Filming the world’s smallest wild dog, the fennec fox, as seen in episode one

The fennec fox is tiny – about 20 cm tall – it’s also very shy, and it lives in small dens somewhere in the Sahara Desert. We knew our attempts to film one would be an interesting ‘behind the scenes/making of’ film, a classic ‘triumph over adversity’ story, but we also knew that wouldn’t be enough to sustain the ten minutes needed for the ‘making of’ - we needed another angle too.

The main body of Dogs in the Wild is 50 mins of blue-chip behaviour, celebrating the diversity, adaptability, and general wonderfulness of canids around the world, so the additional ten minute ‘making of’ was an opportunity to talk about an important conservation story: the illegal trade in fennec foxes, much of it for photo opportunities with tourists (see references at the end of this doc).

To tell this conservation story I was going to interview our main guide – a Tuareg who’s lived in the desert all his life and could talk about the subject in detail. We would also use library stills and video of fennecs displayed for tourists. These two elements would give us enough material to work with, in addition to the classic ‘triumph over adversity’ storyline.

We finally arrived on location in Morocco – nine months later than planned, due to covid restrictions – and filming of this tiny, shy canid was every bit as hard as we feared. And just when we felt our luck was turning, the worst possible thing happened: we filmed a fennec fox emerging from a burrow with a huge trap clamped around its front leg. The poor creature stumbled off over the dunes, dragging the trap with it, before we had a chance to rescue it. We were all sickened by the experience, particularly as we felt the fennec might not survive its ordeal for long.

In telling our conservation story we’d got more than we bargained for, but my concern was coming off the back of a 50 min blue-chip film celebrating canids, this brutal scene might be a kick in the face: this is a family show, it’ll go out in the Christmas/New Year holiday. I felt this story needed another element, another narrative step to help wrap it up. Meanwhile the filming itself was starting to go a bit better, we finally filmed a fennec and we had the ‘high five’ moment for the ‘making of’, so that part of the story had its pay-off. But how to resolve the conservation story?

But then something unexpected happened.

Our guide suddenly spotted the trapped fennec we had seen earlier, this time cowering under a concrete structure. He quickly jumped out of the car and was able to catch it. We grabbed our cameras and caught up with him, and I was able to open the trap on the fennec’s injured leg. There’s no local support or veterinary expertise for such a situation, and keeping the fennec in captivity while we figured out how best to treat it would likely cause the fennec more stress, and potential death. However our guide was able to assess the fennec’s wound, and despite the injury he felt there was a good chance it would survive, particularly in the desert environment’s dry and clean conditions. We let the fennec go, and it was able to scamper off so fast we knew this fennec would have a good chance.

I’ve seen the clip many times now and I still well-up when I see it, but we now at least had some kind of resolution for the ‘making of’: our story doesn’t fix the problem, and the rescue itself was just a tiny drop in the ocean, but it is a drop nonetheless, and hopefully as a piece of storytelling, it will have some resonance for the audience.

Meanwhile we left a remote camera with our guide. About one month after filming, he sent me a still of a fennec fox in the same area. It was missing its lower front paw, but it appeared strong and healthy. It may well have been ‘our’ fennec. It’s not uncommon to see fennecs with missing paws, likely the result of botched trapping, but at least they have survived and are able to continue living in the wild.