She is now about a year and a half. When we first brought her home, she was way too skinny. The shelter's vet said that it was from a compination of her not being fed enough by her past owners and having puppies when she was too young to. The vet had stated that while dogs go into heat as young as 6 months, they should never have puppies before they are a full year and a half old. It took us almost two months to get her up to a healthy weight because she is soooo active. Which is great for playing with our son who is nine, but makes weight gain hard…I usually go for a 2-mile walk with her every morning, then after Aaron gets home from school the two of them run outside for about an hour and a half playing "Reba tag" and fetch...she still seems to have energy to burn though. While it is rough to get out of bed to go for a walk, it keeps her from being distructive while I am at work...

We have also discovered she has a nose that you cannot hide anything from. We have a colony of feral cats that we care for (we live on an old farm that backs up to a boyscout camp, which causes our biggest problem of people dumping cats...of course this is how Reba came to us since we were working with the rescue to have cats spayed and neutered -- my never ending project -- when we found her). Anyway she finds all of the cats "trophies", so she needs to be watched very close when outside lol. She listens pretty good when you tell her to leave it. She drops what ever she has right away, but when you take it off her, you must throw it somewhere she cannot get or she will just go get the trophy again...lol.

I will have to have the vet do a test for Fanconi Syndrome.

All of her puppies have gone to their furever homes. Many of them had been adopted before we found Reba, they were just waiting to be big enough to go home without mommy. I have to say I was not surprised since I know most people want the cute little puppies and not the old mom. We were actually looking for a slightly older dog as I was hoping not to deal with some puppy issues like teething and house breaking so it worked out perfect for us. Aaron had been bugging us for a new dog since Buffy, our cocker spaniel, and Brandy my Bermise Mountain Dog and Border Collie mix had passed (Buffy was about 15 years old and Brandy was a few weeks short of 20). After Buffy died, Brandy went down hill fast.

We had a rough first month as she was so afraid of everyone and everything. I suspect she may have been abused (and by a woman because she was more scared of women then men). Anytime you picked something up she cowered like she thought you were going to hit her, which broke my heart. I don't understand how people can do those things.

Hello,

I stumbled upon your site when researching Basenjis. We resently rescued a Basenji, Reba, from a local shelter. We had no clue what kind of dog she was, but fell in love with her when she crinkled up her forehead and put her head down. She looked so darn cute! The shelter we rescued her from actually did not know what kind of dog she was (they do not take many dogs, they are primarily a horse rescue and took her and her puppies only because they had no where else to go after the owner of the rescue who is also the animal control warden in the area closed down a puppy mill). When we took Reba to the vet for the first time, that is when we discovered she was a Basenji (we do not know if she is a pure bread or not, but after looking up the bread the only difference is her tail does not curl as much as the ones on all the breaders sites). Any way when the vet walked in, he asked us if she ever barks. When I said she hadn't in the week that we had her, he told us she was a Basenji. I have to say she is the cutest dog, but boy is she a devil if you don't watch her. She must know she is that darn cute