Dog Day Afternoons.

[Lisbeth]

What has that to do with filthy tails?

[Dewi]

After a brief pause to confirm the direction.



And a quick check as to where the rest of the pack was.



They continued on through the bush.



The Alpha female was with the pack.



J and I were grinning from ear to ear at this point as we travelled alongside them.





We even kept a look out for possible prey animals ahead and would have pointed them out to the dogs had we seen any.







This was such a privelige to witness. The dogs trotted along at that ground eating pace that appears to be deceptively slow, but allows them to cover large distances.

[Dewi]

What has that to do with filthy tails?

The tails are wet with saliva, not filthy Lis. (They are also covered in those little spiked seed pods that stick to anything).

[Lisbeth]

Aha, that explains it! In fact I had noticed those little round thingies were also on other parts of the dogs

[Bushveld Jock]

What a wonderful sighting of dogs playing and getting ready for the hunt. Very

[Richprins]

Hell, Davidi...this is very good to put it mildly..

For once I am in your hands regarding virgin territory in this narration and it is experience-widening for many, I am sure!

I bow to the master!

[nan]

It seems these little dogs risk their... legs in this crowd

indeed very interesting

beautiful pictures

[Dewi]

Thanks for your comments Lis, Bushveld Jock, RP & Nan.

Not too sure about the virgin territory bit RP. We were verging on the ridiculous most of the time.

[Richprins]

I feel ya!

[Dewi]

At the risk of making this TT boring, here is another set of pics of the wild dogs trotting through the bush. Still, I did warn you all with the title of this missive.























After shadowing the dogs for a few klicks, it was at this point that they melted into thick bush and were lost to view. You would think that we would have been elated at this point, having witnessed behaviour that we both thought we would never see away from out tv screens. But no. We were miserable. Having allowed us to witness part of their lives, we now wanted more. We motored back to the den, but the pups had gone for a nap and the pup sitters were laid up out of sight.

We moseyed on back to camp and set the tents up. Whilst sitting in my chair reviewing photos, Jan went for a wander to look at the adjacent campsite. I was still "chimping" through my pics when he returned.

"Dewi. Turn around very slowly." He whispered.

I turned my head around to find an ellie sniffing the items on our camp table directly behind me! How I'd not heard him coming up, I'll never know, but it gave me a huge eye-opener as to how one should always be aware when out in the wilds.

The ellie took a last sniff of our food box and wandered down to the river for a drink.

We settled in for the evening and made things ready for leaving the following morning. We had a long drive ahead of us. Mbabane to Kasane in a day. We had heard some bad things about the road ahead from some, but good things from others.....