POACHERS, BEWARE!

Arrow is part of a crack unit of dogs that parachute with their handlers in the fight against poaching

IBy JACQUES MYBURGH Pictures: MARTIN DE KOCK T’S A sweltering 37 °C in the Bushveld. High above us in the trees a woodland kingfisher chirps anxiously as a black speckle appears in the cloudless sky. It’s coming closer fast and starts to take shape. First you see a white parachute opening, then there’s a man. And then, with ears flapping, goggles protecting his eyes and tail wagging, a dog!

Arrow, a five-year-old German Shepherd, is strapped to his handler, Henry Holsthyzen, who hits the ground at high speed. He releases the dog and takes off its muzzle.

“The muzzle is just for safety purposes in case something goes wrong and Arrow gets panicky,” Henry tells us later. But this never happens. Arrow loves jumping from planes and helicopters.

One of the other handlers is pretending to be a poacher. Arrow excitedly gives chase and flattens him, his descent from the sky long forgotten – now it’s only this “thug” that matters.

“Arrow likes parachuting a lot more than I do,” Henry quips.

The two recently made it into Guinness World Records when Arrow became the world’s first anti-poaching dog to use a parachute.

In the cockpit of the Gazelle helicopter Arrow looks like a true hero. The dog and his friends are the stars of a specialised unit devoted to dog breeding and training at Paramount Group, an international defence and aerial company based near Midrand in Gauteng.

“This is the fourth time Arrow has jumped with a parachute,” Henry tells us. “He’s jumped from a helicopter three times and once from a Cessna plane. His first jump made me a lot more panicky than him.”

Like any dog, Arrow gets excited when his owner opens the car door and now he’s become equally keen about hopping into a helicopter, ready for his next jump.

“The bond between Arrow and me is very special. Where I go, he goes, and whenever I’m jumping from a plane or helicopter, he also jumps,” Henry says.

WHEN rhino poaching started becoming a problem in 2009 The Paramount Group and Ichikowitz Family Foundation – the company’s charity branch – recognised the need for a dog unit.

“It was important for us to show Sanparks [South African National Parks] that dogs can also be used for insurgency work and that their talents aren’t limited to tracking,” says Ichikowitz Family Foundation director Eric Ichikowitz.

The foundation has trained about 80 handlers and 120 dogs who now serve in parks and reserves such as Addo Elephant Park in the Eastern Cape, Timbavati, Kruger National Park, Marakele in the Waterberg and Manyeleti private reserve in Mpumalanga. Some are working even further afield in Zambia, Botswana and Gabon.

Dogs are taught tracking and antipoaching techniques but not all of them are The dogs learn to jump from a helicopter into a body of water.