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Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsRescuers Discover Lovable Stray Is Actually A Purebred Dingo Puppy
BY J. SWANSON
A family from Wandiligong, Australia, was certainly surprised when they walked outside and found a cute puppy whimpering in their backyard. They initially assumed that the little dog was just lost but, when nobody came around to claim it, they realized the frightened creature might in fact need some help, so they decided to call the cops.
The dog eventually made its way to Rebekah Gray, a local veterinarian who runs a nearby vet clinic. He was very laid back and happy to be picked up, Day told CNN. Really just ever so cute, he was just a little floof.
But as Gray looked closer at the puppy, whom everyone had started calling Wandi, she made two surprising discoveries. First, the puppy had some odd scratch marks on his back, which led Day to suspect Wandi may in fact have been dropped by a hawk hoping to enjoy the puppy as a snack.
She also guessed that little Wandi might also be wholly or partly Dingo, or Australian wild dog. There was no evidence of any other dingoes around (and) we have some large birds of prey in the area, and we have seen lambs and small dogs picked up on occasion, Day said.
Before long, the director of The Australian Dingo Foundation, Lyn Watson, was on the phone. After all, finding a dingo these days is increasingly rare. Though the dogs once roamed freely across Australia, hunting, habitat destruction and climate change have all taken a toll. Now the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources considers modern dingoes a vulnerable species.
Now Watson was asking if she could place Wandi in her groups conservation program, which hopes to rehabilitate the countrys native dog populations through breeding. Theyre our apex predator, theyre our lion, Watson told CNN. Their job is to keep the kangaroo population down, that was their job before the coming of the Europeans, that was their job for thousands of years.
Wandi revealed his apex tendencies almost immediately, according to Watson. (At the beginning) he sank his fangs into everybody, she laughed, recalling the teams collective efforts to socialize Wandi by introducing him to other dingo pups.
Weeks later, the team got a second piece of good news. Not only was Wandi displaying much better manners, he was also 100 percent dingo, according to the results of a DNA test. Naturally, conservationists were overjoyed, foreseeing how the pups purebred heritage would help them achieve their eco-friendly goals.
Were just keeping the genetic lines going until the day that theres going to be a safe place where they can be rewilded, Watson said. Now Wandi, the adorable dingo that dropped out of thin air, will be integral to those efforts!
https://blog.theanimalrescuesite.greatergood.com/rescuers-discover-dingo/
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All I can think about is Elaine on "Seinfeld." I need to grow up.
Karadeniz
(22,486 posts)Laffy Kat
(16,376 posts)I needed a happy story this Friday night. Wandi will never have to worry about food or shelter and will spend his days siring puppers for his species.
hunter
(38,309 posts)Fossil evidence suggests dingoes arrived in Australia about 4000 years ago, sailing with humans. Humans had been in Australia long before that.
Dingoes were near-domesticated dogs then.
Years ago we had a dog breeder in our county who imported various ancestral dog breeds, including dingoes. He's since moved away to some libertarian desert hellhole accepting of such nonsense, but before he moved away some of his dogs escaped and became remarkably successful feral dogs, competing with the coyotes.
My wife and I have one dog who ended up in the animal shelter, probably born to an escapee feral dingo. The animal shelter called her a "husky mix," but as we later learned she's dingo through and through. Even our actual husky, another difficult ancestral dog breed, often thinks she's too much.
This could be her and she sleeps with us:
wikipedia
Our dingo is, by far, the most difficult dog I've ever known, and I've known and loved many dogs. She's incredibly intelligent and was a star student in dog school. But she's a thief and a scoundrel when nobody is looking.
She's also a one-person dog. She knows my wife rescued her, therefore she is my wife's dog, nobody else's. The rest of our family, dogs and humans alike, are lower ranked members of her pack. She considers herself my wife's first officer. I'm just a Neelix or someone, a botanist. What use have true dogs for botanists?
I've only seen this dog scared of three things -- my wife's scolding, gun shots, and air rifle shots. When she was feral I'm certain people shot at her while she was stealing their chickens. Our vet figures he'd find a few shotgun pellets if he ever did a full-body x-ray of her.
IndyOp
(15,512 posts)If you love an ancestral dog, you may enjoy this -
https://wwwx.cs.unc.edu/~hays/humor/dogs_in_elk.html
I read it 15 years ago and laughed until I had tears in my eyes 👀
avebury
(10,952 posts)hunter
(38,309 posts)One thing strikes me about the story now is this:
"Sharing a house with a very primitive, deeply attached and wildly inspired animal has led me into all sorts of situations I never anticipated as a pet owner."
DFW
(54,325 posts)They look different, but I assume they are related somehow?
Codeine
(25,586 posts)Totally different mitochondrial DNA haplogroups; they should be referred to as Carolina Dogs rather than dingos. They are really cool animals though, smart and healthy.
dware
(12,325 posts)I once found an abandoned coyote pup alongside Interstate 10 just outside of Phoenix, AZ, I took it into my truck and called the nearest animal rescue outfit who picked it up from me and assured me it would be well cared for and returned to the wild.
In my opinion, these animal rescue people are the greatest.