Kenya Dog Names

Unfortunately, there are times when circumstances will leave a parent overwhelmed. Hopefully, when this occurs, other family or members of the community can fill in and assist to ensure that things are taken care of. In rare cases, help is offered by a family pet. Oscar is a dog in Kenya who is doing his best to fill the mother role for two children: David Mbogo, who is seven and Mary Wanjiku, who is six. Unfortunately, the two children were abandoned by their birth mother a few years back and now live with their grandmother. Their grandmother has five other children in her care, meaning she can’t always keep up with what everyone needs. Fortunately, the family has Oscar. The dog walks the children to and from school every day, making sure that they don’t get lost.

In the late nineties, the Mara Triangle experienced a large amount of poaching and poor security; one ranger remembers “tourists being robbed, stripped and dumped on the side of the road”. The Mara Conservancy, which is a public-private partnership with the local Maasai community, then took over management. This led to dogs being employed to help track poachers in the savannas of Kenya. These dogs are called anti-poaching dogs and they have unique skills that allow them to track poachers. Once such dog is Shakaria. She is a five-month old bloodhound seen working her way through the savannah of the Maasai Mara reserve in Kenya. Her mood is playful, like any puppy, until she is ordered to track a human scent.  Upon getting the order she becomes determined and focused. In the past, it was a struggle for rangers to locate and chase poachers across the flat grasslands that seem to go on forever. This led to the tracker dogs being introduced in 2009. Now, the unit has four tracker dogs and two more who are trained, especially to sniff ivory and guns at the entrances to the park. Linda Porter and her husband John Lutenberg, former police officers who previously had hunted escaped convicts in the United States, are training the bloodhound pups. The dogs have led to a significant reduction in daytime poaching and technology like thermal imaging cameras have helped track poachers at night.