The true story of an African Wild Dog’s remarkable life.
"Newky” was an African Wild Dog, whose exceptional life was scientifically documented over a period of five years by wild dog researcher Dr.J. Weldon ”Tico” McNutt.
Now, this emotive natural history film brings Newky’s story back to life, in a faithful and detailed recreation of his experiences.
Through Tico's personal recollections, we follow the dramatic account of Newky's life, in a moving, true story that is both heartbreaking and important to understanding the challenges wild dogs face as a species.
Set against the spectacular wilderness of Botswana’s Okavango delta, this poignant tale follows Newky’s life from the dangers and joys of puppy-hood, through the loss of his siblings in tense encounters with lions, and into the trials of adulthood.
But even being a strong adult dog brings a life of danger, hardship and conflict. In a tragic twist of fate, Newky’s entire pack is wiped out by a mysterious disease epidemic. Alone, he is forced to endure dangers that normally would be met by a strong, coherent pack, as he searches for months trying to find others of his own kind.
Newky at last finds a mate, another lone survivor of the epidemic, only to endure tragedy once again when she is killed by a farmer’s bullet. Newky remains undaunted, and in the end, succeeds in fathering a new generation of wild dogs. Before then, he must not only find another wild dog pack, but also compete for acceptance and overthrow the alpha male.
Several years of experience of filming African wild dogs in Botswana, and 3 years spent with the remaining descendants of Newky’s pack, resulted in the filmmakers achieving a unique, personal bond with this particular group of wild dogs. That close relationship allowed them unprecedented access to the dog’s daily lives, and the result is some of the most intimate footage of wild dog behaviour ever filmed.
This is a tale of struggle, endurance and triumph, and of one dog’s extraordinary spirit to win through against almost impossible odds. Above all, it is an emotionally powerful, true story, in which, through Newky’s remarkable life, we learn of the challenges facing one of the worlds most endangered and fascinating social mammals.
Photo: Dave Hamman
The full story ...
On the eastern fringes of the Okavango Delta in Botswana, spreads a vast area of coarse yellow grass, the variegated greens and browns of mopane forest, and grey dusty sand. There are dappled camelthorn woodlands, mantles of wild sage and patchwork islands of kigelia trees, knob-thorns and the beautiful twisted shapes of the loncocarpus capassa tree. It is a wilderness known as Santawani. At home among the woodlands and floodplains is an African Wild Dog pack - fourteen adults and a bundle of boisterous pups. Part of the few viable remaining wild dog populations left in Africa, the Santawani pack is soon to become one of the most well-known.
Kenyan born wildlife cameraman Mike Holding first came to Santawani 20 years ago. For the last 5 years he and film producer Tania Jenkins (better known as ‘TJ’) have been regular visitors, constantly renewing and cementing their ties with the resident wild dogs and local wild dog scientist, Dr. J.Weldon ‘Tico’ McNutt, who has been studying several packs in the area for the past eleven years.
While filming the Santawani pack for various international natural history programmes, Mike and TJ decided to embark on their own major documentary film project, to help to dispel the myths which surround the African Wild Dog and to bring to light some of the issues which threaten this critically endangered species. Mike recalls, “I sat down with Tico one evening and said “if you had to pick one dog you’ve known, who epitomised all of the challenges and difficulties that a wild dog might go through, who’d it be? And without hesitation he said ‘Newky’ and began to tell me the story of Newky’s life. I remember we were sitting around the campfire and all the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, because it was just such a powerful story. This was the film story-line we were looking for. In this film we’ve tried to recreate the life of Newky and what he endured as faithfully as we possibly could. We’ve stuck with the tale of Newky’s life, because it is such a fantastic story.”
A 50-minute blue chip documentary, “A Wild Dog’s Story” for the BBC’s ‘Natural World’ series is the result. It is a re-creation of the true story of an African wild dog that manages to encapsulate all the joys, dangers and tragedies of being a wild dog in an increasingly perilous world. But more than narrating a simple story, Mike and TJ have set out to make a difference in this portrayal of Newky’s life.
“Many blue chip natural history films are lifecycle films or behavioural films or generic films about places, but very few of them have a real, true story, and fewer still confront any ‘issues’ in terms of conservation.” Mike continues, “there’s long been an argument that all these films are very pretty, but they don’t really say anything. Probably the biggest issue facing wild dogs is the loss of wildlife habitat to ever- increasing livestock farming. We’ve tried to make it a fairly central issue in the film, as it was in Newky’s life. Essentially wild dogs need large unspoilt areas, with natural habitat and sufficient prey species, but that requirement is often in conflict with the people of Africa and their development needs. The more we open up areas to livestock, the less areas there will be for wild dogs. With the race for land, one of the species that’s going to disappear the quickest in Africa is the wild dog. More endangered than elephants, than cheetah, than rhino, are African wild dogs and the reason for that is that space is the greatest criterion on which they rely to live their lives.”
African wild dogs, Lycaon pictus, have been eliminated from most of their former ranges and today only three viable breeding populations are left in the wild. Altogether there are thought to be as few as 3000 individuals, living mainly in South Africa’s Kruger Park, Tanzania’s Selous Game Reserve, and in Northern Botswana.
The wild dog has also, until recently, had an undeserved reputation for being the most cruel of hunters and uncaring of their own kind. In 1956 R.M. Beres of the Uganda National Parks inaccurately reported ‘They do more damage than almost any other carnivore, for when they enter a particular stretch of country the disturbance they cause is so great that for the time being, all the buck are driven out.’ He erroneously continues, ‘…. they will, without hesitation, turn upon any member of the pack that falls by the way through wound or sickness and show no reluctance to consume their own kind.’
It is this kind of completely bigoted, inaccurate misperception that sadly still exists, and that Mike and TJ are hoping dispel in their film. “Historically they’ve been persecuted almost to the point of extinction and are probably one of the most misunderstood social mammals on the planet. They’re seen as vicious wanton killers, they’re seen as expedient, and nasty, and a threat. But there’s little historical evidence to suggest that they have ever been a significant threat to livestock, and there’s not a single recorded incident in Africa of anyone having ever been attacked by a wild dog. They are, of all the social mammals, one of the few examples of an animal whose entire social system and structure relies not on dominance but on submissiveness, on altruism, on caring for the young, on caring for the injured, and on maintaining a cohesive, co-operative social structure that allows the pack to benefit. They foster non-aggression, it’s built into their genes and their behaviour and that’s pretty amazing.”
In 5 years of working in the Okavango, Mike and TJ have developed a very special relationship with the dogs. For many of the yearlings and adults in the pack, the first thing they saw as puppies, only three weeks after they were born and crept bleary-eyed from the warmth and darkness of their den, was Mike, his camera vehicle, and his Arri film camera! Both Mike and TJ feel that the resulting bond allowed them to witness events and film the dogs behaviour in a way that has rarely been done before. Says Mike, “There’s no question in my mind having spent the amount of time that we have with them, that there is some kind of understanding between us and the dogs. There’s no doubt that over the period that we filmed, a partnership developed between us, and they allowed us to gain great intimacy. They showed such trust in us and allowed us so close without reacting in an un-natural way, that eventually it seemed as if they regarded us as just one of the pack. We probably couldn’t have made the film, portraying totally natural behaviour, without that level of trust and co-operation. I’m convinced that there was a mutual understanding between us and the dogs about what we were trying to achieve on their behalf, otherwise I don’t believe we’d ever have managed to film the scenes that we did.”
Says Mike, “Few people realise that the really good wildlife films are made by people who spend years and years and years with these animals, getting to know each individual and letting the animals get to know them. I think that that’s probably why being a wildlife film maker is said to be one of the most sought after jobs on the planet – people recognise how special it is to be able to spend that kind of time with an animal, and to become integrated with it at that kind of level. Done properly, it requires an enormous amount of respect on the film-maker’s part. A lot of less scrupulous filmmakers just barge in and film and barge out again, and they go away with adequate footage but without that connection. What we’ve done is to come away with great footage but also a genuinely life-enriching experience, which is what’s truly valuable at the end of the day.”
Despite this intimacy and trust between the pack and film crew, there were still major challenges to be overcome. The day at the film camp started at 5 every morning. In the winter this often meant facing chilling temperatures made all the more fearsome when driving in an open vehicle, trying to keep up with fourteen fleeting canine shapes flitting in and out of the spotlight, here one minute and gone the next into the dark Botswana night. When dogs go hunting, the camera crew pray that they will make their move after daybreak. In the dark it’s virtually impossible to keep up with the dogs in their home of dense bush or mopane forest, as they slip into a rhythmic, long-distance trot at a steady 20 kilometres an hour. Notably, the crew avoid filming at night using lights, as they believe it significantly alters the animal’s natural behaviour.
Once the inky darkness begins to melt into the soft roseate hues of dawn, and presuming the dogs haven’t been absorbed by the night, the crew can set about their task in earnest. Standing next to Mike on the back of an open Range Rover as the dogs broke from their loping, long-legged trot to their spectacular hunting speed of nearly 60 kph was an unforgettable, adrenaline-charged experience. The film team’s well-practised strategy in these vital seconds is to second-guess the dogs - and their prey – attempting to keep up with the luckless impala and to capture on film the magnificence of a wild dog in full gallop, as it runs its prey to the point of exhaustion, or skilfully tackles it to the ground. Dodging trees, low-flying branches, bone-breaking logs utterly hidden in long waving grass, and the most terrifying of all obstacles – cavernous, elephant-created holes that would comfortably swallow up the whole front end of an off-road vehicle – are all reasons why it is virtually impossible, without considerable luck, to catch this moment on film. As for the holes, I can tell you first hand that the hollow, reverberating thud of brutalised vehicle as it slams, full-tilt, into the sinister depths of a cavity the size of a small crater, is enough to send chills through the heart of the most hardened of bushwhackers. Mike and TJ have had more than their fair share of dangerous encounters with these car traps, and Mike has twice come away with a couple of broken ribs to show for the experience.
The wear and tear on people and vehicles in these kinds of conditions is an often-overlooked element amid the perceived glamour of wildlife filmmaking. By the end of their year in the bush, Mike and his crew were weary bush mechanics, fixing an average of 6 punctures a day, and repairing steering rods and suspension bars which regularly snapped in half with the sheer stress of high speed impact with obscured logs, tree stumps and holes. Mike retorts, “Let nobody tell you that being a wildlife cameraman is a glamorous job - you spend 5% of your time with wildlife, and 95% of your time stuck under a bloody broken vehicle!”
What is more, time out filming is infinitely valuable. As the dogs are only active for about two hours morning and evening, and within that there is only 20 minutes of decent filming light, any time lost on vehicle breakdowns becomes intolerable. Ironically this also means that minutes spent trying to protect vehicles at the expense of falling behind the dogs is also out of the question. “You can’t afford to be down for one minute because in those vital seconds the dogs have gone.” Mike continues, “People probably don’t think about it but if, for example, you’re following a pride of lions, they walk along at walking pace, then they lie down or they stalk – but the action happens all within a few hundred metres. By contrast, wild dogs are coursers, they’re like greyhounds, so they’re out there trotting, or cantering miles and miles and miles and then running long distances at very high speeds on the hunt. If you lose them for 2 minutes you’re not going to get any footage that morning – you have to keep up, and every second counts, so that’s why the punishment on vehicles and equipment.”
Every minute that a camera car, generator or camera is out of action means the loss of valuable filming time, so TJ spent much of the shoot 1000 miles away, back at base in Johannesburg, ensuring that spare parts were shipped to their remote tented camp quickly and efficiently. As a result, the crew lost only one day of filming in 15 months. But having a smooth-running production was often the least of her worries. “Following wild dogs at high speed is incredibly dangerous, and just checking that the team were alive every day after each hunt was vital. There were times when radio communications would go down, and the camera crew could have been dead or injured somewhere in the middle of thousands of square kilometres. Where would you start to look for them, and who would look for them? They were miles from any kind of civilisation, so the responsibility on the producer for ensuring everyone was safe was huge.”
From a filming point of view the off-road vehicles had to be equipped not only for brutal assaults through the bush, but also for speedy transition from hardy bush vehicle to sophisticated film-car. The result resembled something out of ‘Mad Max’, with steel bars and camera mounts everywhere, and a sophisticated hydraulic platform mounted into the front passenger seat, which raised and lowered Mike’s camera into position at the press of a button. “You have to be able to get into position fast, set up fast and preferably get low angles, which is where the hydraulic lift is great. You don’t want to keep jumping out of the vehicle to get low angles because that disturbs the dogs, so you need something that’s quick and easily deployed, so that the camera can be out, and on the ground, on a mount and steady in seconds, without having to clamber out of the vehicle with a tripod and bits and pieces of equipment. If things were happening quite fast, the lift meant that scenes which we wouldn’t have got before, we’ve not only been able to film, but to shoot from low angles. And that’s critical, as we’ve tried to film the movie from wild dog level, so that we’re shoulder to shoulder with the dogs and we’re seeing their world from their perspective. It’s hard to emotionally involve an audience when you’re always looking down on an animal. The moment that you cut to a shot that’s from above their level, suddenly you feel disassociated from them. As soon as you’re back down on the ground, you’re drawn in to their world. The nicest scenes in the film are going to be the many shots filmed from that low angle perspective.”
Among all the challenges that the team faced, do they feel they achieved what they set out to do? Mike believes they have. “I’ve probably set extremely high expectations for what I thought we could achieve with the film, and even if I’d shot everything on the shot-list I still wouldn’t be satisfied, because I’m that kind of person. But I think it’ll be a good film and it’ll do justice to Newky’s story, which is what we set out to accomplish. Beyond the film itself, if we don’t all do something to preserve wild dogs, they’ll have little time left on this planet. Our hope is that by making this film, perhaps in some small way we will have given something back to wild dogs, and that we will have made a contribution towards keeping wild dogs alive and well on this planet. If we as humanity have made the decision that we need to share the planet with its other inhabitants, and if we’ve made that decision because we realise we’ve got something to learn from life on earth, then there can’t be a better social animal from whom we could learn than from wild dogs. The more we can know about them, and discover from them about how to co-operate and behave in a supportive, altruistic way, the more the planet will benefit and the more humanity can grow in new ways.”
TJ concludes, “If the film can touch one or two lives as the wild dogs have touched mine, then we’ve done enough. If one or two people can say ‘hey, there’s a different way of living, there’s a different way of being’, and be touched in their soul so that their soul wants to live differently, then we’ve done way more than make a ‘Natural World’ film.”
And a bit more from the filmmakers - interview 2001
There is no doubt that wildlife film making is undergoing something of a revolution and whilst Mike and TJ were able to complete a more traditional ‘blue chip’ film, they were not exempt from the more stringent conditions which now govern the industry. “The old-style film makers are battling in the existing market. Accustomed to going out there and just shooting for three years, they will find it hard to make a good behavioural film in eight or ten months. Budgets are smaller and schedules are tighter and there’s no longer the luxury of being able to run off to some exotic wilderness with a camera and a bunch of film for two or three years and come back with a movie. These days you have to plan it like a military operation, you have to structure it like a feature film, you have to have a script and have scenes and have shot lists and have a story. But within all those constraints of time and budget, you’ve still got to get great pictures and shoot good behaviour. If you want to make it at the top level, it’s not easy and it’s becoming harder all the time.”
More than a simple story, Mike and TJ have set out to make a difference in this portrayal of Newky’s life. They wanted to try and dispel the myths that surround this animal as a vicious, wanton killer – an image that hasn’t been helped by the film industry’s frequent portrayal of wild dogs. “The demands of some audiences and broadcasters are such that they want a kill every 5 minutes, and every body who’s ever made films about wild dogs always goes for big dramatic kills. Well that’s not what this film’s about - it’s a story about a character and his life. Generally they spend one minute a day killing so why in a 52 minute film would you have 20 minutes of wild dogs killing?
So, yes, there will be kill scenes in the film but they’ll be a more realistic illustration of what a wild dog kill is like, and they’ll be an integral part of the story of Newky rather than a reason for the film to exist.
Any one who’s witnessed a wild dog kill will tell you “I didn’t see very much, it happened so fast, it was all over in a flash, there was a blur of dogs and suddenly the impala was gone” - and that’s what I wanted to put across visually in the film. If you’re not to perpetuate the myth, then you’re not going to go out there and show dogs ripping things to bits in a blood thirsty kind of way, so the decision was to try and shoot things from an unusual perspective or in some concealed more secretive kind of way so you could get a feeling of what was going on without showing it. One of the techniques to make that work is to film at 12 frames per second instead of 25, which gives you a more blurred kind of a feel, it’s more dream like. As wildlife film makers we’re all looking for those perfect shots where there are no obstructions in the foreground and every animal is out there clear and clean and sharp and you can see it from its feet to the tip of its ears – well it isn’t like that out there, and what we tried to film is what we see – a blur of action, a frenzy of something happening that’s over in a couple of seconds.”
Mike agrees that the use of digital cameras may well have been useful in low-light conditions, but he feels his choice of film stock also gave him the necessary leeway he required. “We filmed most of the film on Kodak Vision 250 ASA daylight stock which probably gave us an extra 15-20 minutes extra filming a day than we would’ve had on 50 ASA. The stock itself has proven to be remarkably resilient – really, really good in lowlight conditions. What it’s also meant is that using that 250 during the day gives you a higher ‘F’ stop which means that when you’re shooting slo-mo or very long lens stuff, it’s much easier to follow the dogs and keep them in focus than if you were shooting on 50 ASA. Five or eight years ago we probably wouldn’t have been able to have done it because 250 was too grainy, but now the stock is super fine and it really makes beautiful pictures. Over and above that we’ve got an extra bit of insurance policy by carrying 500 ASA film for those situations in the evenings or early mornings where the dogs might have done something and that we couldn’t get on 250. The footage we have shot on 500 seems to me to be very nice. It doesn’t like being under-exposed and it is a little bit grainy but I think that it’s a very useful film. It’s tungsten balanced and we’ve shot it in daylight and it’s corrected back on the Spirit Datacine perfectly.”