Readers’ Forum
My Little B

By Vicki Gundrum, Sept 29, 2006

It is a harrowing experience to keep a basenji in Mexico. If you’ve ever lived with a basenji and visited Mexico then you already know what I mean—and you’d best not read on because it would be like reliving that trauma you worked so hard in therapy to overcome.

Maybe you even tried Neurolinguistic Programming, in which you relate the trauma to a therapist while staring up and off to the right, the eye posture of recall. As you hold this eyeball position while retelling the event, the therapist waves a couple of fingers in front of your eyes. I’m not sure how this works to dissociate anxiety from the recall of the traumatic event (and neither do the therapists), but the technique has yielded good results for many, including people who have witnessed terrorist attacks. Are there any therapists practicing Neurolinguistic Programming in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico? Anyone out there want a basenji?

I’m trying so hard to be a good girl to a bad dog. I made a promise to this puppy I named “Diva.” Making a promise to take care of a dog for its life is what you do when you acquire a puppy. Of course, it seems like an easy promise to keep when you pick up a tiny, reddish-brown and white basenji pup—with its stand-up ears at attention, brow wrinkled in worry or curiosity, tail curled neatly over its back, and matching white blaze, collar, tail tip, and dainty feet. You can put things in the tail—things like a doll or pencil—and the basenji pup will carry it around, dancing on little white socks.

Diva was a difficult puppy. At first I tried crate training her. I’d leave for a couple of hours and return home to find the puppy had foiled the lock on the crate door. She’d gotten out, and then helped herself to some new shoes. I don’t understand this leather fetish at all. When I first tried putting the nice rolled leather collar and leash on her she bit me, but she’ll happily lick and gnaw any good pair of shoes I own.

One time I padlocked the crate. I returned home to find she had gotten out and pulled up the carpet from the floor. The wall-to-wall carpet was unattached wall-to-wall, throughout the entire apartment. I have no idea how she got out of the padlocked crate. The crate was still padlocked when I got home, and there was Diva, standing outside the crate. If she’d been a boy puppy I would have renamed her Houdini right then.

I was able to secure her in that crate just once. I put a mountaineer’s carabiner on it. This is the clever device mountain climbers rely on to save their lives while dangling hundreds of feet above an icy gorge after losing a grip. The locking mechanism on the carabiner is what never gives way; it is the climber’s last resort and guardian angel. Coming home after leaving Diva in the locked-for-life crate, I found that indeed she could not escape it—but she had managed to move the crate 10 feet, leaving a 10-foot long gash in the wall. She stopped rocking and rolling that crate when it butted up against one end of the couch, which she chewed by extending her teeth through the bars of the crate—because, well, a girl just wants to have fun.

No more crate after that. She could have the San Francisco condo and destroy it at will, which she did.

Basenji owners are a masochistic bunch. Nobody tells you that when they try to sell you a puppy. Instead, the sales pitch is all about what a basenji doesn’t do:

No shedding

They are fastidious little animals that lick themselves clean like cats, plus what they aren’t shedding is fur because they have hair, not fur, making them hypoallergenic. Another plus is that without the sweat glands that go with fur there is no doggy odor, not even when they are wet.

No barking

It’s true. They don’t bark. Basenjis are the only barkless dogs in the world. This was the big selling point for me, but don’t you get suckered in. They don’t bark but they do howl and growl, just like coyotes and wolves, which don’t bark either, by the way.

And basenjis make a few “special” sounds: the chortle, yodel, and what I’ve come to call the “devil-under-stress threat.” The chortle and yodel can be charming, but that third sound will make each hair on the back of your neck stand up and salute every single time.

No vet bills

They are tough little dogs that don’t get sick. They can be injured: most die in automobile accidents; most in populated areas do not live out their natural life spans of a long 14 years. If injured, they don’t halt the injurious activity—head butting a moving car, fighting a pack of pit bulls and rottweilers—instead relying on Mother Nature herself to quickly coagulate that wound or seal that stump of a former limb.

These dogs originated in the Congo, in Africa, home of lions, King Leopold’s vicious regime and slave trade, and the Ebola virus.

I’ve read that in Africa they sometimes breed them with jackals, to make them better hunters. I have read that they work in packs and will bring down a lion, but I don’t believe that one. The human hunters outfit the dogs with gourds around their necks. This I have seen in a picture. The gourds have dried seeds that make a sound like a shaking maraca when the dogs run, a sound the people can then follow because the dogs are hidden when they hunt in the high savanna grasses. Whatever game they bring down the basenji pack immediately begins to devour. The people have to hurry up and get there to have any food left for themselves. This part I find easy to believe. Ha! If you believe a basenji would stand still and point to dinner, then I have a hot internet stock you should buy.

Also out of Africa are their nice, round bottoms—so cute!—no flat, furry asses. They are “short-haired,” and the short hairs form little spiral galaxies on their backsides. It is important that a dog have an attractive rear end, because as anyone who regularly walks a dog knows, that’s the part you are always looking at.

They are beautiful animals, beautiful like an Arabian horse or a gazelle. Their proportions are perfect, like the Greek Parthenon, and sometimes I think I am living with a work of art, or at least a piece of work. Basenjis even have a special gait. At a certain speed between walking and running they will begin to trot like a horse—the hocks stay straight while high stepping carries them forward with an aristocratic air. My aunt says that Diva is conceited (Diva does spend hours in front of the mirror), but I don’t know how someone could know that about a dog.

So, it’s all about looks. That’s the hook. The line is the “no shedding, no barking, no vet bills.”

The sinker is that the hateful basenji breeders neglect to reveal the full list of what basenjis don’t do: No obedience, no displays of affection, no playing second fiddle.

I joined an online support group for basenji owners. We referred to them as “Bs” so as to save the keystrokes it would take to type “basenji” each time. In the chat room I learned about a family that became so exasperated by their B that they shut it in the garage, slipping it food and water through a dog door that was locked from the inside of the house. One day someone needed to use the truck parked in the garage. They opened the garage door and their little B, Peanut, sashayed into the yard. When the driver began to back out the truck, all four hubcaps fell off—clink, clink, clink, clink—showing what little Peanut had been up to.

Another fellow support group member told the story of how her B, also a male, was following a big German shepherd male. The German shepherd lifted its leg and marked a tree. The little B went up to the tree, sniffed it, appeared to actually think for a moment, and then did a handstand to pee right on top of the shepherd’s pee. Take that, tall dog!

It’s interesting to note that like other African animals, it is the female of the species that is dominant, the Top Dog in the case of basenjis. Think of how the lioness is the one to hunt, while the so-called “King of Beasts” merely saunters around showing off his afro.

All female basenjis are “A” or alpha bitches. All the males get an A minus.

I know about one alpha bitch named Baby, who became known as “The Baby” in her neighborhood. Whenever the dog got out, the neighborhood kids would run back into their houses screaming “The Baby’s out!” Well, The Baby died (I forget how, probably a car), and her owner—a computer programmer who worked in a software cubicle farm and ended up with a reputation for being callous—was overheard on the phone at work saying “the baby died.” After a pause, he added “we’ll just get another one.”

Diva as a crate-less puppy (she was in crate training for just one week) would run up to greet me when I came home by latching onto my arm with her teeth. She always got my right arm, because quite naturally I would extend it to protect my face. I could never shake her loose, either. I would have to strip off my shirt over my head and pull the sleeve back with all the strength of my left arm and hand—leaving Diva attached and growling to an inside-out blouse. I was then able to rub down the painful canine dents and tears in my right arm.

After early puppyhood came what I think of as our “honeymoon” period. I gave Diva to my dad, who boasted he could train any dog. She stayed with him for nine months. It was heaven!

My dad treated Diva well. He took her for boat rides. He and his wife live on a man–made canal where people have party boats that look like golf carts and whose main feature is an abundance of cupholders. My dad discovered he could calm Diva by puttering around the canal with her. Diva’s place was at the bow, where she stretched out her neck to catch the wind like some canine figurehead, or Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl.

My dad also learned to make Diva happy with car rides to the McDonald’s drive-up window, where he’d buy her ice cream cones. After nine months my dad returned to me a chubby, undisciplined B who soon after our reunion jumped out the driver’s side window, hitting her head on the screen at the drive-up ATM.

Diva sleeps with me, under the covers. My brother quakes at this fact because he knows her. He has heard that “devil” sound and seen her with a bone, and he would never let her alone down there.

I have to get in bed first to warm it up. Then after 15 minutes, Diva jumps on the bed, looks at me and gives a quick upward nod of her head, which is my signal to lift the sheets so she can go under.

A boyfriend sports fan taught me to shout “go long!” to encourage a little distance in the bed. Then Diva would start to turn in circles, under the sheets. I’d say “make the rounds!” and after three turns or so she’d settle down for the night.

Anytime I meet another basenji owner, I ask where the dog sleeps. Every single basenji sleeps under the covers. This instinct is in the genes, because the dogs aren’t talking to each other and none of the people are encouraging it.

Diva is now with me in Mexico. She has the run of the house, plus a dog door to the roof, where she has a view of the Parroquia, water, a shady spot and a sunny spot, a bed, a paw-triggered treat feeder and a scrap of Astroturf to pee on. I take her out on the street for walks each day, which she loves but I dread. When out walking, both Diva and I are scanning the horizon for strays she might fight. And there are a lot of strays. If a dog rushes up to us I have to pick up Diva and run, with my little B growling and scrabbling to get down out of my arms and beat up the other dog.

Why do I keep her? Why does anyone keep a basenji after the first week? My only explanation is the Stockholm Syndrome. I’m quite fond of Diva, and grateful that she’s selected me to be her bitch in the little prison of my house. I’ve learned how to please her and so no longer fear attacks.

Also, Diva has changed as she’s gotten older, and her Jackal/Hyde personality has matured. She is easier on me, having lost some of her fierceness with the years. I know it sounds like I don’t love her, but I do. I’m just trying not to forget about her roots—her wild, daring, beautiful roots—which I tamed, and I live with the guilt of that. And she has changed me, too, because I’d rather live with her on a desert island than anyone else, partly for her quiet company, and partly because I remember that she could feed us.

For years now Diva has shown affection for me. She wags her tail. When I enter the house, she shakes that tightly curled brown and white tail like a fist. Then I clap and shake in my own little delirious way, craving a coffee to go with her tail, a sweet cinnamon bun having a little sugar fit.



You can reach Vicki at vgundrum@earthlink.net  should you need further dissuasion from getting a basenji. Vicki recommends you adopt a nice “San Miguel especiale” from the Sociedad Protectora de Animales. She adds that a basenji would make a good gag gift for someone expecting a dog.









Letters, Sept 29, 2006
Send your letters to the editor to letters@atencionsanmiguel.org  

Atención will not publish offensive or defamatory material.



Editor,

It has come to my notice that some dogs have misbehaved in the Biblioteca. I have known and been a member of the library since it was first formed after having been a slaughterhouse. As far as I know, only rarely have dogs misbehaved, and I put the fault with the owners. To my way of thinking, the owners should be responsible for their animals, and if the dogs have not been trained it is the fault of the owner—in which case he or she should be thrown out! 

Well-trained dogs with responsible owners should be allowed in the library, as has been the custom since it first opened.

Rosamond Campbell



Editor,

O.K., true confessions time. Once, years ago when I was just a pup, I ate a library book. My “person” replaced it and I have since discovered books are more fun to read than eat.

There is nothing worse for a reader than to go to bed at night without something wonderful to read. Please let me and my friends back into the library (I’ve been going there for the past six years). We’ll be forever grateful and well-behaved; I bet none of us has ever stolen a library book.

I will gladly furnish you with references from some of the best places in town attesting to what a great, well-mannered dog I am. It annoys me to use that word, “dog,” as I don’t think of myself in that way, but I admit I do look like one!

¡Gracias!

Yolanda la Hermosa and Helene Kahn, Yolie’s person 



Editor’s note:

I am so pleased to hear from a member of the canine community. I was wondering how many visited the Biblioteca without reading or borrowing a book!



Editor,

It was very interesting to read your article about low-cost housing in San Miguel. It seems that the availability of such is always in short supply. Housing, either rental or owned, for the low-income person is very difficult. The reasons for the scarcity of affordable housing in a place like San Miguel are complex, from population explosion, international “visitors” investing on properties and speculators to Byzantine requirements and favoritism to be granted the privilege to qualify for a mortgage.

I have known people who have completed the required paperwork year after year and are still waiting. On the other hand, I also know of some people who own more than one of the subsidized homes and rent them, despite the fact that these credits are supposed to be awarded only once and the owners are supposed to reside in them. 

But one of the big dirty secrets about public housing or affordable housing is that there is discrimination against single people. This was brought to my attention by a woman friend of mine who is in her late 30s or early 40s and single. She is one of six adult siblings living in the parental home. My friend has worked since her late teens doing housekeeping. She has managed to save some money, but not enough to qualify for a bank loan. When she applied for one of the municipal homes she was told that these homes were for couples or single mothers and that being single disqualified her. 

My question to the authorities is: What are single people of a certain age in the low-income bracket supposed to do? Are they supposed to remain at the parental abode for the rest of their lives? Is a woman supposed to get pregnant out of wedlock just to qualify? 

If the fourth article in the constitution stipulates that accessible housing be reserved only for “families,” then it is time to either amend the constitution or redefine the family unit. If a person were suddenly to lose all her relatives in one terrible accident, does that person as an individual stop being a family? 

R. Kandell