Encountering Cheetahs

We've been absent for a while from the blogging world...there are reasons for that, but we'll get to those later.  In recent days I have finally been sorting through more photos from our trip to Africa.  So picking up where I left off...

One of the other great perks about visiting Spier Winery is that they have a Cheetah Reserve.  As the population expands and more land is being settled for agriculture, the cheetah is one animal that is becoming extinct due to loss or habitat and natural prey, and therefore increasing conflict with humans.  So Spier houses a Cheetah Reserve that takes care of rescued cheetahs (mostly rescued as cubs) and does a lot with education and awareness to protect cheetahs.  It was very interesting to learn about.

This is a Turkish Anatolian Shepherd dog, which the rescue group breeds and places on area farms as guard dogs for the livestock as part of the cheetah protection effort to help reduce the conflict between cheetahs and farmers.  They are very large dogs!

This is Joseph...he is 9 years old...and I was able to "encounter" him at the outreach :)

If interested, you can read more about cheetahs and the reserve here: http://www.cheetah.co.za/default.html

It was a really cool experience!