Fury, the first Canis africanis to be trained in anti-poaching tracking, is displaying some serious puppy power.
Three-month-old Fury is a tiny puppy destined for great things after being plucked from the streets of a Zambian village.
She's the first Canis africanis — better known as your average African village mutt — to be trained for a canine anti-poaching unit.
Invictus K9
Fury will join the park's first ever canine unit, working alongside two German Shepherds in tracking down poachers and traffickers.
Among other smells, the dogs are being trained to sniff out ivory, weapons, pangolin — one of the most trafficked mammals on earth — and human tracks so they can follow illegal hunters.
Such elite jobs are typically entrusted to pedigree breeds like German Shepherds and Belgian Malinois, so Fury was battling the odds from the start.
“One hundred percent of the professional trainers I’ve met in Africa pretty much agreed that [Canis africanis] can’t be trained," Jay Crafter, co-founder of Invictus K9, who are setting up the canine special ops unit, told BuzzFeed News. "If I take a 12-month-old dog from the village, I’d agree that it would be – not untrainable, but it wouldn’t want to train the way I’d want it to,” he told BuzzFeed News
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