Reddit reviews African Wild Dogs: On the Front Line

Not sure if you are including the African painted wolves in your quest but if so, there are a few books I can recommend. Prices vary a lot - as with all these things, the more specialised ones tend to be more expensive and some are more difficult to get hold of than others.

• There is a really old classic called 'Solo' by Hugo van Lawick which has a lot of close observations of the wild dogs behaviour. It shows really well how, just as with domestic dogs, there are many different characters in a pack - the alpha female struck me as being a little on the psychotic side! No two dogs have identical markings and the same is probably true for their character. Peter Blinston, expert on the species and director of Painted Dog Conservation has said that it was this book which started his fascination for the species.
  
  
• Speaking of Peter Blinston - he and Nick Dyer, renown naturalist and photographer, have just published a coffee table book called 'Painted Wolves: A Wild Dog's Life' which is available from the [Painted Wolf Foundation](https://paintedwolf.org/the-book/
  ) which will receive all of the profits. Currently waiting for my copy to arrive so I can only say that I have seen a lot of images from it on various site and they are stunning. Given that Nick was virtually living with the pack at times and Peter has over twenty years in the field as conservationist with them, the text should be pretty comprehensive, too.
  
  
• The BBC are about to bring out a new nature series called 'Dynasties' which will feature the painted wolves as one of five species. I would imagine that the accompanying book should be pretty good, too, although it will feature the dogs for only a part. The painted wolves in question are the same packs as those in the book by Dyer and Blinston who were involved with the programme as consultants but who had already been studying them prior to the BBC.
  
  
• The two above both feature wild dogs in Zimbabwe where the areas available for the dogs to roam are larger - for a book detailing very different problems in connection with Lycaon pictus try African wild dogs: On the front line by Brendan Whittington-Jones. The book is all about the problems encountered when managing these packs of highly mobile carnivores in the smaller parks of Kwa-Zulu Natal. It starts off a bit slow but the reader is soon enmeshed in one break-out escapade after another with a dose of park politics thrown in. It covers a period of seven years and came out about three years ago but I did a double take the other day as there is a current problem which is pretty much an action re-take of an incident from the book. Conservationists are still fighting the same odds.
  
  
• I know you are not currently looking for a scientific book but should the day arrive... This one has got figures and statistics by the bucket load.
  
  Hope you are successful in your search :-)
  
  Edit: typo