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.
The Cretan Hound and its ?relation? to the Basenji
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I was reading a discussion about 'rare breeds' and i suddenly remembered the Cretan Hound, a recognised dog breed that is considered to be ancient.
some say that it may be related to the basenji (Crete is a Greek island in the meditteranean sea that had trading as well as other kinds of relations with ancient Egypt.)
Here is a link to a greek sight (sorry if it's only in the Greek Lg)
take a look! -
and again I wish you could read the following link refering to the basenji and the cretan hound as well:
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I went to check out the website…but it's all greek to me (ha, ha!)
Can you summarize what it says?
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Nice looking dog!
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Yes, please tell us what it says!
Love the white dog in the first link! -
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That is cool, Robyn…I had no idea you could do that!!!
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I wish It had an English version, i sent them an email to do that in future time. i think that through Google translator, you could succeed in understanding the general idea. It has many historical facts and results of some archaeological researches… I use the google translator for many sites in other lgs:
http://translate.google.com/translate_t?langpair=en|ja#en|el|i%20love%20my%20dog