The Official Houston Zoo Blog

Road trip!

In the fall of 2007, Carnivore Supervisor Kevin Hodge and I drove to Missouri to pick up two Anatolian shepherd puppies Tusker and Taji. At 12 weeks old they were already almost too big to carry. As soon as we got on the road, Kevin and I were surprised at their calm demeanor. The only challenge we had on the 12 hour road trip was getting them to wear their collars and leashes.

Anatolian shepherd dogs have been bred for many years to guard livestock. This means they are intelligent and independent dogs, used to making their own decisions. From the perspective of an animal trainer, this means they are stubborn!

wake me up when dinner shows up

Several weeks after the dogs’ arrival, Carnivore Supervisor Sara Riger and Veterinary Technician Kara LaVictoire returned from Florida with 3 day-old cheetah cubs Kito and Kiburi who had been abandoned by their mother. A few weeks later, we began to introduce them to the dogs. If you haven’t already heard the story, I’m sure you are asking “why on earth did they do that?”

When wild cats have to be raised by people in captivity, it is important that they be socialized with another animal growing up and so they are often raised with dogs. Kito and Kiburi were lucky enough to have each other but we had another reason for introducing them to the dogs.

Several years ago, farmers in Namibia were killing cheetahs that preyed on their livestock. The Cheetah Conservation (CCF) facilitated the donation of some Anatolian shepherd dogs to be used to protect the herds from predators in Namibia in the 90′s. Cheetahs are shy by nature and the large size and fierce bark of the dogs would scare them away so the farmers did not shoot them. This project has spread throughout Africa and is also being used by Cheetah Conservation Botswana, a project the Houston Zoo supports. Here at the zoo we wanted to tell this story about how a domestic dog is helping save an endangered cat.

Today the dogs and cheetahs are nearly adults and after over a year of training, they regularly go out together in the zoo for presentations. Since the program is going so well and is so popular we decided to develop another presentation that the dogs, cheetahs and keeper staff could do at the exhibit in the zoo.

I’ll be blogging regularly about our progress so stay tuned!