The wild dogs are very special. They are the most endangered predator in the world. They are also known as the "painted dogs" and have never been successfully domesticated. They hunt for fun as as well a food and most game parks can't handle having many if any of the animals. Madikwe has a few small packs that are constantly on the move which makes them very difficult to site. We know because we have driven many, many miles all over the park looking for those dogs.
On this game drive, our guide Pule headed off for where the dogs had been spotted the morning before. We drove quite a while and then on one narrow road, we came across another safari vehicle heading in the opposite direction. They assured us that nothing had been seen from the direction they had come. But Pule persisted feeling confident that the dogs would be close since they had fed well that morning and the day had been too hot for them to want to roam about.
About 2 minutes after we left the other vehicle, Pule spotted some ears sticking up about 500 feet off road. We took off in the direction of the ears and came up on the pack just hanging out. They were a little disturbed at first by our presence but the heat soon convinced them that they should settle back down and continue their rest. This gave us an amazing opportunity to observe the pack very closely for about 20 minutes.
our first glimpse of the dogs:
the dogs settling down under a shady tree:
just hanging out with the dogs:
see how close Thom is to the dogs:
To see many, many more photos of the wild dogs and other things that we saw on this trip to Madikwe, you can view our photos at Shutterfly: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AbtWzhs0bt3WQ&emid=sharshar&linkid=link5
Anyway, this blog is actually about the Friday morning game drive. When we stopped for morning coffee, our guide noticed that there was an elephant far in the distance coming our way. He told us that although he wouldn't have stopped if he had seen the elephant before stopping, we should be able to finish coffee before the elephant got to us if he continued on the path it seemed he was taking. So we had coffee and hot chocolate while we watched the elephant come closer and closer.
When our guide noticed that the elephant was traveling much faster than it had appeared and not veering from the "road", he quickly packed up the coffee stuff and told us to get in the truck...NOW. 
