Six wild dogs, sleeping under a tree. Not moving. Not doing anything.
We sat with them for two and a half hours.
This is the part of wildlife photography that nobody really prepares you for — the waiting that doesn’t feel productive, that has no guarantee attached to it, that asks you to just stay with an animal that is currently doing absolutely nothing. The dogs were breathing. Occasionally one would lift its head, look at something we couldn’t see, and put it back down. That was it.
On the drive to Kruger, I’d told my husband: if we see wild dogs, we’re staying with them for as long as it takes. We both knew that going in. So there was no debate, no temptation to leave, no maths about what else we might be missing. We’d made the decision before the dogs even appeared. All we had to do was sit there.
And then two kudu bulls came crashing through the bush.
What happened next is difficult to describe in a way that does it justice. The pack erupted — and it was only then that we realised how many dogs there actually were. Adolescents we hadn’t known were there. Animals that had been invisible in the shade. Twelve dogs in total, suddenly moving in every direction at once, dust everywhere, the kudu bulls splitting and scattering, the dogs regrouping in ways I couldn’t track fast enough. I spent the next hour shooting like I’d never get another chance.
When I think back on that trip, I don’t think about the two and a half hours. I don’t remember being bored, or watching the clock, or wondering if we’d made the wrong call. What I remember is the dogs — the chaos of the pack rising, the adolescents tumbling over each other, the way the whole clearing transformed in seconds.
The wait just disappears. What stays is the experience on the other side of it.
