No 133 - Jill Wylie's "Search" reissued

Search was originally published by Echoing Green Press, a sequel to Jill Wylie's now classic search-dog account, Call: Life with a Basenji. Having run out of stock, it has now been reprinted, updated, and redesigned to match her other books (Call, Wildwoods: the making of a wildlife sanctuary, Barefoot & Pawprint: A Kenya childhood). They can all be purchased singly or as a lovely set (at a discount). 

If you're interested in Dobermans (with tails), search-and-rescue adventures, wildlife rehabilitation, or just the life of an extraordinarily compassionate and courageous woman in Rhodesia-Zimbabwe, Search is for you. Jill will take you from laughter to tears to astonishment in a few short pages.

To order, contact Dan Wylie on d.wylie@ru.ac.za, or visit www.netsoka.co.za

Below is the opening page or two of Search:

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“It works!”

The glad cry must have been heard clear across our valley this green

and golden day. Up on the bluff old man baboon replied with his deep,

“Wah-hoo!” Beside me Jack said, “Hmm!” which in engineering terms

means it could probably be fixed, given the right tools, while our young

son, Danny, capered like a colt, calling encouragements.

We were gathered on the lawn with its long views of the Imbeza

Valley in Zimbabwe’s Eastern Highlands, great umbrella thorn trees

guarding the thin river, occasional houses peeping between flowering

Jacarandas and Flamboyants, vagrant Australian gums towering over

the indigenous miombo woodland and, up in the far reaches, the dark

green of commercial pine plantations claiming the steep hills.

“It” was an everyday, everydog sort of tail belonging to a small

Dobermann puppy, and therein lay the question: Dobermanns had

always been docked, even root-docked, ever since Herr Luis

Dobermann of Apolda began to develop his new breed way back in the

1890s. What’s more, he seems to have used an interesting mixture of the

old type German Pointer, the Rottweiler, one or more varieties of the

Vorsthhund Pointer and the Weimeraner—all traditionally docked

breeds.1 Now, after all these years and generations, here was a

Dobermann with a tail as long as she was born with. Would it work?

With no instruction manual, no long-tailed mother to advise, would it

somehow remember, dredge up from latent genetic memory how to get

up and talk as a good tail should?

Until this day there’d seemed little hope of that. The whole thing was

far too long for a start. The last inch of it dragged along behind like

half-forgotten history, through dust, puppy puddles, across floors,

leaving a fascinating trail like a lizard’s. When the puppy slept it was

left wherever it happened to fall instead of arranging itself beside her

and was frequently trodden on when she turned around.

Every now and then we stood her before a mirror and wagged her

tail for her between thumb and forefinger so she could see what she was

supposed to do with it. To no avail until just now. She shifted on her

bony little buttocks, smoothed her forehead self-consciously and slowly

raised the end of her tail, the tip quivering with the effort. She turned

her gaze from our faces to look at it and with her head cocked

comically, watched it fall back to earth.

I swept her up in my arms. “You clever little thing!” I laughed. “Now

we’re getting somewhere!” and prayed she’d keep it up, more ways than

one, because there was a Plan to all this and a tail was absolutely

essential.

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