I take Blaze into the senior's lodge to go visit Grandma (in a town of less than 300), sure enough, there's a gentleman there that knew what Blaze was. He was an archeologist back in his day. His last dig was in 1976 deep in the Congo, and he stayed with villagers and witnessed the hunts and the lives of the basenjis in the village.
He told me about one hunt.
The basenjis chase antelope into huge nets that are strung up in the forest like barriers. The nets are handmade with ropes and vines. Some of the hunters stay near the net and hide, the majority of the hunters take the basenjis to the water hole and wait. When the antelope arrived, they release the basenjis and chase behind almost soundlessly. You can really hear the gourd bells, which are mostly around the loins. The antelope hit the net and are shot with arrows. The basenjis have to get beaten off… they get a little too excited.
He has some amazing pictures. I'm trying to borrow his album to scan, but he's not comfortable with that idea.
He loves Blaze though and he knows the african word for the breed which I can never remember or pronounce.
Can Basenjis find water underground?
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I met a guy today while I was walking my two basenjis, Benga and Lulu, back from the dogrun. We were chatting about the breed, and he was telling me, while Lulu was pawing at the sidewalk, that when they do this, they are smaelling water underground, and that this is something that they can do…to seek out underground water, being a desert dog... Does anyone know if this is true? Are they "Divining Basenjis"?
Very curious....:D
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They have great smell sense, so maybe so - whether "divining" or not, they are surely "divine" - I use that term loosely.
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They certainly are DIVINE! There a couple other things that go along with this…He mentioned how they like to lick the water off his feet when he gets out of the shower, and Lulu does this to me all the time...Another is whenever I walk them, they go crazy lunging towards the fire hydrants, not to pee, but to smell...I always assumed they are doing it to smell other dogs' markings, but maybe the water as well. They don't go crazy like that with other places dogs mark, at least not as fervously...It would be interesting to take them out to the dester and let them look for water, and start digging wherever they start hovering... anyone want to try?
