On track

What’s it like to track armed poachers through the bush in the middle of the night? We spoke to Anke Kruger de Rosner of K9 Conservation in Hoedspruit about the important work she and her dogs are doing

- ANNEMARIE VAN DER WALT

First you notice her big smile, then the handgun strapped to her hip… You realise that she’s already sized you up: She knows how tall you are, the colour of your hair and eyes, what you’re wearing, the pattern your shoe soles leave on the ground… If she misses anything, the friendly dog sniffing around your feet will alert her to it with its body language.

Anke Kruger de Rosner ducks under the branches of an acacia tree as she approaches. It’s been a wet summer and everything is overgrown. It’s always hot here in the far north of the country, and not just when it comes to the climate: Hoedspruit and surrounds are also a poaching hot spot.

This is exactly where Anke likes to be: In the heat of battle. “Maybe I listened to too many of my dad’s war stories,” she says.

Jock is a dog of indeterminate breed. Anke describes how she and two friends saw a car hit a dog on the N4 near Witbank. The dog died but her pup survived and hid in a culvert next to the road. Anke was the one who eventually coaxed it out, thereby ending the debate about which of the three rescuers would get to keep it. It was July 2017 and little did she know that the six-week-old pup would steer her in a new direction.

Anke was born and raised in Pretoria and would often spend weekends and holidays on a friend’s farm. It was there that she fell in love with the bushveld. She moved to Hoedspruit soon after she finished matric. “I have no idea why I chose Hoedspruit – I think I was acting on instinct,” she says.