Bushdogs

In South Africa there's an indigenous breed that is now being registered as 'africanis'. The dogs in the breed don't look the same- there are several different-looking groups within the breed, according to their geographical origins (rather like the german shepherd when it was first registered). These dogs have been here for centuries and are extremely hardy and resistant to diseases and parasites such as ticks. After reading about the dogs we wondered whether crossing them with pure-bred 'foreigners' would make the resulting offspring tougher.

Our thoughts were not yet cold when a local indigenous bitch came to our gates on heat! (No, honestly!! What's more it's the only time that we've ever seen one here in 15 years! ) Anyway, we put her in a camp, as we do all strays, without planning to start an experimental breeding programme. A day later she unraveled our diamond mesh and Wolfram, our Olderhill male, mated her! She had 7 beautiful puppies. One day, when they were about 8 weeks old, Julie went into their camp to play with them and a sable bitch greeted her and then ran off. That was very odd because they usually stuck to us for as long as we were there. She came back moments later with my watch in her mouth and handed it to Julie! I must have dropped it there when I played with them last. We were so impressed with her that we kept her and called her Watchdog! (We also made such a fuss of her about the watch that for ages afterwards she would bring us something whenever we saw her - a stick, a stone, a toy or whatever!)

Watchdog looks and behaves very much like a belgian shepherd. She has a sable coat shorter than the usual german shepherd one, and has energy for Africa! She's always healthy and hasn't had billiary yet (touch wood!). We let one of our pure Olderhill males mate her every year to get 3/4 Olderhill , 1/4 Africanis puppies. These are huge, beautiful puppies that work like a bomb and are very hardy. The photo above shows Watchdog (on the right) with two of her 4 month old pups. We call her offspring 'bushdogs' because many of them are the colour of the yellow bush grass and blend in there.

UPDATE........

Here's a photo of "Wolf", an 18 month old bushdog. He's Watchdog's grandson and is 15/16 Olderhill and 1/16 Africanis. We have two puppies at the moment that are exactly the same cross as Wolf. They are also dark sable like him. They were born 30/11/02. (See photos below.) We still have a couple of Watchdog's own children that are 3/4 Olderhill and 1/4 Africanis. They were born 19/07/02 and are now in training. This is her last litter because we've now spayed her. Our bushdogs are brilliant but we're scaling down our breeding programme and can't keep on with them any more.

This is Shadow, one of Watchdog's girls at 6 mths. She's 3/4 Olderhill and 1/4 Indigenous Dog. Her two brothers McGyver (sable) and Murdock (black) are still waiting for homes.

	This is Diesel. He'll be 2 yrs old in July 2003. He's the older brother of the sable girl and boy, born 30/11/03, who we still have left. Like them, his parents are Ginny and Wolfram.
Here are the two pups with their mum Ginny. They were 12 weeks old when the photos on the right were taken. The mask on some of the puppies' faces is from the african indigenous dog (Africanis). Below are the same two puppies at 7 months.