WESTERN AUSTRALIAN
DINGO ASSOCIATION
AMBASSADOR TAFFY ABBOTTS
Taffy from Mount Hart
I have had the pleasure of dingoes for the past 14 years. Stock the original one I found abandoned at 4 days of age. She was the only one in the litter still alive, her mother probably baited or died after whelping. I raised her on an eyedropper, then a bottle at three weeks. She stopped taking milk and went straight onto solid food she was never tied up or penned up but chose to stay here because she wanted to. She would go off hunting for up to three days at a time but always came back.
You see you never own a dingo they choose to stay with you. Because I raised her by hand I became the alpha male, and it was important to have some chance of control. The Dingo is not for the faint hearted they are in no way like the domestic dog they need a lot of attention, get bored easily will chew anything and every thing they can (I think the first year of stock, I went through about two hundred rolls of toilet paper several pairs of boots and who knows what else)
The rewards are immense - to see their interaction with each other, the bush and with me. One day I was taking (I know they have one million acres to roam but they like nothing better than going for a walk in the evening in the wet season) stock for a walk when a frilled neck lizard went about eight feet up a big straight tree. She had a couple of jumps but could not get it so she walked away about five yards (I could not believe she had given up) turned around and ran flat out at the tree then ran straight up on an angle like the wall of death, grabbed the tail of the frilled neck and threw it to the ground, jumped down, gave it one shake and then left it alone. They let nothing beat them.
I kept a male pup out of Stock's first litter he got named Casserole. He once cost me six thousand dollars in vets bills and helicopter hire when he got a grass seed down in his inner ear (but he was a mate it was worth every cent). When he was about five he started to mate with a wild bitch Who lived about twelve k’ms away. When she whelped he would come home every day, eat as much as he could, pick up and carry the biggest piece of meat back to her and regurgitate the rest for the pups, he would do that right up to December. Then stay home in the A/C till next season. So he became a SNAD sensitive new age dingo.
Another time when he came home, a couple from Broome were staying here. Amber had a new baby, which she was breast feeding while sitting in the bar with the baby's feet on the table. Casserole jumped up on the table and was watching the baby suck. After a while he moved up the table on his belly to the baby's feet where he proceeded to lick the soles of the feet to encourage it to suck harder as they do to there own pups, until Amber said, "Enough get that dingo off its making me sore."
The "bushfoods, insects and wild flowers Of Mt Hart" mural has these words written on it (in the arc at the bottom):
'Once the earth was a garden
It gave us all we need
Then it grew so barren
All because of greed
Once the air was for breathing
And clouds caused rain to fall
Then it filled with poisons
Strangling us all
Water was once for drinking
And giving life to the land
Then it was used for cooling
The machinery of man
Dancing in the meadows
To the sound of a living tree
In and out of the shadows
Laughing with the breeze.'
There are many stories I could recount about my dingoes enough to fill a book if I only had time to write them but I would like to say that they are wonderful, intelligent animals for those people that have had the pleasure of knowing dingoes they never forget them, for those of you reading this enjoy them through the eyes of others they take a lot of looking after and are unique like no other type of dog mine have been lucky in that they have there freedom but also the love, ice cream, Anzac biscuits and prime beef.
Unfortunately they get bad publicity from the press and pastoralists that they do not deserve in the wild they are timed and none aggressive towards humans it is only in situations where they are encouraged by mostly tour guides with food scraps to come in close so people can take photos that problems arrive, where they are brought up with people and respect you as alpha male or female and have constant contact with people as mine do by mingling with the guests that stay here there is no problem.
In the wild they have learnt over the thousands of years they have been in Australia to live in harmony with nature and they do far more good than harm by keeping down the feral foxes, rabbits, piglets and CATS ( mine would kill at least three cats a month, even if they put the cat up the tree and they are within a mile or two of the house they will come back for me to take the gun back with them not to shoot the cat but to shoot the branch from underneath it so they can catch and kill it).
So give the poor dingo a chance learn about them open your eyes before it is to bloody late and they have all been shot or poisoned and have become extinct then you will say oh what a shame. Support our icon the DINGO
The "pioneers of Mt Hart" mural has these words written on it:
"A portrait gallery should be of those we know, those we would like to know and those we should not ignore"
(which were taken off a Harry Chapin record - "Portrait gallery")
MT HART
WILDERNESS LODGE
Accommodation & Fine Cuisine
Gibb River Road,
West Kimberley
Can you help me find homes for these two dingo pups? If you know of anyone we're looking for a really good place for them to be Given away to either separately or as a pair.
Preferably somewhere with lots of land and people who have had dingoes before.
They are both males, three and ½ weeks old - Part Alpine dingo, part Kimberley dingo.
Their mother Luca has a really fantastic gentle and friendly temperament, and their father was a wild dingo.
They have had contact with people from the time they were born.
Thanks
From Taffy
PO BOX 653
Derby WA 6728
PHONE: 08 9191 4645