Page 41 - K9 News Digital - Issue 11 May2020

Mike John
more names were added that year to the Roll of
Honour. One was 2-year old Butch, a Border Collie,
who saved his owner, a dairy farmer, from being
gored to death by an angry bull; another was Indian
Red, a Morgan/Quarter horse, aged about 25. He
refused to pass a snowbank, whinnied and pawed
the ground. His rider found an elderly lady collapsed
and covered by snow. Then there was Herman, a
Siamese cat, who could have left his smouldering
and smoke-filled home safely but stayed to rouse his
almost unconscious owner.
The fourth was a Malamute, Luke, 2 years old,
who was out cruising with his owner, Ron Thomson,
and a friend on the Burrard Inlet, North Vancouver,
when their boat burst into flames. Unable to reach
lifebelts, the three jumped into the icy waters. Luke
towed one man close to the other, then kept circling
the two until they clung to his singed fur, when he
struck out towards the distant shore, towing the two
men. Halfway there a boat rescued the men but Luke
swam all the way.
IVAN IVANOVICH BERING
Between 1728 and 1733, Russian explorer Ivan
Ivanovich Bering (who was actually a Danish
cartographer, real name Vitus Jonassen Bering, and
in the employ of the Russian Navy), under orders
from Peter the Great to discover if Russia was joined
to Alaska, made several trips across what is now
known as the Bering Straits.
In his logs and diaries he makes several references
to the “superior sled-dogs of the Malamute people”
(incidentally, though it is now universally known as
Malamute, the tribe which developed the breed has
also been variously known as Mahlemut, Malemute,
Mahlmut and Mahlmiut). This tribe of Eskimos had
developed a dog to be used for pulling heavy loads
over long distances, a sled dog that was built to work
and survive in his environment, where he would often
sleep outside in all extreme weathers, his double
coat protecting him against the extreme cold. Even
the insides of his ears were furred.
And while it is doubtful that there is anything of
these original Malamutes left in today’s stock after
the breed’s re-creation in the 1920’s, there is plenty
of evidence that the Malamute goes back at least to
the early 1700’s.
MALAMUTES AND MEERKATS
On one of our fishing weekends away, my husband
and I drove from Henties Bay (a small Namibian
coastal town) further north along the Namibian
Skeleton Coast. It was not the best of days weather
wise, as we Namibians prefer our days sunny and dry,
however we went fishing along with our two Alaskan
Malamutes and our friends. Our friends brought their
Meerkat (Kicki), just like in Meerkat Manor, along for
the day.
They had rescued Kicki on a hunting trip, in the
middle of the winter, earlier in the year. He was barely
two weeks old and standing outside his nest when
they drove by, which is an indication that something
must have happened to his mum because those tiny
Meerkats don’t leave the nest until at least 4 weeks,
or if their mum didn’t return home. Then only after
a few days do they venture out to look for food and
rarely do they survive.
Anyway, it was cold, misty with a bit of light rain, we
were all dressed in thick clothes from head to toe. Of
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