George)
(Moremi Game Reserve, Okavango Delta, Botswana)
At the den: where care begins
I saw this work up close during two mornings spent at a monitored wild dog den in the Okavango in June 2023.
Anxious and alert, a mother waits at the den as 15 newborn pups depend on the hunters’ return. (Credit: Alexandra George)
(Moremi Game Reserve, Okavango Delta, Botswana)
That afternoon the dogs rested and even at rest, the pack is never fully at ease. While most dogs lie down in the afternoon shade, one remains on lookout, listening, watching, ready… It is a reminder that survival here depends not on strength alone, but on shared responsibility.
A BPCT-collared member of Krakatoa’s pack rests as another stands guard. Cooperation and trust sustain the group. (Credit: Alexandra George)
(Moremi Game Reserve, Okavango Delta)
Thanks to the Botswana Predator Conservation Trust’s Wild Dog Project, packs like Krakatoa’s still have a chance. BPCT monitors den sites, protects critical habitat, tracks threats and studies pack behaviour so that more pups survive their first vulnerable months of life. Their work is the reason painted dogs continue to hold on in the Okavango.
Changing the odds for painted dogs
Care that carries the future forward.
(Credit: Steve Segall)
(South Luangwa National Park, Zambia)
Where wild dogs still have space, protection, and careful monitoring — thanks to organizations like BPCT — they continue to survive, disperse, and form new packs.
Conservation doesn’t remove danger, but it changes the odds. It turns fragility into resilience, and loss into possibility.
Where hope takes root
Standing at the den, watching the pack interact and the pups stir below ground, it was impossible not to feel hope — not a naïve hope that denies risk, but a grounded one born of knowledge, protection, and respect. This is what conservation makes possible: not guarantees, but futures.
For the pack: supporting African wild dogs
This is why I’m launching a small GoFundMe this holiday season in support of wild dog conservation. It’s a modest gesture, rooted in firsthand experience and trust in the people doing this work on the ground. Because respect is not just something we feel, it’s something we act on.
And when we choose respect, we help ensure that the joyful dawn greetings of Africa’s painted dogs will continue to echo across the wild places they still call home.