Dogs – Lessons from a Stone

The African Wild Dog

Originally Written for Medium

The Piercing Gaze of An African Wild Dog
burrard-lucas.com

Among the many species of creatures that are in jeopardy of fading into extinction, there isn’t much information out there on the plight of the African Wild Dog (AWD). These incredible canids once roamed freely throughout much of Sub-saharan Africa but are now predominantly confined to small parts of Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Tanzania, Mozambique, and South Africa. But the countries where they are still found comprise a much larger area than the patchwork of comparatively small national parks and game reserves held within them. In looking at a map of protected AWD habitat relative to the geographic area in which they are found today, one can quickly see the small and disconnected patchwork of sanctuaries, wildlife parks and reserves where the species can go about its business without the perpetual threat of encountering humans and the associated dangers that have already brought the species to its knees. It’s like connecting the dots to form a blotchy and incomplete geographic space where they are safe, with a gauntlet of hundreds of miles of unprotected and hazardous African bush between protected areas. That would be fine and is what these incredible canids are built for if it didn’t mean that they’ll eventually have some sort of encounter with man or the many hazards that are associated with mankind. Worse yet, they have no way of knowing where these protected areas lie, so these places where they can seek sanctuary are largely ineffectual. If they did much good, the species wouldn’t continue to decline at such an alarming rate.

I used Copilot to provide a summary showing the historical versus current range of the AWD and provide an explanation of these maps along with relatively up-to-date information as to their continued decline over the past 100 years.

Click on any image or screenshot to view it in its entirety.

Current Versus Historical Range
animalia-life.club

For African Wild Dogs that are fortunate enough to have been born into or ultimately find themselves living within sanctuary boundaries and tending to new generations, there is the still the neverending risk that they’ll eventually venture outside of these habitats of relative safety. When this occurs, more often than not they are killed before landing safely in another. Unfortunately, and not unlike any animal, they can’t read signs or comprehend borders. Worse yet, the areas between these “safe zones” comprise the bulk of where most AWD’s spend their lives. It is, for all African species, the majority of their overall living space. The risks include but are not nearly limited to being hit while crossing roads, dying at the hands of poachers, or being shot for straying too close to a native farmer’s goats or cattle. Put differently, these are far-ranging apex predators and whether they remain within a given national park or any other form of sanctuary set aside for the protection of African wildlife and their habitat, it is simply a roll of the dice. Most AWD’s spend their entire lives traveling and maintaining pack territories well outside the boundaries of the relatively small areas which provide the very habitat that have been set aside for their survival. The larger the protected area, the greater the likelihood that they’ll remain.

It is when you look at Africa as a whole that you see just how small these protected areas are relative to its overall landmass. In our conquest to populate the African continent, we made an attempt at creating a few wonderful spaces and they do fall into some of the best habitats for many African species, but for Africa’s wildlife and their predilection for widespread travel and vast migrations, they are far too small.

When I began following the plight of the African Wild Dog four or five years ago, the estimated population remaining at that time was a staggeringly low 17,000. As a lover of dogs and their wild counterparts, I had no idea that the AWD was already so close to extinction, and I was overwhelmed with a deep sense of both sadness and anger. The reason for the sadness is obvious, but the anger was more complicated. How could we, as the supposed caretakers of the planet, have allowed such a massive decline in a species which looks very much like its close cousin, our beloved domestic dog?! If the population data as reflected above provides us with a reasonably accurate estimate, then there are now just 6,000 AWD’s remaining in the wild, or roughly a third of the population which existed just a half-decade ago. It doesn’t take a genius to see that it has become the “Eleventh Hour” and saving them now would require a complete workover to catapult them into the forefront of public consciousness in the same way that mankind came together to save itself when faced with the COVID pandemic. This is the sense of urgency that I spent a year on Quora trying my damndest to advocate for threatened and bighly endangered species only to find that the overwhelming majority of people who are supposedly committed to this very thing are still lost in talking about wildlife conservation without so much as lifting a finger to get involved in a way that their time and purported compassion results in “moving the ball down the field”. While they’re discussing the issue of the demise of keystone species all over the world, the very creatures they’re hoping to save are, each day, moving inexorably closer to oblivion. In other words, many “Red Listed” species will reach the point of extinction while these “talking heads” are still talking about it.

As was the case with the American bison, historians today have no concrete number as to the pre-white settlement population of buffalo roaming all over what would become the United States, but best guess estimates range from between 40 and 60 million animals. For the AWD, the number a century ago is estimated to have been in the “hundreds of thousands” roaming all over Africa. That there are estimated to be just 6,000 remaining today is beyond heartbreaking. It means that we, as the most powerful species on earth, haven’t learned a damned thing. Please let that resonate for a moment before continuing to read any further.

The primary reason as to why so many species of both flora and fauna are in serious trouble the world over is related to loss of habitat due to human encroachment. In Africa, humans and their activities such as burning, logging, farming, and mining have quickly spread throughout this magnificent continent once teeming with hundreds of animal species, large and small, roaming freely over hundreds of millions of acres of wilderness. Many African creatures are larger than creatures found anywhere else on earth and these large animals require continent-sized areas in which to thrive. More and more creatures cease to exist in and around regions of development and the entire African continent has become fragmented and discontinuous in the span of just two-hundred years. The entire landscape changed, beginning with European colonialism and followed by the Industrial Period when railroads connected towns and towns became cities, while nations became nations, and boundaries began to exist everywhere in a place that had never known boundaries.

Among other things, loss of habitat coupled with poaching, meat hunting, and legalized trophy hunting of many of the large ungulate species (herbivores), results in a major loss in food resources while apex predators like the African Wild Dog, lion, leopard, cheetah, and hyena quickly decimate what’s left of the remaining herds and other prey species that are caught in their own struggle for ecological survival. Whether predator or prey, they share the same fate from accidental human interaction through legalized hunting, poaching (which continues to run rampant even today when measures are in place to help curb the animal parts and trophies trade). The anecdotal analogy of the “thumb in the dyke” in an ill-fated attempt to keep billions of gallons of water from slashing its way downstream and taking with it everything in its path, seems appropriate. There aren’t nearly enough resources to fight the poaching problem head-on. Worldwide bans on the “animal parts” trade have helped, but from what I know of the issue, it has been like placing a bandaid on an arterial bleed, or fixing a single dent on a car ravaged by hail.

We are living in a time when most people are aware that Mother Earth is gravely displeased with our goings-on and the collateral damage left in our wake on our way to drastically overpopulate the planet to a point that defies our own logic and reasoning. It would seem that Ted Kyzinsky’s manifesto on “Industrial Society and its Future” wasn’t far off the mark. I read his manifesto when it was first published by the New York Times in 1996, while he was still hard-at-it making bombs to be unleashed on those he viewed as the creators of technology and unimaginable future technologies which were having or would ultimately have a drastic impact on the relatively controlled world he had known. In a nutshell, his manifesto blames humanity for taking technology too far and well past the point of diminishing returns, to a level where it controls us and no longer does the converse exist. It is worth reading and is even more relevant today than it was then. I obviously don’t condone his means for getting his point across, but as a prognosticator of the future of mankind, he was spot-on. There was a part of him that was truly sociopathic, but it shows that even a madman with a high IQ may have seen the world more clearly than many of us. He knew what was coming, and what the world has been up to since his demise proves it.

I fail to understand how global society can continue on its social media-driven path while allowing for the wholesale extinction of some of the world’s most beautiful, intelligent, and fascinating animals. I am not a member of any of the social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram (“Instant Gratification”). You will never hear me “tweet” about anything. There’s simply too much at stake to get lost in such nonsense. It would be an altogether different matter if social media didn’t function as a perpetual diversion from things of greater importance and these same platforms were put to better use in disseminating important information such as that which could be used to save our dying planet.

I do not think humankind has proven itself to be responsible enough to be the world’s top apex predator while also charged with being the planet’s caretaker. There’s a fundamental conflict of interest associated with such a responsibility. I suppose that many of you reading this will find that to be a harsh blanket statement, but someone needs to be an oracle for creatures who, while incredibly intelligent, simply don’t speak our language (though some of their languages have proven to be far more intricate, elegant, and complex than our own). I just don’t meet enough people who would risk the relative ease of their lives to do whatever it takes to save some of these creatures, including the African Wild Dog. If we refuse to do what it takes to save the AWD from almost certain demise, what does that say about our relationship with the most historically significant and beloved creature we’ve so carefully cultivated over a thousand centuries – the domestic dog?! Will we eventually turn our backs to “man’s best friend”, as well?!

There are, of course, certain wildlife conservation groups that have been charged with the monstrously huge task of saving these animals from the rest of us, but these groups are vastly understaffed and underfunded and are just not militant enough to address the very significant issue of poaching. I don’t care if a poacher is some person from a native tribe trying to make ends meet. Whatever his reasons, his actions border on evil. Get some funding out there so he can be given a job protecting these species in lieu of annihilating them.

There are now close to eight billion people populating the globe and fewer than 6,000 African Wild Dogs (650 breeding pairs). This statement should serve as a “shock and awe tactic” to compel people to do something as opposed to just sitting around and talking about it. But my plea will likely die along with the creatures it is intended to protect. When a population of any animal gets too small to be viable (no longer sustainable because there aren’t enough individuals remaining to formulate a healthy gene pool), there is no going back. When the number of animals for a given species has reached this point, there is little that can be done, particularly if that species has proven itself unfit for captive breeding. Some animals are simply too wild and require continent-sized areas in which to thrive. Perhaps they don’t breed in captivity as a way of saying, “We are simply too good to submit to your machinations and would rather die than live out our once free-ranging lives in captivity!”.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. If you feel as guilty as I do for being a human being and, however unwittingly, taking part in the destruction of our planet, perhaps you’ll do some research of your own and find a wildlife and wild places organization you feel good about supporting. It may just be the most important thing you’ve ever done.

Here is a list of places to start. To expand it, just click.

African Wild Dog Conservation Organizations

Photos.willbe.com (Burrard-Lucas Photography)

Rattlesnake!

Originally Written for Medium – Edited and Expanded for this Post

A Five-and-a-Half-Foot Western Diamondback at the Bottom of Our Front Porch Steps

I’ve lived in Western Diamondback country for much of my life, but not until a move to rural Central Texas in 2014 was it that I saw them regularly. In almost thirty years of mountain biking, trail running, hunting, and fishing in my adopted home state of Colorado, I had seen fewer than a dozen and had just three close encounters. Since then, I’ve had many more over a much shorter period and have been compelled to learn more about these reptiles than I ever wanted to know.

After eons of evolution and a less than fifty years of scientific study, much of their behavior remains a mystery to us. I’ve read that certain environmentally-driven changes in reptiles don’t take thousands of years to occur, but significant change can come in as little as a few generations. No one knows all the reasons why, but I’ve witnessed marked evolutionary changes that have occurred over a period of just twelve years. Take rattling and the purported reasons for it as an example. As children, many of us are taught that rattlesnakes rattle primarily to keep close encounters from happening. That before we even spot the source of a rattle, it is a way for rattlesnakes to communicate their presence to virtually anything or anyone, whether the animal (including humans) is approaching with purpose or the would-be encounter is a function of happenstance. It is designed to help prevent those other creatures from continuing on a path which will force a confrontation. It is a wholly defensive mechanism and, believe me. when you hear your first adult-sized rattlesnake rattle, it is a sound you will never forget and will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand at full attention. As humans, this is a response that is well written into our genetic code. The sound will make a person freeze in their tracks to have a tentative look around in an attempt to see the source of this primordial sound. In my fifty-plus encounters right here on our rural Central Texas property, I’ve heard that telltale rattle on just a few occasions before coming dangerously close to bumping into one. I’ve talked to longtime residents of this part of Texas, including a number of multigenerational ranchers, and other outdoorsman and there have been some theories derived surrounding this radical departure in behavior.

The most widely held belief is because just ten years ago, in the extremely rural areas surrounding the town of Lockhart (population: just over 14,000) there was an entire landscape which made for absolutely perfect habitat for growing snakes of all kinds which are indigenous to Central Texas. Between the large expanses of unmaintained ranch lands which have, over the course of numerous decades, gone from being open prairie interspersed with high-quality native grasslands and hayfields, with just islands of brushy species of trees to a landscape overrun with high-density walls of brush consisting of many species of thorny trees and thick stands of red oak, juniper, and mesquite. The area hasn’t had a significant fire (nature’s gardener) in decades to bring the unmitigated brushy growth back under control, restoring the prairie to its true form. This is partially due to the fact that wildfires have had the tendency to be squelched by ranch owners and area fire departments for over a hundred years. This kind of ecological transformation hasn’t happened in our area alone, but has become a serious problem throughout most states. Additionally, and in more recent history, many people have been fleeing the high cost of living in Austin, roughly an hour’s drive to the north, and relocating to Lockhart (the closest small town to where we live) and the surrounding areas. Large tracts of land here in Caldwell county could be had for a tenth the price and land speculators and developers were busy buying-up land for near-term subdivision and longer-term investment. Soon, county planners were inundated with proposed communities and homes began springing up across the predominantly rural landscape. Wildlife was pressured into relocating to areas not yet touched by heavy equipment and land clearing machinery. Also happening during this same period was the steady influx and proliferation of feral hogs, which will eat just about anything, including choice morsels of rattlesnake. The third environmental change to affect the region was the tremendous rise in the Mexican eagle (caracara) population flying overhead. Their historic northernmost range had, up to just ten or fifteen years ago, been two counties to the south. Rattlesnakes weren’t the only snake species impacted by all of these changes and copperhead densities were also on the rise along with a dozen species of nonvenomous snakes. This part of Texas happens also to be the westernmost boundary of the copperhead, which is surprisingly abundant. And, of course, the nearby San Marcos River just so happens to be the westernmost boundary for the cottonmouth, aka, water moccasin. If you’re a lover of North American venomous snakes and nonvenomous snakes of all manner, this is a great part of the country to find them in unusually high densities.

When combined, these environmental changes to historical rattlesnake habitat have seemingly created a shift in the rattling instincts where, with so much newfound pressure, the rattlesnakes began a decline in the times they chose to rattle because, when doing so, they were giving away their positions which could mean being shot on sight, getting gobbled up by hogs, or attract attention from above and find themselves on today’s menu for several caracaras flying overhead. Like all birds of prey, red-tailed hawks have incredible eyesight and will also dive-bomb an unwitting rattlesnake . This change in rattlesnake behavior, rattling far less often, took less than twenty years to genetically take hold. Again, this is the primary theory related to the change held by people who have lived in this area for several generations.

In our time here, we have had as many as four dogs at a given time and two have felt the sting of an envenomation to the face. One bite to our young (less than a year old at the time) black lab-mix, Josie, proved to be non-life-threatening, though we still had to endure not only the fear of losing a beloved friend, but veterinary treatment for rattlesnake envenomation is extremely expensive. Another involved our prized Australian kelpie dog, named Kelpy by my then six year old daughter, who took the worst hit possible and spent three or four touch-and-go days in professional care. That dog meant as much to my wife and I as many people’s children do to them. It was an extremely scary and anxiety-filled experience, one that I would not wish upon anyone.

My first order of business during our numerous moves has traditionally been to build a nice dog kennel. When we moved here, we had two medium sized dogs so the kennel was a roomy 24′ x 32′. Later, when our two dogs had grown older, we took in two larger dogs and I expanded the kennel to a whopping 48′ x 82′. We referred to it as the “Taj Majal”. But long before the new dogs, it would become abundantly clear that I had to do something to keep my dogs and wife as safe as possible. The learning experience in terms of our dogs came the hard way when Kelpy took a big hit on a cold and blustery Christmas night (when virtually any other snake would have been tucked inside of its den) inside the relatively “safe” confines of the kennel. I was in our loft playing guitar with her by my side when Sage, our wonderful chow-mix called out with her five-alarm bark and Kelpy flew down the stairs and out the dog door, crying out with a single yelp before flying back in. Sage was still out there barking but, wisely, not getting too close. After quickly examining Kelpy, I immediately saw the telltale fang marks and blood beginning to trickle just below her left eye, missing the eye orbit itself by less than half an inch. I grabbed my handgun and, after having Sage revealed the location for me, I shuttled her indoors for my wife to examine while I went right back out and unloaded an entire clip from my 9 mm into the snake. My sense of defending my family had taken over, so it was certainly a case of overkill. It was a thick-bodied, five-and-a- half-foot female searching for her denning site which at that time (before I had sealed-up access to the crawlspace and the latticework under the front porch), the area beneath the porch provided access to the crawlspace which had served as a major denning site (unbeknownst to us) before we ever bought the place. The house, barn, and four acre property sat idle and surrounded by hundreds of acres of undeveloped ranchland, between completion of the home in early 2013 and when we moved in during February of 2014. I left the snake there as we feverishly made our way into town to meet our vet at her facility. Bless her heart for putting herself on call for the most sacred of holidays. I carried Kelpy in and stayed with her for as long as our vet would allow and came back first thing the following morning. I arrived at 6:30 AM and she opened the door for me. By then, Kelpy was in sorry shape with her head and neck swollen to virtually twice their normal size. She had been treated with three vials of anti-venin and horse plasma (horses have evolved to have a substantial resistance to rattlesnake venom, but they are not nearly immune). Though I would have had no way of knowing that a rattlesnake, or a snake of any kind would be roaming around on a chill Christmas night with a cold rain mixed in, I felt responsible for the incident, and the sight of seeing my cherished dog in such utter distress made me sick to my stomach. I couldn’t get the thought that I was somehow responsible out of my head. In any other place I’d lived up to that point, a well-built kennel was all that was necessary to keep my dogs out of harm’s way. She would spend three more days in the hospital recovering. Immediately after the ordeal, I went down to the local farm and ranch supply house and purchased a few rolls of 24″ x 1/4″ mesh to surround Kelpy and Sage’s kennel and used the material to secure the open latticework under the front porch. Later, when we adopted Josie and Jett, our sibling male and female pair of black lab-mixes and I built the large kennel addition, I wrapped the same bottom two-feet with 1/4″ mesh. Since then, we’ve had one incident where a young (less than two-feet) but still dangerous copperhead found its way through a slit in the mesh that I must have unknowingly hit with the edge of our large field field mower which is designed to be pulled behind an ATV or small tractor. I couldn’t believe it! The young snake must have wandered along the kennel fencing until it happened upon a slight tear. The chances…geez! Josie, who is now “snake-wise”, came across it one evening last summer and barked her own “five alarm” bark and literally came in to get me to see what the fuss was about. I took care of the snake and that’s the only time in the ten years since I started using the mesh when a snake slipped its way through our defenses.

It has taken me twelve years of steadfast work to carve our property out from the surrounding wild and overgrown lands which have proven to be absolutely perfect Western Diamondback habitat with a vastly inordinate snake density rarely encountered elsewhere. Where there was nothing but brush and enveloping weeds with little quality native grass, there is now restored Central Texas prairie which gets mowed regularly to keep the snakes from once again getting a toehold and overrunning the place just as they had when we bought the place, named Lonesome Dove by the builder. There is now a well-worn trail that follows the boundaries of our property on all four sides and this trail gets used many times a day to walk the dogs and allow them to mark their territory. I keep the trail mowed such that there’s at least ten feet on either side where the grass is kept short, along with keeping the remaining parts of our property mowed regularly. Snakes don’t like crossing open ground, so the trail helps serve as a barrier to keep more snakes from finding the property’s inner-sanctum. I’ll do whatever is necessary to protect my family and have spent far more time on this one very imminent threat than I care to remember. I’ve spent time in grizzly country and would choose potential run-ins with them to being forever on guard searching for a threat that is virtually impossible to see. That is, before it’s too late!

As for me, it seems that I am out and about working on our property all too often and exposure to a potential bite is much higher than I would prefer, but when I’m using things like our push mower to mow under the limbs of the trees, or the brush cutter, chainsaw, ATV and utility trailer, I can’t help but from looking out for my personal safety and, where applicable, I put on a very good pair of snake boots or below the knee gaiters and thick leather hiking boots. I also take this precaution when I take the dogs for a hike on the trails of the nearby state park where I’ve had several encounters. Nonetheless, I’ve still had more close encounters that I can remember and remain alert at all times. These are not the immersive, relaxing hikes and trail runs I had in Colorado where the chances of an encounter with a creature of the venomous kind were far more remote, particularly during the winter months. These animals are incredibly well camouflaged and difficult to differentiate from the surrounding fallen leaves, rocks, and forest floor, but I’ve engaged in the serious game of finding them before I walk right over one (which I’ve done) for many years now. Paradoxically, it is their evolutionarily perfect patterns that my eyes have been trained to pickup on. The only way I can explain it is to say that my eyes must now find their markings to be “too perfect”. During the times of year when they’re most prevalent, I’ve learned to take a proactive approach and regularly go out “snake hunting” when it gets just warm enough in the morning for them to find a hidden place in the sun to warm themselves after the cool of the night. Better to find them before they unwittingly find us.

About six months ago, I had my closest call to date. I was out in the barn’s carport working on the ATV. There were several maintenance issues that I was performing at the same time and I had the machine pretty well stripped down, creating a couple of piles of fairing and parts. I was having particular trouble removing the CVT belt (the drive belt) without a couple of tools designed expressly for the task, using only my hands and fingers to turn the assembly and have the belt slide off. It just so happened that I’d enlisted ten minutes of help from our A/C tech who was finishing up with the annual spring checkup on our system. He was kind enough to offer his “second set of hands” and we pulled the belt in no time. Just as we were patting ourselves on the back for making short order of the job, the guy spoke softly while informing me of the very particular predicament I was in. I had donned a pair of cushioned knee pads to do the work and directly under my left knee I had a small, coiled rattlesnake pinned between my knee and the ground. He must have crept into the area where we were working while I had gone from standing to kneeling. It was the knee pad that not only provided enough cushion that I never felt the snake attempting to move beneath me but also kept me bite free. I stood up slowly and took two quick steps back. The snake didn’t appear to be all that “rattled” and that must have meant that he wasn’t in much discomfort. The floor of the carport consists of a layer of fine cedar chips which are pretty soft to walk on and work from. His tail had been free but he never rattled in the ten, or so, minutes he must have been pinned. Our A/C tech had a look of complete disbelief that such an uber-close encounter could have happened as I reached for the short sledgehammer I happened to have nearby and put a humane end to the snake. Not a second later, I was consumed with guilt over what I had just done. While having ample opportunity to bite, he chose to remain still as his best defense. Over the years and due to our rare set of circumstances with the sheer density of snakes with whom we have shared our property, I’d had no choice but to kill them on-sight lest they eventually have a future run-in with a member of our little family (perhaps after they’d grown much larger and were all the more dangerous). I simply couldn’t take that risk. Plus, the naturalist in me knew that the population was way out of control and needed some serious tough love. It would have been highly dangerous and impractical to have tried to capture and relocate each of them someplace nearby (fifty-plus times and counting). I’d have only been increasing the snake density on some neighboring ranch owner’s property.

Finally, after twelve years of living here in a place we love just as it were a living, breathing member of our family, we are enjoying our time in a way we were never able to before. All I can figure is that, at least on our property, rattlesnake densities are much closer to what would be considered normal. In those twelve years, a number of other homes have sprung up nearby and the building activity would have pressured a lot of the rattlesnakes in close proximity to us to move on. There’s still plenty of undeveloped wildlife habitat near us, so I don’t think it’s caused the rattlesnakes and copperheads much difficulty. But in a year like 2016, the time of Kelpy’s envenomatiom, when I killed as many as four or five per month for several months, I was never afforded the opportunity to simply relax while being out on the property. I was responsible for the health and safety of my family, a job that I took very seriously, and I was always out of balance with my feelings about having chosen this place as our next home. I had always lived in rural country and knew there would be a fair share of “creepy -crawlies” here, but never in my wildest nightmares did I think this kind of venomous snake density was even possible.

Kelpy Out Exploring and Being Her Awesome Self!

My Kelpie, Kelpy

IMG_20190116_091335316 — Kelpy *(RIP 2021),* Roughly Two Months After Being Bitten on Our Central Texas Property by a 5 1/2-foot Western Diamondback Rattlesnake

Post Edited February 16, 2026

In this recently taken photograph (January, 2016) of my Australian Kelpie dog, Kelpy, there is a discernable scar running almost five inches from a point just below the left eye down to just underneath her left lower jawline. This scar of hers, something I can’t help myself from seeing everyday, is a constant reminder of her life and death struggle from a single, full-on rattlesnake envenomation and of the innate toughness of our beloved canines relative to us, mere human beings, as their compassionate caregivers and forever faithful companions. She took the hit delivered by a five-and-a-half-foot Western diamondback on Christmas night, 2016. I recall the event as if it were yesterday. I was in our upstairs loft quietly playing acoustic guitar with Kelpy lying at my feet. It had been a chilly, rain-filled Christmas day here in Central Texas. I’d spent the entire day at home alone with the company of our two dogs. My wife, Genie, had been visiting her relatives at the family farm in Cibolo, roughly an hour’s drive from our place. We have a beautiful house and a couple of outbuildings on some property seven miles west of the small town of Lockhart. Genie had gotten home earlier that evening and we enjoyed a late Christmas dinner. Afterward, she’d gone into our main living area to watch some TV while I retired to our upstairs loft to play guitar. The rain had let up perhaps fifteen minutes before the big event and I remember checking my phone for the temperature outside, which was 58 degrees and the time was 8:30 PM. A moment later I heard Sage, our wonderful Chow-mix, barking outside in the kennel which is connected to the back room of our house by way of dog-door. Sage is an extremely proficient watch dog and has a vocabulary of various growls, woofs, and barks ranging from a mild, low growl to a full-on, high pitched, three alarm bark! She continued on for perhaps five seconds before Kelpy rose from the bed, sailed down the steep wooden staircase…just about leaving sparks in her wake. At a full run I could hear her fly through the dog door as if it had all been done in one grand motion. It wasn’t five seconds later that I heard a shrill and troubled yelp and Kelpy reappeared in the house, frantic. She’s a rough and tumble alpha female if there ever was one, chock full of outdoor life experience at her then age of ten years. I’d never heard her in her life yelp in pain, nary even a slight whimper. I looked her over closely as two streams of blood had begun to pool just below her left eye. Like tears of blood, the crimson colored fluid began to trickle down the left side of her face and, on closer inspection, I could see two tell-tale puncture wounds a good inch and a half apart. Sage was still out in the kennel barking furiously when I ran out into the night after quickly flipping on the back porch light. Standing her ground just eight feet to my right, Sage was trying hard to point out the threat. But it was dark and the porch light left a surreal presence in the muffled fog as I looked and I listened for what was by now just a faint rattling in the leaves. It was cold and I’m certain the snake was by now tired and feeling every bit of the chill. Naturally, I was being cautious as all get-out but there had been no time to don my snake boots so I was tip-toeing around in an old pair of Merrell clogs and shorts. Aha! I spotted the snake, a big one for this locale and opened-up on it with my 9mm Ruger. After shooting the snake full of holes and removing its head with a five-foot garden hoe we keep on hand for precisely such duty, I finally had the chance to check Sage over. I turned again to make absolutely certain the snake wasn’t going anywhere without its head as I brought Sage inside to both better inspect her in the light and settle her. She was frothing at the mouth, lathered from the effects of adrenaline and salivary glands gone postal, but I found nothing…not even a scratch. In all that excitement she’d managed to keep both her head and her distance. It dawned on me that by the time Kelpy showed up the snake would have been completely riled. I feared that this was far more dire than a partial envenomation or dry bite warning snakes sometimes give.

By now, we, all the four of us, were inside with the headless snake left outside to be cleaned up later. Genie was on the phone with our vet who lives several towns distant and turned out to be unavailable. It was Christmas night, after all. After listening to his voicemail message we decided to call our secondary vet, a larger operation just eight miles away and in town. Amazingly, a live person picked up the phone and said they had one particular vet who’d been placed on on-call status for the holiday weekend. The answering service gave us the name and cell number of the vet and Genie immediately dialed her up. We were in luck and, while knowingly interrupting her own Christmas dinner, we were consumed by feelings of good fortune. A vet on Christmas night! Someone was smiling down upon us from on high. The vet, new to the clinic but a Baylor Veterinary School grad, met us thirty minutes later at the main clinic in Lockhart. Keeping Kelpy calm and as motionless as possible was easy…she knew full well where we were going and that papa was now in charge. Having spent ten years with this wonderful dog, she and I had crafted a way to communicate through body language, gentle and firm commands and, from early on, the uncanny ability to know what the other was thinking and going to do before doing it. Genie drove while I sat in the back seat of our SUV smoothing-over Kelpy’s coat and using gentle words in a soothing tone. Keeping her calm would help save her life.

We arrived just a few moments after our dedicated vet, each of us knowing it was going to be a long night. Amazingly, (because of the cold weather) there were two other dogs being treated for snake bite who’d arrived just an hour before we rolled-in. I carried Kelpy to the emergency room area of the clinic and walked along with the vet providing her with every relevant detail. From the moment of envenomation, just forty-five minutes had elapsed. We were darned lucky and we knew it. After I got Kelpy settled the vet and an assistant took over while I watched them go to work. While new to this clinic, our vet was moving deftly as if she and her assistant had been partnered-up for years. Once transfer of care had taken place I was told to corral my wife and head home for the night. The clinic doesn’t carry insurance for people in the emergency room on-site, only their beloved pets. I understood the rule but it would be the most difficult goodbye of my lifetime. They were doing all they could and viscerally I knew my dog was in good hands, but mentally I just didn’t want to leave knowing my dog might not make it through the night. Then logic began to take hold. It was now hovering around 11 PM and Genie and I, and Sage, could do no more for our sweet Kelpy. She was in the hands of professionals and what little time I did spend at the clinic that night, that fact had become abundantly clear.

Sleep came slowly but we were, the three of us, exhausted and I eventually drifted off. The vet had indicated that she’d be there all night by Kelpy’s side, administering antivenin, IV saline, and horse plasma. Over the millennia, horses have developed a tolerance for rattlesnake venom, so plasma taken from the blood of a donor horse has within it certain antibodies to quell the damage the venom would otherwise do. This is Texas and this clinic had been weened on snakebites.

The next morning came quickly and I drove up and ran into the clinic at precisely 6:30 AM. I sat and waited for what seemed a lifetime but in reality was less than twenty minutes at which time I was called back into the ER to see my dog. I was astonished at the size of her head and the open, gaping, and draining wound around her neck a full seven inches from the bite zone. The vet said that she’d taken a really potent bite but that the worst was over. Kelpy had made it through the hellish night. We talked and I conceded to leave Kelpy there for two more days and nights of round the clock care. The vet believed if we did so, if we gave her the best of care for a couple of days she’d pull through. The vet then allowed me to walk Kelpy outside in the neighboring grassy area to “go to the bathroom”. My poor dog. My heart sunk as I watched her once bright but now lackluster eyes meet mine. I could only hope. Hope was all I had. I took pictures of the gruesome sight which, to this day only a few others have seen, but I’ve never had the heart to show to my wife. Brutally grotesque. Though different, her bond with Kelpy is as strong as my own and they can be inseparable at times.

On day four I awoke early…somewhere close to 4:30 in the morning. I was anxious to see my dog for today was the day the vet had anticipated her release and I’d be taking her home. Again, I arrived at 6:30 AM and by 8 AM Kelpy had been discharged into my care once more. This tough, wonderful, creation of a dog had pulled through. I never doubted her…not for a minute. I put her on her favorite blanket in the passenger seat of my truck and we headed home for a joyous reunion. I’d cleaned up the snake’s remains before I’d gone to get Kelpy and tossed them in a cow pasture to be eaten by vultures just up the road a half mile from our home (the mess was gone by the following day). I pulled into the driveway, letting Genie and Sage out at the gate and Kelpy and I drove in. I helped Kelpy out of the truck and within seconds she ran through the house and out the dog door headed straight to where the nastiness had gone down. She sniffed around at the remaining blood spots and with Sage yielding her alpha sister a wide berth, Kelpy turned and as if nothing had happened and casually marked the spot. You’d have to know our beloved alpha female, Kelpy, to understand the significance of that mark. It meant that whatever happened during those four days after Christmas of 2016, not once did she forget who she was! And aside from the yelp when taking the bite, I never heard her whimper. She is thirteen now and is as tough, dominant, and willful as ever.

Kelpy – About a Year Prior to Tangling With Her Rattlesnake on Christmas Night, 2016

Edit: After living her sixteen adventure-filled years, we were forced to have Kelpy put down. She’d been treated for some form of liver cancer over the previous couple of years and had taken well to the medication. She remained happy and healthy until we could finally see that she was in pain and made the decision to have her euthanized, right here in our home. Her ashes sit alongside those of Sage, who passed at fifteen years of age, just a year later. The two dogs had grown up together in Colorado and had forged a powerful bond that goes beyond words. We enjoyed hundreds of trail runs and many other adventures together.

Kelpy Reconnoitering Hermosa Canyon

Originally Posted on Quora

Circa 2008 Canon G-10

My beloved Australian Kelpie, “Kelpy”, as named by my then six year-old daughter. Kelpy and I were spending the 2013 archery elk season (end of August through end of September) in our favorite place, up high in the “Middle of Nowhere”, Southwest Colorado. Our camp was just 30-feet behind where this picture was taken.

What role do zoos and conservation groups play in helping increase the Dhole population, and are there any success stories?

Originally Written for Quora

I’m going to use this question about the dhole, a wonderful but little known animal that inhabits parts of Asia but is 75% absent from its original habitat, to make a point that no one seems to want to hear. The first thing I noticed in this National Geographic story are the words used to define the story category: “Photo Ark”. To me, that’s a great way to think about endangered species, particularly the ones that have little to no chance of recovering from their current status and made the Endangered Species list decades ago. To send out the message that Nat Geo is compiIing a photographic ark obviously means something. I have posted a couple of screenshots so you can read the basics on the dhole and see what they look like. Like most caniids, I am drawn to their handsome, wolf-like features. Though wildly different upon initial inspection, the dhole has similar features to all sorts of wild dogs found all over the world. I must admit that while I have at least a general understanding of most canids, sort of a “working knowledge”, other than the name “Dhole”, I knew very little about them as a species.

Of course, the second thing that struck me was just how few of them remain, 4,500 to 10,500 individuals. This is roughly half the number of African Wolf Dogs which, as the name suggests, can be found in South Africa and just a handful of countries to the north. It’s historic range was throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. Dozens of creatures are down to similar numbers, numbers that have been holding onto existence using tooth and claw and every bit of their instinct to thrive when conditions are stacked heavily against them. How would we view our own chances if there were just 20,000 of us remaining following what could have only been apocalyptic events to bring our kind to the knife’s edge of being? With this and other posts, I’m trying my darndest to wrap some “shock and awe” perspective around what’s happening to the planet. It is abundantly clear that even with biological scares like (in recent history) HIV, Influenza, COVID, Ebola, Bird Flu, Hantavirus, West Nile, and on, that we’ve become numb to the potential for something as big to come along as the Black Plague (aka Black Death, 1346 – 1353) which killed 25 to 50 million people in just seven years. Granted, times have changed, but COVID should be a reminder of how we had to enlist the help from doctors and scientists from all over the world to bring to bear their collective knowledge to come up with a solution while the clock was ticking on something which quite easily could have been much worse. This clearly reflects the extents to which we will go to save ourselves but, even then, nothing seems to shake us as we look to others to save our lives.

Credit Wikipedia

Credit Wikipedia

If that same effort, say, over a six year period, were put into saving threatened and endangered species, I believe we could have turned things around for some of the most ecologically important species. It’s amazing what we can do when pressed hard for results.

In the mid-60’s, my grandmother took me the one of the larger zoos back East and even as a child of preschool age, I was imprinted by seeing what were clearly wild animals stuck in cages and steel and concrete mini-habitats. I went some thirty years before I took a chance because my girlfriend at the time had never been to a zoo and had a strong desire to visit one. I really liked this girl and thought I could set my feelings aside for one day. I know that most people don’t feel the same way I do on many fronts. Besides, I was just a young child during that first ill-fated foray. Who was I to stop her from having an experience that millions of others enjoy every year?! The Denver Zoo was known for having a very good wolf exhibit and I had been fascinated by wolves for my entire life, reading numerous books and catching every documentary I could find on the subject. I thought I could “tough it out” for one day at one of the most progressive zoos in the country. But almost from the get-go as we were buying tickets, I began to get “cold feet”. I had lied to myself in an effort to make someone else happy. I managed to fake my way through the other exhibits (as I did not wish to have a negative impact on her experience) until we got to the wolf enclosure and, as much as I wanted to spend a few moments admiring them, I began to shed some uncontrolled tears while doing my best to quell my reaction and keep her from seeing it (I must be a decent actor because she didn’t notice).

What got to me the most was due to simply knowing too much about wolves to see them in captivity. They are an iconic symbol of everything that is pure and wild. The alpha male was probably around six years old and 120 pounds of sheer and magnificent masculine beauty. Predominantly light grey and white (grey wolves, aka, timberwolves come in a variety of colors from various shades of grey to reddish brown to all white, and all black) he was what most people think of when they hear the word “timberwolf”. It was just my girlfriend and I at the exhibit and he and I locked eyes as I watched him pace back and forth on a 6″ deep x 12″ wide groove the wolves had cut by pacing along the fence line at the front 30-feet of the enclosure. These are animals that have home ranges of up to 500 square miles and regularly travel between 20 and 50 miles in a single day. Talk about pent up energy which leads to stress, anxiety, and depression. His angst was palpable as was, I’m certain, my own. Today, some thirty years later, I can still sense his pieycing, highly intelligent eyes looking straight into my soul. I distinctly recall marveling at his masterfully efficient gait as he paced. I honestly believe he could feel my sadness and empathy for his situation. I require a lot of personal space to be comfortable and mile upon mile of open space in order to recreate and live happily. As much as I wanted to stay and observe both he and his incredible pack, we were there for just ten or fifteen minutes. When we were done at the zoo, we spent the evening having dinner and talking about a new class my girlfriend was about to start teaching. She was a chemistry professor at a Christian college in Denver. I do not remember what it was that ended the relationship other than the fact that I’d soon be moving to Durango but we weren’t together long enough for her to hear of my aversion to zoos. She had had a good time and that was all that I had cared about. The someday for telling her my genuine feelings never came. My current and by any and all means, final wife, and I feel almost exactly the same about wild things and wild places and our mutual love of nature is one of our primary connections. We prefer dogs to kids.

It has been another thirty-plus years and I’ve not been to another zoo, not even to take my daughter when she was young but all too impressionable. She’s twenty-six now and I don’t believes she’s gone to one of her own volition. She is her father’s daughter. The same goes for aquatic theme parks, though her mother once took her to the grand opening of a Sea World, near San Antonio. While knowing of my feelings on the subject, she took our then seven year-old daughter without informinng me of her plans (taking her out of state without informing the other parent was a clear breech of our parenting plan). Suffice it to say, it had the desired impact on me. What some people will do in the name of pure vindictiveness.

Between zoos and many of the conservation programs which work with them, we have literally researched many important species to death (or, followed them as they made their debut onto the threatened or endangered species lists) with just five to thirty years remaining on their respective clocks. Make no mistake, I am all for research and education, but when it comes to the treatment of the creatures involved, there must be limits.

I want to be clear. I am certainly not opposed to conservation programs. That would be nothing short of just plain stupid. They need to continue but without a reliance on zoos. Almost like the separation of church and state, they should continue on parallel path with more aggressive conservation efforts put in place to expedite the issues around key species that are almost gone and putting a real end to poaching and outright slaughter, and habitat loss as it relates to prioritized species. As an example, the American Wild Horse and the African Wild Dog. rhinos, highland gorillas, the Big Cats, wolves, elephants, and, of course, the dhole. These are but a few of the species that can still be salvaged but action needs to take place in the present, not after we’ve researched these animals for yet another ten years. I’m sorry, but they may no longer be here to study. Education and study efforts should be ongoing but targeting the next wave of species that are clearly in trouble, mostly having to do with loss of habitat. Establish new programs surrounding the next wave of creatures that will one day soon require intervention. I see it as a two-pronged approach. Long-term research and education on creatures not yet in their 11th hour, and short-term aggressive conservation measures to provide absolutely necessary aid to species in dire need of our help. In the end, we cannot save every species but we can still save many. We just don’t have the kind of conservatiion programs in place to ramp things up as it becomes necessary to save the most endangered species today. And last but not least, these programs must be afforded “teeth” so that when it becomes necessary to fight for the animals they’re trying to protect they are able to react with more than just words.

For the sake of discussion, let’s say that my childhood reaction to zoos and what I think of them is valid. I realize that zoos have enabled us to study many species that would otherwise be diffucult to study in the field, but for how long and at what cost? After so many decades -long studies have aready gathered the necessary information surrounding the long-term survival of many keystone animals, I believe we’ve got to put an end to zoos. We are long past the point of diminishing returns. If we take all of what I’ve said above as fact, we need to take an urgent look at this huge and amorphous issue and put some definition around it. To take a sound, pragmatic approach to mitigating the vast expanse of damage we’ve already done. We need to set worldwide protocols and place definitive timelines (deadlines) around the species that are at the highest risk but could still be saved. And. we need to be able to fire back when fired upon!

This is extremely difficult for me to even say, but in looking at wildlife conservation as a whole, there simply isn’t enough time remaining relative to current funding levels and tactics to save every species on the endangered species list. It’s already too late for certain species. We need to take a much more pragmatic view based on what is truly possible. What could be accomplished if we went at this global problem much more aggressively and if we did all the right things from this point forward and started today?! We won’t know until we engage the problem head-on, in a highly structured manner, and provide hard push-back to anyone or anything that gets in the way.

In the meantime, we can look for the most proactive wildlife programs currently operating and find out what we can do to help expedite things in real time with an emphasis on the word “NOW”! When it comes to species that have been on the endangered species list for decades, there simply isn’t enough time remaining for what amounts to political diplomacy.

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Thank you.